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| Capabilities and Experience |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Jun 08, 2009 at 03:17 AM | |
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Nick’s Capabilities, Expertise and Experience About Nick Nick Jarrett-Kerr LLB is one of the leading UK and international advisers to law firms on leadership, management and strategy and is honoured to have helped more than seventy law firms across the world in the last few years. He was a founder member of the (England & Wales) Law Society’s Law Management Section and served as its Chairman for two years. He is also a member of the UK Association of Partnership Practitioners. Nick's main objective is to help law firms to improve their business performance. His unique blend of hands-on experience, practical approaches and academic rigour has been valued by law firms right across the world in facing their strategic, operational and business issues and problems. He is a regular writer and speaker on management and leadership topics such as management/leadership development, as well as strategic planning, financial management, business development and project implementation. He has a particular interest in Law Firm Strategy and Governance, Partner Compensation, Partnership Performance Criteria and Partner Development. He regularly leads or facilitates retreats, partner conferences, practice group retreats and away days. Prior to becoming a consultant in 2002, Nick (a non practising solicitor) was for eight years the Chief Executive Partner of Bevan Ashford, a leading regional firm in Great Britain, during a period of enormous growth which started in the depths of the 1989-2001 recession. Nick has good practical experience of introducing behavioural changes to law firms both from his own experience in growing a small provincial firm to a big multi-site firm, and from more recent advisory projects. Nick also regularly leads training and development events for lawyers. In recent years, he has led over fifty management training or development events each year in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Asia, the Caribbean and the United States of America. Nick has a particular interest in leadership development for partners of law firms as well as Law Firm Finances and Economics. In the last two or three years he has consulted to firms in eleven different countries on three different continents. He is also module leader for the Nottingham Law School strategy modules and a core MBA faculty member. Nick's book Strategy for Law Firms - After the Legal Services Act was published in November 2009 by Law Society Publications. He is also currently writing a further book on Profit Sharing in law firms. He is joint author - with Friedrich Blase and Michael Roch – of the recent Managing Partner Best Practice Report on Financial Management in Law Firms. Nick lives near Bristol; he loves cooking, skiing and sailing though not all at the same time.
SUMMARY OF CAPABILITES AND EXPERIENCE Strategic Planning Nick has regularly advised law firms internationally of all sizes in their strategic planning, and in addition has conducted both full and abbreviated strategic and operational reviews. Nick regularly works with Boards and Management Committees to refine or review the firm's strategic direction. His strategic planning advice has also sometimes been conducted as part of – or leading up to - a Strategy Day or Partners Conference. Nick has proved that a thorough review or audit of a law firm’s existing strategic plan always adds huge value. His intervention has, for example, led to modifications to bring the plan up to date or has been a jump start to drive implementation. Such planning involves updating the facts and assumptions on which the plan was created, evaluating implementation and accomplishments to-date and bringing a new focus to the efforts. Typically a Strategy Day or Partners Conference will result in several outcomes. First, law firm strategic plans are often very internally focused, and therefore, one of the challenges may be to separate short term business issues from the longer term strategic issues. A typical business plan deals, amongst other things, with the internal questions of technology, profit sharing, morale, training and similar issues. The strategic plan is then reserved for external issues related to the creation of new revenues, dealing with competitors and establishing the firm’s position in the marketplace. Nick does not advocate a “canned” or “one size fits all” strategic planning process. The needs and expectations of each firm are different and he attempts to accommodate those differences in working with individual clients. Simply stated, his philosophy of strategic planning was once summed up by Dr Henry Migliore who said "A good way to outline a strategy is to ask yourself: 'How and where am I going to commit my resources?"' Your ansewr constitutes your strategy." This means that you need (1) thoroughly to understand the law firm's current capabilities and position in the marketplaces where it competes; (2) select the most important strategic actions the firm can take to harness its assets and capitalize on its opportunities; (3) plan detail what must occur, what individual partner will take responsibility for the actions and the date by which it must be completed; and (4) drive implementation. Usually a Strategy Review concludes by focusing the firm on two or three external strategies— those issues that have the highest likelihood of successful completion and which have the greatest financial and strategic impact on the firm. Practice Group Strategy Reviews Nick has been recently working with a number of firms at both Practice Group and Industry Group level to tease out the longer term choices which those groups need to make to become or remain competitive. The advantage is that at this more granular level, lawyers have an intimate understanding of what they do for clients and can immediately identify the clients for whom they do it. They see their competitors at close hand and are aware of those who hold a competitive advantage in terms of valuable clients, profile in the market and pricing leadership. Groups know their own bench strength, experience sets and capacity. Perhaps more importantly – they see the real live issues which are worrying their clients and are keeping them awake at night. As front line troops, they can also spot both new laws and emerging trends which are likely to affect their practicing lives. Armed with this key knowledge set, he has helped such groups to decide and to crystallise the long term direction and positioning for the group Operational Reviews In addition to Strategic Reviews, Nick is frequently asked by firms to conduct operational reviews, either as part of or separate from a strategic review. Typically, an operational review will analyse some or all of the issues of profitability, management and governance as well as departmental business planning. In some cases, the review will also focus on the adequacy, variety, quality and delivery of management and administrative support services Mergers and Acquisitions There is little doubt that the legal profession is starting to consolidate. In the UK, the Top 100 law firms house an increasing number of the available lawyers. Most firms now have merger firmly on their strategic radar, realising that safety in numbers, critical mass and depth of team are all fast becoming critical to success. However, most law firm merger discussions start by chance or without much research. Firms might seek a merger partner in a different locality and make contact with firms whom they just happen to know. Or partners of different firms meet and because they like each other, merger of the two firms seems a bright idea. At this stage, many law firms think they can manage M&A discussions without advice and assistance – just another transaction requiring legal documentation. Many such mergers turn out to be ill-advised and badly planned and often end in tears or unfulfilled expectations. Nick has helped at three stages.
