Is there new Life breathing into Legal Aid firms? As we all know recent governments have cut the legal aid budget down to the very minimum and still they look to make savings. Legal aid goes to the very core of what the legal profession should be about, helping the small person stand up to […]
The law firm world has changed without many of us noticing it. Many of the Partners who now wish to retire, bought into their firms in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s when it seemed good business to buy equity for departing Partners and, more often than not, also agree to pay an annuity to them […]
Why do some mergers work but others do not? The answer is 6 P’s – Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Poor Performance. April 2017 This is the £1m question and the simple answer is that the losers frequently conduct the process in a casual fashion, with little structure. Those firms who tackle mergers with intelligence […]
With the summer holidays coming up, we thought it would be useful to review 4 recent mergers to highlight the wide variety of deals that get done. With mergers, no one deal is like another and there is no right or wrong way of doing them! Case Study 1 Our client was a sole practitioner […]
How to get your firm merger ready (good practice whether you want to merge or not). As a managing partner, you never know when that merger approach might come through which is right for your firm. At least half of the firms we work with did not actively plan to merge but each approach offers […]
Merging into new profit centres There are 2 major motivations for firms considering merger for growth. Consolidating their current location, or merging into a new profit centre. There is a lot to be said for consolidating, but property is always the key driver here. One or both firms will need to be able […]
What are the benefits of joining with a consolidator. There is a new type of law firm slowly gathering traction in the legal market, and these are the consolidators. Primarily these have been in London but they are now spreading out into the regions. So what is a consolidator and why are firms […]
If there is one question we are often asked it is what is my law firm worth. The simple answer is nothing and that seems so unfair until you consider a few points. Investment. Most partners draw all the profit out and do not invest in the firm. Indeed there is not at lot to […]
Succession planning by attracting junior partners to buy in. I was speaking at the Local Law Societies conference last week and a theme that kept on cropping up was that junior partners are no longer keen to buy in to small firms. I was asked what firms could do about this and I think […]
Retirement strategies for law firm owners. There are 8000 firms in England & Wales of between 1-4 Partners and a large majority of these will have Partners who are in the last few years of their careers. For these Partners to retire there are only 6 possible solutions. These are that you already have tomorrow’s […]