August 15, 2023
John Grant - Streamlining Delivery Workflows for Lawyers
The Agile Attorney, John Grant, joined me on Ditching Hourly to share how he helps his clients transition from inefficient workflows, WAY too much work, and low margins, to efficient workflows, a comfortable amount of work, and higher profits.
Talking Points
- Expectations for attention to detail and planning increase in high-dollar professional services like law practices.
- Many law practices lack upfront planning and make assumptions based on past experiences.
- Transition planning is often triggered by the need for change in firms that have been operating in the same way for many years.
- Maximizing employee utilization can lead to gridlock and hinder growth.
- Phased flat fees, where different phases of a case or project are billed at a flat rate, provide flexibility and room for adjustment.
- The desire for fixed pricing and the potential for higher rewards motivates software developers to move towards productization.
- In the legal industry, professionals are transitioning from delivery work to strategy work.
Quotable Quotes
- “When the lawyer does plan, oftentimes they plan for this sort of ideal situation.”
- “If you are constantly having to do QA on other people’s work, it’s really hard to feel like you’re ever gonna get off that hamster wheel.”
- “The beautiful thing is that if you take the time and you begin to express your quality standards in a written form, then you can actually push those standards upstream.”
- “I think there’s been a ton of movement away from hourly billing. I think there’s more movement than most people in the profession want to recognize.”
- “Different ways of exchanging value for their services than they were certainly when I first hung my shingle back in 2008.”
- “It turned on this mechanism in my brain that immediately started asking, ‘How can I make this more effective and efficient, quicker, less work for me without cutting corners?’”
- “So it’s like even if they came close to what they would’ve made hourly, they have set themselves up in a way that they can deliver that thing probably in half of the time for the same money.”
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Yours,
—J