Structural, Change Management and Life Cycle Planning Many of Nick's clients increasingly find that the structure of their firm was built to cope with historical challenges and is no longer fit for the firm’s current strategy or its size. Nick has done much work recently in this area. First, Nick has recently been involved in assisting more than one firm in Asia that has historically been controlled by a small group or partners. His work includes structuring the firm’s equity that will allow the gradual empowerment and eventual transfer of control to the firm’s next generation of partners, along with the implementation of all the required changes in governance, performance measurement and compensation that are related to this issue. Second, he recently acted for one of the 100 largest US firms in changing the firm’s equity and remuneration system from purely financial factors (including originations) to a system that encourages and rewards the right behavior across a spectrum of performance and to illustrate non-finance related behaviors in a tangible way so that they are understood and accepted by the partnership. Third, he has been advising UK law firms on their equity and governance structures. A typical assignment has been to advise on the adjustment of partnership tiers and lockstep to keep the equity tight at the same time as meeting the career needs of the current and future generation of equity partners. Partner Profit Sharing and Remuneration About one-third of Nick’s working life has recently been spent in helping firms internationally in the challenge of ensuring the optimal method of profit sharing and partner remuneration. He has assisted several firms to create a balanced scorecard approach to partner development and assessment. He has also facilitated the drafting of partner criteria for accession, promotion and development, and has helped identify Key Areas of Performance for firms to concentrate on the critical areas where partners are expected to perform – and to assess and value such efforts. He has designed lockstep, intolerant lockstep, and discretionary rewards systems and hybrids of them. He has also helped firms to draw up Partner Development Programmes to help partners to develop and grow. Governance and Management As mentioned previously, Nick has helped firms world-wide with their management and governance. No ‘one-size fits all’ approach can work here. He has found through many long years of experience that these issues are a particular challenge in professional service firms because all or most of a firm’s partners actively engage in its day-to-day operations as owners, managers and workers. He has adopted an approach which seeks to find for each firm a structure and constitution which facilitates strategic and operational decisions, provides business units that match the strategy and links decision-making with the point of implementation. Equally, it is vital to provide a means of assessing responsibilities and accountabilities throughout the organisation and to ensure each business unit has clear and unambiguous business objectives, in line with the strategy. Partner Workshops and Training Although Nick leads a lot of sessions at public conferences and seminars, he has found that the most effective way of getting messages over to busy lawyers is through focused workshops – aligned to the needs of each firm – at which lawyers can learn not only from Nick but from each other in a mutual and shared experience. Workshops which Nick has delivered include courses on Finances & Profitability, Business Development, Marketing, Teamwork and the Development of others, as well as – currently – focused workshops on the effects of the Legal Services Act. Succession Planning Nick has helped a number of firms (and senior partners) plan for succession. Succession planning comes in a number of different forms, and he has advised in most of them. Some firms face the prospect of having to ‘buy out’ a retiring partner who may own a considerable proportion of the firm’s assets. Other firms have no obvious successor to positions of leadership. Sometimes there is no obvious successor with the legal skills to replace an outgoing partner. In some of these cases, Nick has facilitated the sometimes difficult and sensitive discussions which have been needed and which partners have been reluctant to confront. In other cases, he has advised on the best corporate and other structures which can be put in place to enable to a practicing partnership to continue to thrive, whilst allowing the retiring partner to take a ‘rent’ on his assets. In at least one case, the discussions have led to merger planning with another firm. Corporate Coaching Nick has consistently and frequently coached a number of UK Top 100 Law Firm Managing and Senior Partners and Department Heads, and also provided similar coaching on a more corporate basis for smaller firms where it has proved possible to engage with all partners on a monthly or quarterly retainer basis.
Details of partner workshops
During the last year or two,Nick has engaged in workshops – both within law firms and in public seminars - in the following areas
Most of these workshops were specifically tailored for the individual needs of the firms in question – sometimes as part of the buy in for other projects such as a change in partner compensation. Also the workshops tend to have varied in content and pitch as between partners and associates. Some of these workshops have been two-day and some full one day sessions. Others have been more concentrated. One popular method is to run two 3 to 4 hour sessions on different topics in one day – a lunchtime session for Associates (say 11.00 to 3pm, or noon to 3pm) and then a late afternoon session for partners (3pm to 6pm or 3pm to 7pm).
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| Last Updated ( Mar 16, 2010 at 09:50 AM ) |