In-house legal teams are under financial pressure. We all know this. In some cases their budgets are relatively static but they want more for the same amount. In other cases the budget has been reduced so they want...

A common feature of international law firms is a dissonance between the firm’s organisational and operational structures ... internecine price competition and clients feeding on the carcass of a firm with no clear cross-border pricing strategy...

With the economy on the upswing, many lawyers are contemplating increasing prices. In many instances, firms and Chambers have held their rates as much as possible and many will not have been able to implement much if any increase over the last...

The refrain; "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there", is essentially a paraphrase of an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Unfortunately, there are some strong parallels between....

The two primary objectives of all pricing decisions by law firms should be to maximise profitability while at the same time ensuring that the pricing structure leaves the client feeling that they have had fair value for money. And yet opportunities to do so continue to be squandered.

This blog has its genesis in an angry and heartfelt comment on LinkedIn from a practitioner who was responding to my post that read, “Law Society accredits first law firms to Wills and Inheritance Quality Scheme. Excellent, but will the accredited firms use the accreditation...

We all like a ‘good client’, whether it is an existing client, or a big one we hope to land. But what exactly are the attributes of a good client and what do we do about them if they aren't as good as we thought they were? When working with partners on pricing strategy...

Over the holiday break I came across two stories that highlight the two sides of long-term profit decline in smaller law firms. One is about poignant failure, the other about success. I want to share both with readers to highlight what...

In a recent survey of general counsel in Australia and New Zealand, just four to six per cent said hourly billing is the optimal method of pricing legal services. When asked which pricing method they would prefer, the general response was a collective shrug of the shoulders...

Well, that’s got a really upbeat ring to it! As if legal practice isn’t challenging enough, we are now being told to not make a profit. No, clearly not. This is the further development of one of my core tenets and that is, production costs have absolutely nothing...

Gollum’s iconic phrase from Lord of The Rings is the theme of this post and pretty much describes the grip that many partners exercise over pricing decisions impacting ‘their’ clients. This gives rise to a broader question; who should control pricing in the firm - partners, marketing, finance or someone else?

Two joint Validatum–Beaton Capital Australian seminars will release to the small and mid-tier law firm market in Australia, the LegalDatum cloud-based resource that will provide law firms with reliable market data about what their competitors are charging and how...