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Apr 16, 2020

Law Firm Planning During COVID-19

Question: 

I am the managing partner of a fourteen attorney business law transaction and litigation firm in St. Louis, Missouri. Our area is in lock-down as a result of COVID-19 and everyone in our firm except for our receptionist has been working remotely. We had planned on putting in place a strategic plan this year and completed a couple of initial meetings. As we move forward how do we plan in this environment or should we even try?

Response: 

These are definitely uncertain times and the legal profession will be facing an uncertain future. I believe that COVID-19 will leave a lasting imprint on the legal profession and will change and accelerate law firms into the digital age. This digital transformation will effect law firm clients, law firms, and the judicial system. Status quo will be altered permanently and new operating procedures will be developed. Entrenched legal service delivery methods will be abandoned. The following practices that we are seeing now will become commonplace:

Competition for legal talent will intensify and commodity work competitive will be greater than ever.

I believe that long range/strategic planning will be more important than ever but more difficult. However, right now everyone is in survival mode with a focus on the day to day. While these are unusual times with a very uncertain future, short and long-term planning will be more critical than ever. Right now I believe your focus should be on short-term tactical operational planning with three month planning horizons. The following are just a few of the topics that you should focus on:

You will need your short-term planning to be flexible as the current situation changes.

Once you have a handle on the short-term you can continue working on your strategic plan. I suggest that it initially be for a five year time period. You should incorporate some degree of scenario planning with different strategies for different future scenarios. While the future may be uncertain an uncertain plan is better than no plan at all.

Finally, if you have people in your firm that are casual users of technology I suggest that this is a good time to push them to get up to speed. Recently I was speaking with the partner of law firm that advised me that he wished he was more comfortable with technology and he is severely handicapped since his IT skills are limited to checking email and browsing the web.

Good luck!

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John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

 

 

Posted at 09:18 AM in COVID-19, Strategy
Tags: Covid-19, During, Firm, Law, Planning

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