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Best Practices in Legal Management

NYSBA’s Law Practice Management Committee, in collaboration with the New York City Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators, has launched   a major publication – Best Practices in Legal Management.  Professor Gary Munneke, Chair of the LPM Committee, wrote the preface for the publication.  "I found it to be a perfect description of the publication and how critical legal management is to a successful law firm."  LPM is thrilled to be part of the project.  The Committee is putting together a series of articles on best practices.  Professor Munneke’s preface seems the perfect introduction to the series

Best Practices in Legal Management Preface by Professor Gary Munneke:

For some people, the term Best Practices conjures up notions efficiency experts armed with charts and research studies telling embattled managers how to make their lives easier. For others, the words suggest an idealized set of expectations that can never be attained in the real world. Still others think of Best Practices in terms of standards below which managers may not fall without the risk of professional failure and possible sanction or liability.

            In one sense, those who perceive Best Practices in these ways are correct; in another sense, they have it all wrong. Yes, Best Practices rely on research studies, practice management surveys, and other forms of empirical data to identify what practices are “best.” Yes, perfection is a state that is always just beyond the reach of even the “best” practitioners, although its cousin, “excellence,” is not. And, yes, behavior that does not target achievement of “best” practices often risks failing to achieve “adequate” practices.

            In a larger sense, however, Best Practices represent the collective experience of managers who have learned, often by trial and error, how to accomplish organizational objectives in the “best” way. If these experiences could be collected, culled, dissected and organized in a rational way, they would provide a gold mine for those aspiring to excellence who seek to accomplish trial without error. When I was a kid, I frequently disregarded the advice of my parents about how to do something the easy way. Fill your gas tank up when it gets down to a quarter of a tank; don’t wait to see how long you can drive with the Low Fuel light on.” It took running out of gas on a lonely road miles from a gas station (in the days before cell phones) to teach me that I did not have to test my car’s capacity for gas consumption with every tank.

            Lawyers and law firm managers now have such a resource for managing a law practice. Best Practices etc., edited by Barry Jackson and Kim Swetland with contributions from numerous experienced law firm managers, provides a blueprint for achieving excellence and avoiding error in running a modern law practice. The editors, all leaders in the New York chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators, have aggregated their accumulated wisdom and share it with the rest of us. The text has also benefitted from review and comment by members of the New York State Bar Association Law Practice Management Committee, and the editorial guidance of the NYSBA Publications Department.

            The final product is comprehensive, informative and amazingly for the serious nature of the subject matter fun to read. The various chapters of the book address every aspect of managing a law practice, including some most lawyers and law firm administrators may not have even thought about. The chapters cover the following topics:

• Chapter 1: Strategic an Organizational Planning;
• Chapter 2: Business Development;
• Chapter 3: Legal Practice Management;
• Chapter 4: Human Resources;
• Chapter 5: Financial Management;
• Chapter 6: Procurement;
• Chapter 7: Operations Management;
• Chapter 8: Technology and Systems Management;
• Chapter 9: Space Planning and Design;
• Chapter 10: Legal Administrators; and
• Resources and Web Sites.

            Each chapter includes both a checklist of Best Practices and recommendations on how to achieve the levels of excellence articulated in the Practices. The text also includes resources that law firms can turn to in order to improve their Practices. Best Practices: etc was written for individuals with management responsibilities in law firms, including managing partners, management committee members, solo practitioners who manage their offices by default, law firm managers, and support staff with management responsibilities. This book will also be useful for those who do not have line management responsibility but want to know more about how the organization where they work operates. This group includes partners who are not actively involved in management but who nevertheless have an interest in how the firm is managed, associates who aspire to partnership and/or management status, support staff members who see a path or career mobility in law firm management, law students who want to know how the firms where they will be working someday are run, and those who study the practice of law in order to contribute the Best Practices principles upon which this book is based.

A word for the lawyers who read this book: Most of us did not go to business school and may have even eschewed learning about business, because we were going to law school, not business school. At some point, we all come to realize that a law firm is a business; it requires capital to start up, income to cover operating expenses, and enough profit to compensate the owners of the business. Some lawyers argue that law is a profession and not a business, but this is a false dichotomy, because the practice of law is a professional business, which means that professional standards often govern the way we conduct our business. In fact, it would not be inaccurate to say that if we do a better job of running our business we are likely to be more professional. In any event, lawyers owe it to themselves, their clients, their peers and the profession to become good business people, even if they never got a BBA or MBA or even took a business course in college. This book is a primer on how to get ahead in the practice of law without compromising professional responsibilities along the way.

A word for the law firm administrators and support staff managers who read this book: You may possess training and experience in management, but it does not take long to learn that managing a law firm is different from managing a business outside the law. First of all, you have to deal with all of the quirky lawyers with their professional rules and seemingly genetic inability to delegate managerial responsibilities, even when they do not have a background in management. Second, you probably have learned that the practice of law is a fast-paced, client-driven enterprise. When clients need something done, they almost always need it now, unless of course they needed it yesterday. Third, you have probably learned that change comes slow to the legal profession. In a world where precedent is a central principle in the analysis of legal cases, it is easy to look backward to find answers to management questions, than to proactively and creatively address problems. This book provides a model to follow to help deal with the impediments to progress in law firms

For all readers: This book is not intended to create minimum standards below which lawyers and law firms should not fall. It rather establishes aspirational goals that are both achievable and laudable. If law firms elect to implement a Best Practices program, they will see an improvement in client satisfaction, in the quality of services provided, in the reduction of mistakes and professional error, and in the financial bottom line.

As a teacher in the field of Law Practice Management and Professional Responsibility for over a quarter century, I can tell you that a book like this has been needed for a long time. As an author of an American Bar Association compendium of essential management forms (The Essential Formbook: Comprehensive Management Tools for Lawyers), I can state unequivocally that Best Practices etc fills an important niche in the practice management literature. I encourage you not just to read this book, but to use it, to internalize it, and to teach it to those around you. In the end, practice management is intrinsic to the effective delivery of legal services, which in turn improves the integrity of the justice system and the confidence of citizens in a society governed by the rule of law.

Order Your Copy Now at: http://www.nysba.org/BestPracticesGuide