The TL;DR of that was that:

• we believe the legal industry is in between a rock and a hard place, and it is going to take more than small change around the edge to fix it for both clients and colleagues; 

• we wanted a blank piece of paper to try new things, learn from them, and build the firm in a way that addresses those challenges from the ground-up; and

• our vision is to be laser-focused on what we do best, offer a solution for a range of budgets and risk tolerances each backed by an appropriate operating model, and pass the benefit onto both our clients and our colleagues.

Designing the firm – a high level view

We all agreed at the outset that we didn’t want to cut any corners; that we should spend the time early on, while we have it, designing and building things out the right way, and in a scalable way.

So, the last six months has been about building out the basics. We aren’t trying to do anything radically different yet. We’re building the foundation blocks that will allow us to do things radically different, and then scale it without losing the efficiency.

That means I have spent the bulk of my time so far on:

• The virtual roof foundations, walls and roof. How do we allow our people to work in a distributed way, in a seamless and secure environment, with a solid technology base that allows seamless access, and can be easily integrated with? 

• Governance. A policy framework that allows us to manage risk and keep insurers happy but doesn’t hinder us from achieving our vision. 

• How we store and use client data. Making sure our client data is secure, and that our people can access and work with it easily during the course of a matter.

• Client and matter intake. How do we onboard clients and matters in a frictionless way for clients and our people, whilst ticking the governance boxes?

• Work in progress monitoring. Most of what we charge is not based on time anymore. We still need time recording, but in most cases we see it as a way to monitor cost and not as a way to charge clients. We need some novel solutions to truly understand the value of our work in progress.

• Quoting and billing. In our book, these are not two separate things. If we get quoting right, both in terms of price and how we prepare the quote, we can get to not far off one click or even no-click billing.

• Financial management. For us, this doesn’t have to be complicated. We don’t handle client money, and if you separate out WIP, quoting and billing, we can be pretty “out of the box” systems and process wise. If we nail all of the above, working capital requirements can also be kept to a minimum.

• People. How do we onboard our colleagues effectively, ensuring that every person we hire feels looked after and welcome despite us not having an actual shared roof?

None of those sound particularly glamorous, but we are really excited about how what we have built so far will enable us to achieve our vision.

In future articles, I’ll be going into more detail on each of the above.

Keep an eye on the news & insights section of our website or connect with one of us on LinkedIn to hear when we publish the next.