Birth of a salesman

The market crash has had a devastating effect on the workforce with many employers proposing fewer hours and less pay as an alternative to redundancies. Ever conscious of the view from the other side of the counter, employers are wary of high staff turnover, reductions in pay and hours and the need to uphold an excellent service while also providing consistency to its clients and customers. Most importantly, they are conscious of who ultimately remains to make up the face of the firm.

At the height of the property boom good professionals were being poached for prime roles at excellent firms, yet, when it came to cuts being made, many found themselves in the firing line '“ they did not qualify for the full range of employee rights because of the length of time at their new firms. From being the crème de la crop, they were soon unexpectedly heading for the chop.

Traditional law firms whose fee earners generalise in a few areas seem to be weathering the storm better than the larger specialist firms, which might be a result of the clientele rather than the service offered. Even then, the larger corporate-style firms have the benefit of being able to deliver a speedier commercial service tailored to a particular client with the resources to enable them to do so, which has for a long time set them apart from the high street generalist firms and will continue to do so. Those resources are, however, costly.

Just as large growth can occur quickly, so too can downsizing. Many firms have closed satellite offices and are looking to build up their workforce once again with part-time employees and/or those who can work from home when the work levels necessitate it in order to provide cover when needed without the full overheads required for office space etc.

Flexible work patterns have been successful in the financial, governmental and regulatory sectors, and the legal sector has to a large extent been slow to follow suit. Some would contend that this is because of the nature of the work rather than anything else, yet solicitors are notoriously solitary when in the throws of legal drafting.

While case management systems have made a huge impact on enabling any fee earner in a department at any one time to access a particular file and work on it, it is far more feasible for one main fee earner to handle a transaction from start to finish. Being available to clients and third parties at short notice and having a quick turnaround can lead to long hours in the office. The problem at present is that there is not much work to fill in those hours, yet people still need and expect their legal advisers to be on hand just as they were before the market crash. The once buoyant legal services market has turned into an inventor's heaven; it is all about who can come up with the best sales tactic.

From fee earner to sales person

The larger firms have traditionally had specialist departments managed by a team hierarchy where the lead partner(s) undertake fee earning and marketing while delegating to a senior associate oversight of some of the work of the junior members of staff. Reports now show that this way of working is coming under scrutiny as there is not enough work for the partners to maintain their past billing performance and enable them to feed work down to other fee earners.

The role of the partner is, to a large extent, being forced to change to accommodate the current economic climate. The re-arrangement of people resources in a bid to maximise performance at all levels is inevitable if firms want to secure some sort of stability in an unstable market.

Calls are being made for partners to play a far greater managerial role in overseeing other members of staff undertaking the work while also concentrating on bringing in more work; as opposed to partners undertaking a large amount of fee earning on lucrative accounts themselves. This would lead to the overall fees being reduced, as a fee earner at a lower level would carry out the work with some element of a 'care and control' charge to take into account the partner's oversight. This would be attractive to clients who are shopping around for the best deals across the board from lawyers and accountants to banks and financial advisers. It will also lead to a better-equipped workforce as their experience levels will rise with higher-value work and a partner to oversee what they do.

Yet this change will not come about easily and, depending on how partnership agreements are drafted for particular firms, it might lead to them being revised. It might also have a knock-on effect as to how much partners are actually paid, which some might expect would be met with much resistance. It will take time, money and good resources to bring about a change that, for some time to come, seems to be the best option to maintain a workforce and get the most out of it.

How much change law firms can accommodate and are prepared to make is an interesting area and will without doubt change the face of firms from the old traditional aristocratic poise to a modern business machine set on success.