The holiday season is still a distant prospect but for law firms the New Year means the rapid approach of Easter and the long summer break. Juggling staff levels with client demand and natural peaks and troughs in activity is essential to ensure a firm’s workflow does not slip into ‘go-slow’ in the summer. Yet how can the law, a people-centred business, balance ever-fluctuating resource planning needs with a trading environment which encourages firms to constantly drive down overheads?
Historically, the emphasis in law firm productivity has been on chargeable hours and billing levels. Increasing profit involves creating an environment which allows fee earners to push ever more work through to a billable stage. Now firms are looking to control production costs as well, moving away from the traditional system whereby lawyers ‘owned’ their personal clients towards a more team-based approach. A fortunate side effect of this is that the delays which occurred when someone went on holiday have now been sizably reduced because cases can now be picked up by a knowledgeable colleague.
