The Alcoholic Partner: An Unpleasant Situation That Has To Be Addressed Ignore a partner’s alcohol problem at the firm’s peril, mainly the peril of lost clients and charges of malpractice. Both alcohol and drug abuse are high among attorneys, says Robert J. Henderson of RJH Consulting, a law firm practice…
How To Deal With – And How To Avoid – Nonproductive Partners Not sure what to do with that underperforming partner? Many law firms are on the same sinking ship. In fact, the problem of nonproductive partners is “right up there with compensation systems as one of the thorniest issues…
Time needs to come in and bills need to go out no less frequently than weekly. Let it go beyond that, “and the losses can be significant,” says law firm management consultant ROBERT HENDERSON of Jackson Hole, WY. Nobody can remember every detail a week after the fact, so the…
Want to improve the profits? Get the partners to stop hogging the work. There’s more money to be had by funnelling work to the associates, says practice management consultant ROBERT HENDERSON of RJH Consulting in Jackson Hole, WY. It’s called leveraging. It means using the firm’s res…
And All Seven Are Easy To Get Rid Of A tight economy doesn’t allow for the waste of money. Yet waste of money is there in just about all firms, and it lurks in places where no one thinks to look. Here are seven such areas. They are outlined by ROBERT J. HENDERSON, a Jackson Hole, Wyoming…
Performance evaluation should go way beyond the tried and the old principles to be truly effective. One should treat this process as an opportunity rather than as a perfunctory exercise. First, to value the person being evaluated; and second, to share and engage the employee in the…
I began the practice of law in 1958. Back then, we didn’t have all of the wonderful advantages of modern technology. For instance, if we wanted to make copies of documents, we simply inserted more sheets of carbon in the typewriter. Our telephones were the good old-fashioned black variety prov…
Unbillable Time Turnover This is determined by dividing the amount of unbilled time by the average of each month’s billings for the year to date. For example, let’s say, the firm carries a balance of unbilled time of one million dollars, and average monthly billings are $250,000. Then it would take…
Here’s a look at another side of the financial picture: how to calculate the partner profitability. And how to approach the poor performers. One of the best indicators of where and how to improve the firm’s profit margin is the individual partner profitability. Knowing whether the partners are per…
At RJH Consulting, our methodology is comprehensive and yet flexible, depending on the circumstances. However, the typical process that we have developed begins with a thought-provoking confidential survey. The questionnaire covers all aspects of the client’s law firm oper…