New model army: do you have the right personnel in place?

When planning the future, deciding on your business model should encourage you to consider the direction of your practice. If we accept that a firm wishes to continue offering a commoditised service, accepting who will deliver the work in the future will be an essential part of your decision strategy. If you are planning to build a £20m-turnover business, your people will be different from those at a solicitors with £1m turnover.

The models are both distinct and measurable. The firms providing client-led hourly charged services will need to charge a premium for their time and will have to give exceptional client service. Clients will pay a premium for this service and will expect increased client care and service – after all, that’s what they are paying for.

In this model owners/partners win and deliver work through their reputation, etc, and it represents the shape of an hourglass with a partner/fee earner being assisted by one or two members of a support team to deliver exceptional service and charge a premium price
for that.

On the other hand, for
those firms that choose the commoditised route, they must process the service and allow for a deskilling of the people involved. This does not mean a reduction in customer care, but it does mean paying the right people to do the work.

Pyramid approach

Partners and experienced fee earners should not be involved in any way other than winning the work through good relationships and managing the team that can deliver the work at a price you can afford.

This model represents a pyramid and should work on
one owner/partner managing
a ratio of ten people to one supervisor/manager. This allows you to use software that drives production. It can be cloud-based with little capital expenditure.

In the example of operating a conveyancing department, the software drives the process and automatically activates pre-approved letters and searches for example, therefore taking the conveyancing process away from individual people who may have been involved as conveyancers
for many years.

The new Mortgage Market Review (MMR) will drive many smaller firms away from conveyancing and without technology and sufficient resources they will find their marketshare eroding.

Each model needs to be established for each department, and running a successful practice in the future will depend on getting each model operating correctly. What you cannot do is merge the two models and deliver a commoditised price-driven service and have partners and senior fee earners deliver it.
This will cost you money with every file you open and will be the recipe for failure.

Once you have decided on your model, you will hire staff based on where you want the business to be, not where
you are. The team that can run
a £1m practice successfully is not the same team that
can manage a £20m firm.

Putting the right people in the right places is absolutely critical to sustain growth. Whole-
person assessments and job benchmarking will enable you
to take a systematic approach to hiring and career development. This will reduce employee turnover and, in turn, produces greater profitability.

Viv Williams is the CEO of 360 Legal Group