Skills to pay the bills

26
Mar
2009

Chris Davies

Law firms around the world are working hard to increase operational efficiency during the recession. So why are training budgets often the first thing to be cut? Obviously this kind of expenditure is easy to trim, but is it wise? Let me explore a few issues.

Human Capital

A firm recently extended its lending facilities with their bank by securing a loan against firm assets. It highlighted an important question - what are the assets of a typical law firm? In this case it was property, fixtures and fittings, goodwill, WIP and IP. Many industry analysts feel this was a largely symbolic move as WIP and goodwill are quickly devalued. The real assets walk into work in the morning and go home at night. Law firms are all about people. When considering this fact redundancies are a double-edged sword for a law firm. Costs can be significantly reduced, but a loss in human capital also means a loss in experience, knowledge and the significant investment made in that individual. Firms who are shedding staff may well be concerned about their ability to respond to an upturn in the economy. Recruitment and development are neither cheap nor quick.

Work Smart

If you've had the misfortune to read my previous articles, you will be familiar with my firm belief in the ability to release the potential in staff through training. Many firms will now have to do more with less people. How can this be achieved? We can all work harder, but we can also work smarter!

Law firms are heavily reliant on secretarial support. Fee earners need secretarial support right? A no-brainer surely? Yes, but at what ratio? Over the years I have lost count of the amount of times I have heard the following words come out of a fee earners' mouth – "I'm an expensive typist". While I agree with this statement to an extent, particularly regarding bulk typing jobs, I have always believed this to be a convenient excuse. A fee earner could easily type a simple filenote in the same time it takes to dictate it. There are still plenty of fee earners that dictate emails. Obviously you need adequate typing skills and the will to do the typing. Guess which one is more difficult to develop? I'm such a cynical soul! You can extend this example to many simple tasks (obviously simple if you know how) such as sending out calendar appointments and making simple amends to documents. It often takes more time to ask a secretary to do it, than just to do it.

The current climate may force the issue. Fee earners may need to be more self sufficient. Training can play an important role in making this transition easier. Of course I'm not saying all fee earners are luddites, as every firm has a good proportion of tech-savvy lawyers, but on the whole I would say skill levels could be greatly improved. In terms of fully exploiting technology, the average fee earner is fairly inefficient. On a positive note, I have seen an improvement in skills over the years. For example, there are more touch-typing and tech-savvy fee earners here at Pannone than any other firm I have ever worked at.

Times they are a changing?

Many industry commentators are predicting the decline of billable hours in favour of fixed fee agreements and other alternative billing methods. Clients are expecting more for less and greater certainty about future costs. Fixed fee agreements are not new, far from it, but the recession has highlighted the issue of fees in the industry. As competition increases I believe many firms will compete on price and the prospective client will expect this more than ever.

Hourly rates do nothing to promote efficiency. All that matters to the average fee earner is hitting their billing target. How efficiently they perform a task for their client is a secondary consideration. If fixed fee agreements become commonplace, then efficiency will certainly matter. Fee earner performance, in terms of KPI's will need to be reassessed. Turnaround time will be much more important. Efficient completion of tasks will become a priority and this is where I believe training will provide an increasingly important role. There are no quick fixes. Development can take time and that is why I believe firms need to take a serious look at the role of training.

Technology, or just the basics?

Firms often turn to technology to provide solutions. Voice recognition software, such as Dragon for example, has been around for some time now. I have been training people on this system for over 8 years and I must admit the outcome can be disappointing. It's a very good system, but it requires a degree of patience. It also requires something that is almost impossible to train – the desire to use it. I have encountered two types of learner, which I can identify immediately. The first type of learner has requested the system. They are much more willing to put in the work and want to get the most out of the system. The second type of learner (and unfortunately the most common) has been told to use the system. They often lack the desire to use it and this is often reflected in how successful they are long-term. Many who fail to get along with voice recognition systems point an accusing finger at the system or at the training. In my experience attitude and desire are the major factors determining success.

The purpose of voice recognition software is to enable the fee earner to be more self sufficient and reduce their reliance on secretarial support. Is this over-complicating the issue? What about typing skills? Even a basic typist can bash out a filenote fairly quickly. If we invested resources in developing fee earner typing skills the long term efficiency gains would be incredible, not to mention the savings that could be made from a reduction in secretarial headcount. If I approached any firm and promised to deliver huge increases in fee earner efficiency and cost savings through reduced support they'd be very interested. If I suggested such a simple idea as developing typing skills I would get some very strange looks. It baffles me.

As a training professional I have to be realistic. Promoting better use of technology and developing training solutions that focus on small increases in efficiency and technical ability are achievable. Fee earners can easily perform some of the simple tasks they commonly pass on to their secretary. We have the ability to make a difference, even if it's a small one. At the other end of the scale, I also believe that training, combined with clearly defined business goals (driven by the business) can make a huge difference to the efficiency of human capital over time. The main limiting factor is this - the average trainer cannot tell a fee earner how to work, only advise them on better ways of working. Setting a long term goal of maximising fee earner efficiency would require the universal desire to change working practices from the partnership.

Here at Pannone I develop training solutions for fee earners based on realistic goals. Many fee earners have limited time for training, so we need to ensure our solutions deliver high impact. We have a full curriculum of 1-2-1 courses we call 'consultancies' which are marketed as bespoke, value for time sessions focussing on common tasks that fee earners need to perform. Using Outlook as an example, a typical fee earner can fill in an online form selecting the topics they're interested in. If all they want to learn is how to save emails into folders effectively, they just tick the box and submit. Consultancies are essentially a structured and marketable alternative to the 1-2-1 ad-hoc sessions all training teams provide. By providing a simple list detailing the tools/features available in an application, a description of what the tool does and how it would benefit them - essentially allowing the learner to control their own learning, we have been able to vastly increase the volume of training we provide to fee earners. A few small high impact training interventions can result in a much larger change in confidence, ability and (possibly) proactive behaviour over time. The feedback has been excellent so far and it's a service we hope to build upon.

Going back to my original point, training budgets can seem like the obvious thing to trim, but I strongly believe this can have a long term negative impact on efficiency, confidence and productivity. In the current economic climate we need to look at ways of increasing productivity using fewer resources. If the main resource is human capital, then surely we need to put more effort in developing this resource, not less.