Already a Profitable Law Firm

This client is a firm with teams of equity partners. They are well known in their field and rightly perceived to be very successful. They had enjoyed a period of growth in turnover, partners and profitability. Early in 2008, as the economy started to turn down and the credit crunch began to take effect, the managing partner, a longstanding client, felt that the likelihood of their maintaining their run of increased profits was very slim (they were already substantially down on their year-to-date results) and the state of the economy meant that the following year was unlikely to be any better.

Boosting the Business Pipeline

As managing partner, the other partners were looking to him to do something to boost the results and defy the downturn. We did our usual deep and thorough analysis of their business pipeline, covering all of the firm’s management information - obviously we already knew much of the background. We produced a detailed report which identified their issues and opportunities and identified ten areas of action which would provide sustainable improvements in results, all but two of which could be started immediately. The managing partner presented our paper at a partners’ meeting and, much to our surprise, nine of the ten recommendations were accepted and we were asked to help with implementation of three of them. The remainder were handled in-house.

Increased Billing, Sustained Profits

Over the next four months, they generated over £200K more profit than they had been expecting - and their cash flow was also very strong. Improvements came from a number of changes including billing processes, back office procedures and some limited staff savings. Not only did they end the year on yet another profit increase (albeit a modest one), but their budgets for the following years are also more optimistic - and they are still on track to meet the improved budget.