denotes premium content | Jan 6 2009 FD Legal archive
Volume 2 Issue 5
Goodbye and farewell
It is with sadness that I am writing my last foreword as editor of FD Legal. I have been the editor for just coming up to a year, and in that time I have met many finance professionals working in law firms today. One thing that has impressed me about the conversations that I have had in that time is just how far the finance role in law firms has evolved. Many finance directors today, particularly in the larger firms, have taken on a strategic role, far beyond crunching figures in a back office, which was once the image associated with legal finance teams. Instead many finance directors now work alongside their managing partner and are closely involved in aligning the firm’s financial management with broader and external strategic goals. Not only that, but recent years have seen the rise of chief executives instead of managing partners – commonly finance professionals who are tasked with driving their law firm’s growth and profitability.
For all the success stories, however, I have also had conversations with finance professionals who continue to worry about their long-term future in the legal profession. Among some firms it still seems that the culture little embraces non-lawyers, at least not on any kind of strategic level. Given little decision making authority, such professionals are limited in the extent to which they can effect real financial change that could impact the overall profitability of their firms. There is also a concern among some finance professionals that their time in a law firm might be detrimental to their career advancement as a whole – that they’ll fall behind on financial advances that would enable them to return to finance roles in the corporate world. Not only is this a problem for professionals who are already part of the legal profession, but it could cause ongoing problems for law firms trying to recruit the best financial talent. If there remains an ongoing perception that law firms are ‘behind the times’ and cannot offer the best career development to finance professionals, then senior management in law firms may well be risking their profitability because they cannot recruit or retain the best talent.
Despite some pockets of concern over non-lawyer progression in the legal profession, the evidence suggests that they are just that – pockets. Most firms have indeed woken up to the huge potential that non-lawyer business and finance managers can bring to their firms. As more finance directors, COOs and chief executives make their marks on law firms – assuming those impressions are positive ones of course – the more law firms will seek to recruit the very best financial professionals from both within the legal profession, as well as from outside industry. Indeed, as these pages of FD Legal testify, the days of the prosperous law-firm finance professional have only just begun.
Thank you all for your support and readership of FD Legal in the time that I have been editor. I hope you continue to enjoy the publication and would like to pass on my very best wishes to the new editor.
Features
Getting Personal
With further pension reforms on the horizon, firms will play an ever-more important role in incentivising their employees to save for their retirement.
Case Study: Norton Rose Group
When burst water mains took out all power to Norton Rose Group’s London head office, it was careful disaster-recovery planning that saved the day.
Q&A: Simmons & Simmons
When finance director David McLaughlin decided to join the legal profession, he wasn't going to do things by half. He joined first Linklaters, and then Simmons & Simmons, two of the largest UK law firms, at a time of rapid change.
Case study: Watson Burton
Watson Burton may boast a 200-year history in the UK’s North East, but the appointment of professional non-lawyers has made the past ten years a decade of unprecedented growth for the firm.
Profile: Aurthur Ferry
Arthur Ferry, chief financial officer at the London office of Baker & McKenzie, loves team sports. He takes a similar team ethos into his working life, believing that you have to be flexible and make time to work well with people. That’s an attitude that should work particularly well in a global firm seemingly keen to shake up its reputation for having very disparate offices and operations. Instead, the firm now appears to want more client focus and cohesion. And the work of new recruits like Ferry seems indicative of this strategic shift.
Opinion: Powers of persuasion
When Dale Carnegie said: “There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it”, he struck at the essence of the art of persuasion. In Verbal Judo George Thompson reinforced this view: “The goal of persuasion is to generate voluntary compliance…The great communicators have that art. They somehow get people to do what they want them to do by getting them to want to do it.”
Cover feature: Partner compensation
The recent Kerma Partners’ ‘Global Survey of Large Law Firm Compensation Practices’ draws some interesting conclusions about the latest trends in compensation practices, and highlights, among other things, the effect of national cultural differences in the way compensation is handled across the world. Although culture plays a part, there is no doubt that the shifts that are taking place also reflect a continuing quest by firms to establish ways in which partner behaviours and individual performances link with a firm’s overall strategic goals and the achievement of a firm’s economic objectives.
Regulars
Thought Leader
CLIENTS HAVE grumbled for a long time about how expensive their lawyers are, and how their lawyers’ pricing paradigm of charging by the hour has caused their costs to spiral out of control. Indeed, as recently as April 2008, the way in which firms price their services has come under scrutiny, with the issue commanding more of the front pages of the financial press.
