Merger Options

Our client, a mid-sized Southeastern firm with several exceptionally strong practice areas, was approached by a national firm seeking to enter their region. During the merger discussions, a second national firm approached our client with an alternative proposal. We assisted the firm in considering their options and eventually recommended that our client remain independent for the immediate future.

International Merger

A large British firm with offices throughout Europe and the Middle East was seeking to establish a presence in the U.S. They were interested in firms with strong transactional practices that did not involve large litigation components, together with a series of industry and geographic preferences. We created a detailed template of the firm’s needs and designed a rating system to consider over 600 U.S. firms. Working with our client, we funneled the number of candidate firms to six and performed “deep” dive” background investigations before making contact and establishing conversations with two firms. The result was one of the largest and most successful international Swiss Verein mergers in history.

Managing Partner Succession

The managing partner of a large law firm with 25 offices was stepping down after many years. The firm did not have a succession plan and feared factions would be created over whether the new managing partner came out of the traditional “home office” or from one of the regional offices.  We worked with the nominating committee and performed independent interviews of partners throughout the firm in determining that the location of the new managing partner was more an issue for the firm leadership than the partners at large.

Linking Partner Compensation to Performance

A firm with a highly subjective modified lockstep system was experiencing a performance drop among many of its middle-aged lawyers.  We worked with the firm to change its compensation system to provide bonus compensation for partners who exceeded the expectations for their seniority step – funded through a compensation hold-back for partners who performed under the expectation for their step.

Large Firm Attrition

Despite having competitive salaries and good working conditions, a large firm continually experienced heavy attrition among its mid-level associates.  Even though they conducted exit interviews, the firm was unable to determine the reason for the heavy rate of departures.  We worked with practice leaders to understand that a large level of non-equity partners and of counsel were siphoning off all of the most challenging work from the mid-level and senior associates.  As a result, their only way to acquire the skills and experience they would need to become partners was to change firms.

Moving to a More Corporate Structure

Governance and Organisational restructuring engagement for a 46 partner (600 people) professional firm in North America. This group had more than doubled its partnership numbers in the last ten years and – recognising that the group should move towards a corporate structure – had constituted a management committee and hired an external chief executive. In practice, however, the partners still were clinging on to the ideal of consensus management and insisted on every decision being approved by the whole partnership. We recommended a number of incremental plans to strengthen the management committee, to streamline the decision-making processes and to assist with better consultation and communication. We also drafted roles and responsibilities at various levels, including a partners’ code to help gain better accountability and buy-in.

Strategic Review and Implementation

Strategy Review carried out for a prominent Asian commercial law firm of 200 lawyers. We were able to help the firm to define its strategic intent to become the dominant independent commercial firm and then worked with them to create a strategic plan that encompassed five strategic projects each with implementation plans and measurable criteria. This work was followed up some time later by individual business planning sessions with every partner to enable them to produce coherent and action-oriented practice group business plans.

Merger Compatibility

Two large firms were involved in protracted merger discussions.  Both firms were eager to achieve the results of the merger but neither felt completely comfortable with the other.  Using the cultural inventory, we were able to demonstrate that, because their cultures were sufficiently different, many of the hoped for synergies from the merger were probably unachievable.

Competitive Strategy For Small Firm

A small general practice firm was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its client base and compete with the large firms that dominated the marketplace.  Working with the firm, we helped them reverse their existing strategy of adding new practice areas to enhance their full-service image, and focus on a few highly profitable practices where they enjoyed a unique market position.  The result is increased profitability and a more stable practice without the necessity of changing their culture to accommodate an increased number of lawyers.

Building Competitive Advantage

A large firm held a dominant position in several practice areas that were becoming increasingly commoditized through price competition from smaller firms.  We assisted the firm in developing a strategy that selected the practices where the firm had the greatest strengths, and building a competitive advantage through technology and specific capabilities.  The result was they were able to maintain both their dominant position and current pricing by providing client benefits that smaller firms could not cost-effectively provide.