Patrick Johansen, CLM, CPP is the Director of Business
Development at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione. He has spent
a decade in law firm marketing and business development.
Patrick previously served on the ALA Greater Chicago
Chapter Board of Directors and the LMA Chicago Chapter
Board of Directors. He blogs at www.patrickonpricing.com.
The legal community took notice in February 2012 when
Scott Green, a Harvard MBA with administrative stints at
Weil, Gotshal & Manges and WilmerHale, was named Chief
Executive Officer of Pepper Hamilton. For the first time,
a member of the "big law" club had ceded full business
responsibility to a non-lawyer; a CEO had been put in
charge of a law firm.
The move was deliberate, according to Pepper Hamilton's former Executive Committee
Chair Nina Gussack: "We concluded a management model that more closely resembles
those of our clients would enable the lawyers at Pepper Hamilton to focus on providing
legal services in the most effective way for our clients."
Lawyers and administrative staff — indeed, the entire legal profession — should
prepare for a remarkable transition of power. Lawyers, for economic and educational
reasons, will begin to recognize their value as revenue generators and will step away
from hands-on management. As this transition advances, administrative staff will have
new career opportunities with a focus on making law firms more like corporations and
more profitable.
TWO DRIVERS OF CHANGE
Since the Great Recession, the legal profession has been enduring a surprising and
unwelcome market adjustment. For the first time in a generation, key performance
indicators all dropped: billable hours, annual rate increases and even collections. As the
industry was hit by the nation's economic crisis, it is not surprising economic conditions
forced law firms to re-evaluate their business models. As a part of that self-evaluation
process, firms began to recognize another significant factor in the "new normal:" education.
Lawyers are not trained economists or businesspeople, yet they are asked to lead sizeable
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