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August 2007 Newsletter

Welcome to your first Firm Beliefs newsletter, informing you about the world of professional services, the world of Firm Beliefs and the world that some of our clients/readers live in. There will be regular and irregular topics. Feel free to email us with any ideas or thoughts about content.

Firm Beliefs Consultancy

Our consultancy arm is developing a new model to help law firms grow and evolve in the new challenging market place. If you would like play a part in this process please contact john@firmbeliefs.co.uk.

Firm Elite Events

Firm Elite events coming up before Christmas are designed to stimulate the business soul as well as the appetite for good food and wine! Join us for the following:

Dinner and Discussion: An evening with Richard Brent, Editor of Managing Partner journal - September 20th 2007.
After Christmas, we have arranged evenings with Kehrela Hodgkinson - a US lawyer practising here in the UK and with the Talent Foundation - who have done much to stimulate and implement good leadership in the health service (dates to be conmfirmed).
We start off the year on 24th January with an Elite Confidential dinner, focusing on plans for the year ahead for members.
Elite Skills events are geared towards the needs of Firm Elite members. So far, we have arranged a workshop at the National Theatre (personal impact), an evening workshop run by AKT Productions (Managing Meetings - Build Your Skills, Build Your Profile) and a session run by Liam Wall, who has worked in international commercial law firms as finance manager (are you, your team and your firm billing all of your precious time at the right rate, in the right way and ensuring the best recovery rate? Indeed are you still charging at an hourly rate?)

For details of Firm Elite, go to www.firmbeliefs.co.uk/firmelite.php where you can request full information regarding membership via the site. Updates regarding events and skills development opportunities will be available via the website and newsletter.

Firm Beliefs Skills Development

Our skills development programmes sometimes lead to a new future for participants:

'I had felt undervalued at my existing firm. Firm Beliefs, through their "mini-MBA" [Buiness Excellence] programme, enabled me to develop my skills. In particular, I began to appreciate the nature of internal politics and became more analytical about how to place myself on the radar of the important people in the firm... I began to think differently. The sessions reinforced my interest in leadership and culture. I changed my perspective on my own job (I am a businessman that practices law).'

Our client moved from his existing firm and is now developing a team of people at another firm - passing on the skills he learnt on our programme AND exceeding the targets he was set for his first year's leadership of the team.

Read further testimonials.

Our skills development programme is now available for individuals, as well as for firms, via the Business Excellence programme. Click here for further details.

Recent Blog Postings

We are lucky to have had some contributions from guest bloggers recently.

Charity As The Way Forward?

One from a marketing director of a charity

'The products I had previously promoted were tangible - my customer could see what they were getting for their money.' Read more.

Sound familiar? Also, can you see any similarities between working for a charity that has no budget for marketing and any law firms you know?! We believe that there are many lessons to be learnt from the not-for-profit sector and next year will be exploring that further as part of the Firm Elite programme.

Born Motivated?

Another guest blogger is Dan Whiter who has now finished his Gobi Desert run. A participant on a programme that Sara is part of at the MOD training academy at Shrivenham, Dan is an avid runner and has an interesting insight into what drives people forward to reaching their goals - and is also interested in the same issue for businesses.

'But I will always doubt myself. And what is success if we didn't have any doubts? For me, success is all about doing something that you are not confident about. If you are confident, then there would be no challenge and no success. If you're not scared, how can you be brave? But to conquer your doubts and triumph over them? Maybe I was successful, but I still have my doubts.' Read more

Dan will be guest at our January Elite Confidential event.

Does "PR" Stand For Positive Response?

Editor of Managing Partner magazine, Richard Brent, contributes a blog - far better written than any of ours I am sure you will agree...

'One of my favourite quotes about journalism is by author and illustrator Nicolas Bentley: "No news is good news. No journalists is even better." I imagine there are a fair number of senior lawyers out there who secretly sympathise with this sentiment. Like others in all walks of business, they might feel articles and interviews on their activities can only be looking for trouble - unnecessary to invite and potentially perilous. In a worst-case scenario they may be paving the way for PR disasters or negative publicity; if not, they are wary of giving people any undesirable insight into their strategic thinking.' Read more.

Richard is also guest at our September Dinner and Discussion event.

Firm Beliefs - in ourselves

We also try to give you a flavour of what we at Firm Beliefs are up to as we develop our own business.

'The Firm Beliefs team spent 100 percent of its time focusing on service development, client relationships and market issues. How many law firms can honestly say that they spend 100 percent of planned "strategic" meeting time being focused on the real issues?' Read more.

The Dark Art of Marketing?

Just as the Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher at Hogwarts rarely survives more than a year in the job, marketing professionals are similarly afflicted in law firms - why is that?

Marketeers, rather like clients, want things to happen quickly - that is not always compatible with the speed of change in law firms.
Committee meetings, especially if the committee is composed of some lawyers discussing aspects of marketing, slowly depress the enthusiasm of even the best and most energetic marketing professionals.
Marketing is both a science and an art with a risk of under performing - so a thick skin is necessary. Many a marketing professional thought they were durable until working in law firms
Marketing professionals often selected their careers because they like excitement and fun .... enough said

Why keep the marketing people happy?

Consistency of personnel is crucial. If the marketing people are client facing and good at it keep them happy for as long as possible. They are freeing up fee-earners and focussing the marketing effort for the firm as a whole - no one else can do it with such vision.

For more about enhancing the working relationships between professional managers and lawyers, click on the blog 'Trying to add value to the unwilling?'.

A New Addition to Firm Beliefs

We are delighted to announce that Sally gave birth to Matthew Robert in County Wexford on 16th July - 10lbs 3oz. Matty is our first Firm Beliefs baby. Congratulations to Martin and Sally.