Firm And File Audits
With any business, including law firms, there is a need for a plan and strategy to assist in driving the firm forward to achieve its goals and objectives. There can be a number of reasons why a firm may call in external expertise to assist them, and our Detailed Strategic Review Service is an in-depth review of a law firm to understand the firm and identify where change may be necessary to achieve specific or generic goals.
The Strategic Partner has a depth of experience across the full range of legal environments and has faced, with firms, a multitude of challenges and assisted firms in overcoming them.
Our Consultants will spend time in your business to gain a detailed understanding from which they will work with the key people to share expertise and knowledge to improve and drive the firm forward in the most appropriate and effective way.
Find Out More
For more information about our Strategic Review service, you can call us on 0203 911 9710 or you can email us at info@thestrategicpartner.co.uk.
You can also download our Strategic Review brochure by clicking on the link below.
Firm And File Audits – The Detail
The Strategic Partner provides essential support to law firms, offering a range of products, services and consultancy tailored to the Legal sector. Our experience and focus provides you with additional support when you need it and we will work closely with the Firm’s owners as a Partner to you.
Knowledge, Experience and Expertise
Our strength lies in our knowledge, experience and connections. We work with you on a continued basis so we truly understand your firm and, where needed, we will provide key services, guidance and support. Our focus is to work with you as a valued Partner, helping you to increase productivity and profitability and control risk through cost effective solutions without deteriorating service delivery.
Through the time spent with you, we will get to know your firm in detail and present back the results with a series of recommendations for your consideration and implementation.
This is a bespoke service to each firm ensuring that we focus on what is important to the firm and delivering advice, recommendations and strategy that meets the firm’s requirements.
Our goal is to deliver practical solutions to help make the firm more efficient and profitable. Areas a review may cover are as follows: –
Vision – What is the overall vision of the Equity and goals for the next 12-24 months? This will enable us to put into perspective the information gathered and identify where you will or may not achieve your goals and what can be done to ensure you do. Where is your operation aligned to these goals and where issues may be that should be addressed?
Structure – Review the structure of the firm and make proposals or recommendations for potential change.
The Future Strategy – What is the strategy for the firm and overall future direction? Does the strategy of the Partners meet that of the staff and where are there differences? This will enable proposals to align approaches to ensure the future strategy delivers on expectations.
Forecasts – Through understanding the goal and strategy of the firm work with you to build a strategy and forecasts for the firm to measure achievements and success.
Staff – Who is needed and why and identify any recruitment needs or potential reductions in numbers and from which areas and why. We will clearly set out the financial benefits and why the Practice will not be impacted negatively by any changes. We will consider reward management structures that could work alongside enhancements to the existing staff management programme.
Succession – working with you to put together an effective succession strategy, if appropriate working with the people you have identified in the firm as potential future partners. We will help you put together an approach that sets out what they need to achieve to reach the status of Equity Partner and discuss a training programme for that to happen alongside targets and expectations. We can also look at the retirement plans for existing partners and discuss strategy and structure to provide for such retirement.
LLP & Partnership Agreement – As appropriate review the Partnership agreement to ensure this meets the needs of both the partners and the firm making recommendations to bring this up to date.
Processes & Workflow – from case capture through to closure, identify any changes to the current method of running cases to ensure consistency of service and fee generation and ensure you are getting maximum value from your legal work.
Systems – Review your use of case management technology and other systems to identify any needed system changes or technology that could result in time and expense savings.
Management Information – Information you currently use and how it is obtained enabling you to identify where you can use your system to provide better management information needed to run the firm, manage the people and provide visibility to the Partners.
Expenditure – Understand where you are spending money and help to identify savings that can be achieved, where and how for your consideration.
Marketing – What is your current approach to marketing and does the strategy you have meet expectations? Where external suppliers are providing services are they performing or falling short? How could your strategy be made stronger or adapted to deliver on expectations?
New work generation and business development – Discussion on skill sets and how they are presented. Collect ideas and strategies from people in the firm and how and what they are prepared to do to help the firm grow. Do you have experience and knowledge that you are not using? Are people willing to enhance their skills and do more etc? This will also include understanding your self-generated work and your existing client base to establish potential remarketing etc. Look at where your opportunities exist and how you can exploit them.
Regulation and Compliance – Review the key regulatory tasks in running a law firm (COLP and COFA responsibilities) and how you apply core activities within the firm to provide a regulatory controlled environment. We will be specifically looking at the application of the Solicitors Code of Conduct and the Solicitors Accounts Rules. Also, review the firm’s approach to risk management and application of file review and audits.
The Practicalities
Following the agreement to engage with the service we will spend time with The Partners to understand the goals of the firm now and the expectations of the review.
This will enable the review to focus on what you need, i.e. experience, cost savings, staff, systems, marketing opportunities, process improvements, succession, regulation, IT, and Case Management.
If there are any areas which are a high priority we can make sure we allocate specific time to such areas.
Through knowledge gathering, we would expect to have a full and detailed understanding of the firm to gain a true understanding of what is happening now enabling recommendations for change or enhancement.
The practical review will involve speaking to each member of staff (or key people you identify). Not an interview but a discussion where we will find out who they are, their experience and what they see the future to be, views on the firm, things they would like to change or see more of etc. This will enable the identification of the right team moving forward and any skills gaps there may be in the firm.
These meetings will enable us to: –
- Identify where individuals are over or under-resourced to assist you with staff and resource planning.
- Gain an understanding of the current costs incurred in running the firm to help you with identifying expense savings.
- Establish how the systems are used and identify any gaps or issues that may arise from systems not being fully integrated or used in the firm.
- Understand what Management information is available and how it is used and interpreted across the firm and by who.
- Look at supplier interaction and controls, who you use, how you interact with them and control spending and commitments.
- Understand the current approach to client service and experience that sits in the firm. establish the current approach to matters matter management i.e. are you consistent in opening files, providing quotations, following up leads, dealing with complaints, forms of communication (email or letters), case history storage, billing, payment processes, data protection, anti-money laundering etc?
- Review the application of regulation and compliance to ensure there are no gaps or issues you should be aware of and if so how to rectify them and there is a consistent approach and application of your policies firm-wide.
- Understand current incoming business in more depth, where it is from, and how it is generated and managed. Do you get the best out of every enquiry? Does your new business and marketing strategy meet the needs of the firm?
- Overview of management and how the staff are managed and how they respond to the culture and management style. This will include your performance management and review structure.
- Files reviews can perform part of the review to establish if what we are told in terms of approach etc. is actually applied in practice and can be demonstrated at the case level.
- Competitor analysis to establish where your main challenges come from which will be obtained by market research and also speaking with your staff.
Reporting
When the review is complete we will compile a detailed report for you to consider clearly setting out the brief, what we have learned and a series of findings and recommendations.
This will only be sent to you for sharing with those you think necessary.
The report will also be accompanied by a presentation and we would propose to attend to provide the feedback in person.
We can then discuss the findings and recommendations.
The Cost
As this is a bespoke service we will discuss your requirements and establish what you are seeking to achieve from the review and we will provide a price to you for the review and reporting.
Enquiries
For more information about our Anti Money Laundering Compliance service you can call us on 0203 911 9710 or you can email us at info@thestrategicpartner.co.uk.