A Tale of Two Sales

The merger and acquisition market of law firms in Australia appears to have gathered pace this calendar year. Already I have undertaken 11 valuations – with five of these being used as a starting point for negotiations for mergers, or to guide a deal where a firm is being acquired. In conjunction with the increased…

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Buying, Selling or Merging With Other law Firms in 2021

View full article here – Buying, selling or merging with other law firms in 2021.  By Jerome Doraisamy for Lawyers Weekly together with Sue-Ella Prodonovich of Prodonovich Advisory, Riana Steyn of Bartier Perry and Dr Rosemary Howell of UNSW. FMRC director Sam Coupland   – The appeal of acquiring other law firms, or merging with them, is “higher than…

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Are SMEs well placed to scoop senior talent right now?

View full article here – Are SMEs well placed to scoop senior talent right now? By Jerome Doraisamy for Lawyers Weekly together with Sue-Ella Prodonovich of Prodonovich Advisory, Mary Digiglio of Swaab Attorneys and Warrick McLean of Colman Greig Lawyers. FMRC director Sam Coupland   – ‘SME firms have “performed very well” in the age of coronavirus and,…

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Firm Mergers in the Midst of a Global Pandemic

Listen to the full episode with Sam Coupland for Lawyers Weekly Oversupply of lawyers means firm mergers will continue amid COVID-19 There was a “huge appetite” for mergers pre-pandemic, and the age of coronavirus has likely accelerated that trend. Speaking recently on The Lawyers Weekly Show, FMRC director Sam Coupland – whose advisory firm has helped broker numerous…

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Setting, Measuring and Coaching High Performance

Anecdotally, 2019 was a solid year for most practices throughout Australia and New Zealand. It has been a long time since I have heard a partner tell me they don’t have enough work to do, and it is even rarer to hear a partner say that they are not looking to employ a talented solicitor…

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Profit-Sharing in Smaller Partnerships

In my most recent article, I looked at some alternative options for profit-sharing among law-firm partners. All of the options I described can be found in mid-sized and large firms. They can all be made to succeed and they can all be made to fail; there is no ‘best option’. What about small partnerships (where…

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A Merger of Unequals

As the merger activity in Australia and New Zealand continues to gather pace we are seeing a variety of deals being struck in order to get a result.  Before any result is announced there are a number of phases that prospective merger partners progress through. The first phase is all around willingness to continue discussions. …

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Splitting the Pie: Some Thoughts on Profit Sharing Among Partners

According to the great David Maister, “Profit-sharing arrangements between partners are among the most difficult set of issues in professional service firm management”. The way partners share profit goes right to the heart of a firm, what it values, behaviours it seeks to foster and reward, the way it defines and recognises contribution, and the people…

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Sharing Profit and Millennial Partners

The millennial generation, born from 1981 to 1996 (or thereabouts), now 23 to 38 years of age (or thereabouts), are THE succession plan for most law firm partnerships. I wonder if our sharing methodologies are ready. Methodologies for sharing profit among equity partners have been an interest of mine for many years. A decade or…

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Equity: From Goodwill to no Goodwill

In recent years I have been engaged by a number of firms to change their equity arrangements and transition from a ‘goodwill firm’ to a ‘no goodwill firm.’ The push to make these changes usually arises from one of two managerial requirements, both of which are due to the success of the firm. The first…

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Planning for the New Year: An Approach for Small Firms

This is an article that contains a methodology that I first published in 2000. Nineteen years on, during a time of change, we often forget the basics, those things that made us successful in the first place. Time to revisit. Small firms (and many larger ones) are being challenged by service commoditisation, increasing insourcing of…

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Law Firm Mergers: Why and How?

In March this year, I wrote an article citing the large number of mergers in the Australian and New Zealand market. Some of these mergers were quite public but most flew under the radar – or out of the gaze of the legal media. Reasons for mergers are many and varied and often go beyond the…

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Characteristics of Winning Small Firms

It was my recent pleasure to attend the annual conference of a group of affiliated small firms that I have known for about 25 years. Every now and then they ask me to look at their financial performance and we discuss a range of contemporary issues. I haven’t attended for about eight years or so,…

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Do Financial Incentives Work in Law Firms?

Incentives are complex and, according to Wikipedia, omnipotent: ”The study of incentive structures is central to the study of all economic activities (both in terms of individual decision making and in terms of co-operation and competition within a large institutional structure). In Australia we are currently conducting a Royal Commission into the banking sector. The Commissioner…

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Challenges in Selling a Legal Practice

Generational change in the legal profession of Australia and New Zealand has led to discussion around the value of a legal practice – is there any, or is it just a myth? Well managed, profitable, organised businesses with repeat customers are worth real money. It is not uncommon for small, successful firms to be purchased…

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Merger Fever in the Air

2018 is shaping up as the year of the merger. Somewhat understandably, the legal media only report the larger mergers and there have been three of them – one concluded and two announced – and as I write we are not even at the end of March. Far greater numbers of smaller firms are entering…

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In Defence of Holidays

I’m on holiday. On vacation (Verb and Noun; fixed period of cessation from work), not doing work stuff, painting the deck, swimming, walking, surfing, flagrantly abusing new year’s resolutions to be healthier and taking stock of me and mine. We have poor mobile coverage at the beach so we just switch them off. We get…

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Strategy on the Back of an Envelope

I’ve just participated in a two-week charity fundraising event, driving 40-year-old cars 5000 kilometres through the Australian outback to raise money for disadvantaged kids. The fleet consisted of 95 pre-1976 vehicles, no four-wheel drive, no engine modification allowed. This event presented me with a useful metaphor for the business of legal practice. Nearly everyone made…

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The Importance of Deciding to do it

Two consulting engagements in the past couple of months illustrate why some firms fly and some firms flounder, particularly in the smaller end of the market. There were a lot of similarities about the two firms. There were the objective measures such as revenue and number of partners, and you could throw a blanket over…

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Some Thoughts on Cost of Production

Not that long ago, law firms were price setters. We decided what profit we wanted, tallied up the expenses, set a chargeable hours budget, and hey presto: we had an hourly rate to charge. And charge it we did. Profits often met or exceeded budget. Want more profit? Easy, whack up the rate, job done….

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