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Apr 26, 2016

Law Firm Billable Hours in an Insurance Defense Firm

Question:

I am the managing partner of a 12 lawyer insurance defense firm in Oklahoma City. We have 4 partners and eight associates. While we have grown over the last five or six years by adding associates our profitability has remained flat. We feel that we are not getting the billable hours that we should out of our associates. What are other firms like ours getting out of their associates in terms of billable hours?

Response:

Most of my insurance defense firm clients expect a minimum of 1800+ annual billable hours from associates and partners. Often 1800 is a requirement to remain employed and the minimum threshold to be eligible for a performance bonus. Often I see billable hours at 2000 to 2200 in insurance defense firms.

This goal is getting harder to achieve. Insurance companies are now managing hours as well as rates and outlining their expectations in their billing requirements and guidelines. Law firms can no longer "lean on the pencil" like they used to do in the old days. In addition, if business and file assignments are down you can't expect associates to work on work that isn't there.

If you are not getting 1800 hours – the problem may not be associate work ethic – it may be that more time needs to be invested by the partners in focused business developed and bringing in more work.

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

Dec 30, 2014

Law Practice Management – 5 Ideas for Jump Starting Your Law Firm in 2015

Happy New Year and best wishes for both a personal and professional 2015.

Here are a few ideas to help you jump start your practice in 2015:

  1. During the next week review your 2014 personal and practice performance and consider
    1. Things that you did well and could have done better
    2. Things done poorly
    3. Things that you should have done but did not do
    4. What you should be doing now – in 2015 – to be effective in your practice
  2. Write down what results you expect – goals – for 2015 – both financial and non-financial – and compare actual results against these goals
  3. Ask each person in your firm to create and implement one goal that will improve your practice in some way (revenue, profitability, process, client satisfaction)
  4. Implement one action item that you have been things about for years and procrastinating
  5. Give some though as to what you want to be remembered for – personal and professionally

Good luck in 2015!

https://www.olmsteadassoc.com/blog/category/strategy/

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

 

 

 

Nov 04, 2014

Law Firm Attorney Compensation in a Contingency Fee Firm

Question:
 
Our firm is a five attorney personal injury plaintiff law firm located in San Francisco. We have 2 equity partners, one non-equity partner and two associates. One hundred percent of our fees are contingency fees. Our attorneys work on some cases together. We do not keep time sheets.

The two equity partners are compensated based upon their ownership interests and this has worked well. We are looking to improve our compensation for the non-equity partner and the two associates. Currently they are paid salaries and a percentage of firm collected fee revenue over a certain threshold. We feel that they have not been profitable and we have been overpaying them. We would appreciate your thoughts.

Response:

Personally I think that a percentage of firm revenue or profit should generally be reserved for equity partners or shareholders. There should be a reason for them to want to become equity partners. I would tie the majority of their compensation to individual performance – client origination revenue, working attorney production revenue, and responsible attorney revenue, and case profitability - being the primary factors. Develop specific guidelines for client origination (rules for the credit – direct effort of the attorney versus the brand of the firm). Since you don't keep time sheets you will have to develop some method for allocating the working attorney credit when attorneys work together on cases – subjective determination of value and contribution to the case, etc. Without timesheets it will also difficult to determine profit at the matter/case level. Decide how you want to weigh origination, working attorney, responsible attorney and case profitability and then use these to determine a compensation percentage to be used for overall compensation or bonus.

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

 

Aug 04, 2014

Law Firm Client Telephone Satisfaction Interviews in Insurance Defense Law Firms

Question:

I am the chair of our firm's marketing committee. We are a 24 attorney insurance defense firm in Houston. While we solicit feedback from some of our larger insurance company clients at lunch and face to face meetings – the sessions are not structured, data is not really tabulated, and only a handful of clients are usually involved. We have been thinking of embarking on a more structured process. I would appreciate your thoughts:

Response:

Our firm recently completed client satisfaction interviews for several of our insurance defense law firm clients. Here are a few quotes and a summary of what these insurance company law firm clients told us:

Much can be learned by talking to your clients. Structured telephone interviews conducted by a neutral in-house law firm marketing employee or outside third party can provide many surprises as well as answers. Client satisfaction interviews can be the best marketing investment that you can make.

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

 

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