Law Practice Management Asked and Answered Blog

Category: Follow-up

Aug 22, 2018

Law Firm Retreat Follow-up and Implementation

Question:

I am a partner in a eighteen attorney firm in Milwaukee. Over the years our firm has held firm retreats, but the results have been disappointing – a lot of talk and little action. We have the same problem in our monthly partner meetings. We spend a lot of time in meetings – discussions and decisions made but little implementation. This week we are having a partner vote to decide on whether to have a retreat this year. Frankly, I will vote against it and I think it will be a waste of time. What are your thoughts concerning law firm retreats?

Response:

I understand your frustration and concern. Many law firms have had similar experiences with retreats. Good ideas and decisions but no follow-up or implementation once the retreat is over. Often retreats are too loose with no structure or leadership.

Insure that the firm appoints a qualified retreat leader either from within the firm or someone outside the firm that has experience leading or facilitating retreats. Identify specific objectives and desired outcomes during the retreat planning phase and design in how follow-up and accountability for implementation will be achieved. Be sure you come away from the retreat with a specific plan for follow-up action on every problem discussed. For example, if you decide to start a talent search to fill specific position, or if you have assigned several partners members to work further on specific problems and report the results, it is important that individual assignments and target dates for reporting and completion be made explicit. Determinations of this kind should be recorded and made part of the minutes of the retreat. Further, a system of follow through meetings to assess progress is advised, in order to maintain the momentum achieved at the retreat.

Many law firms benefit considerably by incorporating specific retreat decisions into a twelve month plan and schedule of activities to meet firm objectives. Planning of this kind typically results in significant firm progress, even though there may be initial resistance to these efforts by some firm members.

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John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Jun 06, 2017

Law Firm Collections/Retainer Management – Using a Retainer Follow-up Report

Question:

I am the managing partner of a nine attorney general practice firm in the Chicago suburbs. We practice in the areas of estate planning/administration and family law. While our estate planning and uncontested family law work is done on a flat fee basis our estate administration and contested family law work is time billed. We collect initial retainers for these matters but we fail to insure that the retainers are replenished. We are having accounts receivable collection problems as a result. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Response:

This is a common problem that I see in firms doing estate administration and especially family law. The best way of managing your accounts receivable is to have less in outstanding accounts receivable in the first place. You do this by staying on top of your retainer balances compared to your work in process and ask the client for additional retainer before the work in process exceeds the retainer balance. In order to stay on top of retainer replenishment you need to develop what I call a retainer replenishment report and have someone assigned to reviewing the report daily and advising responsible attorneys to contact the client when work in process has hit a certain threshold (percentage of retainer used). Some firm’s present the report at a weekly attorney meeting and determinations are made regarding additional retainers to request. Other firms assign the responsibility to the firm administrator to automatically bill for the additional retainer. It is also important to insure that ongoing work is managed in a way that an excessive amount of work is not committed to a matter until the additional retainer replenishment is received.

A retainer replenishment report is not a standard report in many billing systems. You may have to create a custom report in your billing system using a report writer or in a worst case drop a accounts receivable report to an Excel file and add in some columns for the other information.

Here are the suggested data fields/columns for such a report:

Responsible attorney
Client/Matter name
Retainer Balance (typically this would be the balance in the trust account)
Unbilled WIP Fees
Unbilled Cost
Total Unbilled WIP
75% Retainer Threshold
Amount Over/Under Retainer
Additional Retainer Requested
Total Amount Retainer to Bill (Amount WIP over retainer plus additional retainer requested)

Many family law firms have advised me that after learning the hard way they are now doing a good job at this and advising me that they have minimal accounts receivable issues.

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