My brother Esau . . .

There was a lovely article in the FT some months ago about beards, A hairy issue for today’s executive, explaining why today’s executive prefers a clean shave. In the legal profession it is little different. Bearded lawyers are comparatively rare (for example, of my just short of 60 partners, only one at last count was bearded).

Why this should be the case I don’t know, but I still remember the words of my principal, as we left a meeting at a very pukka Lincolns Inn law firm some 30 plus years ago.

I don’t usually trust lawyers with beards. Mr X [with whom we had just had a less than satisfactory meeting] has done nothing to dispel this prejudice.

From that you will gather that the then partnership of my firm was clean shaven to a man. During my six months off to take Law Society Finals Part II I grew what I thought was a very fine red beard. Having to go into the office to collect something, I bumped into the Senior Partner.

Been on a cruise? Quite sure we won’t see it when you are back next week.

He didn’t.

Watching the fairly recent proceedings of the General Synod, beards are clearly more acceptable in the Church of England than the law, although whether their wearers are more or less trustworthy I couldn’t say.

Not quite such a simple solution

It is all too easy to think that the solution to falling fee income in a downturn is simply to find new clients.

Well, up to a point, but this is, or may well be, a riskier strategy than you might imagine. Time may be better spent looking at ways to develop your active clients; or re-activating your dormant clients.

So, why not new clients?

For most organisations changing law firms in a downturn is going to be well down their list of priorities; and for most law firms, themselves facing the same recessionary pressures as you are, hanging on to their valued clients is going to be important. The result is that changing advisers is only likely if there is a compelling reason to do so. Certainly there will be price sensitivity and pricing pressures, but the aware law firm should be prepared to be flexible. And among the reasons for change are a couple that should give you pause for thought.

First, the incumbent law firm may be trying to “lose” the client. The client may be a bad payer, or it may be asking the law firm to do something that leaves it uncomfortable. In which case why would you want to act for the client? Client take up procedures all too often get overlooked in the bad times, but ignore risk management at your peril.

Alternatively, the incumbent law firm may have cocked up, which in turn may mean that the client has a somewhat jaundiced view of lawyers: and you may get sucked into a lot of remedial work that the client is reluctant to pay you for.

As Stefan Stern noted in his FT column Beware of fad-loving analysts

Simple solutions to complicated problems can be seductive.

And all too often such solutions fail to deliver. There are certainly going to be opportunities to find and develop new clients in this downturn; and there are going to opportunities to be burnt: as a result of taking on unsuitable clients, agreeing to do work beyond your competence, or on terms that not only devalue the work and demoralise your team, but set a precedent it may be hard to reverse later.

Thought for the week ahead

From a March 2008 Stefan Stern FT column Desperate measures for latter-day Willy Lomans, in which he quotes Neil Rackham, (in his words, ‘the author of the seminal Spin Selling and reliable deliverer of common sense’)

In hard times, people make the mistake of trying to sell to more people at less intensity,” Mr Rackham says. “But what actually works is selling to fewer people in more depth. The same approach that works in good times works in bad times.

How unlucky are we?

Somewhat off piste, but in his post The fickle finger of fate earlier today, Matthew Taylor (RSA’s Chief Executive) concludes with the following, with which, I expect, most of us (reluctantly) will agree (taken froman argument developed by Dan Gilbert in Stumbling into Happiness ):

We systematically exaggerate both the control we have over our own life course, and our own talents in comparison with other people. So, we have an inbuilt tendency to believe that good things in our life are the consequence of our own talents and actions while bad things are the result of misfortune.

Lawyers are no different to anyone else.

Neglecting strategy

An excellent email in my in box this morning from Edge International, with their Law Firm Strategy Newsletter. The topic? The Strategy Executioner (or, to paraphrase the opening, 10 easy ways to ensure that your law firm’s strategy never sees the light of day). You will need to subscribe to the Newsletter and visit Edge International’s website for more (their RSS feed is not great) but good reading, and a very telling conclusion,

The sad truth, though, is that much strategy fails because of simple neglect rather than active sabotage.