Tag Archives: Tim Corcoran

Mid-sized firms and How to Adjust to the "New Normal"

There’s been a lot of chatter over the last few years about the “new normal” for law firms, and what that might mean.  Yesterday, I was reading an interesting article at Above the Law, which addressed the idea that the new normal is a lot like the “old normal” (making the boom time an aberrance and not the other way around).

While that part was enlightening (and I recommend reading the article in full), what I found most useful were the lessons that the author felt we’d learned over the past four years and advice for BigLaw firms in dealing with the new normal.  We all recognize that BigLaw and mid-sized firms are different, but in this case, the advice are very much the same for both. We’ve been hearing it again and again, so it’s definitely time to start making some changes (if you haven’t already), to remain competitive. 

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ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part III

Today, we’re wrapping up our last post from Tim Corcoran’s webinar series on the business of law! Check out part I and part II of the Contract Lawyers and Outsourcing session.

In speaking about outsourcing, Kevin commented that he feels like he’s overstating the point on a lot of these things, because he’s been involved in this arena for so long. He added that evaluating a company to handle outsourcing is like evaluating any business partner – think about the challenges of hiring a third party that you’ve never worked with before, to work on something that might end up in your clients’ hands. 

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ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part II

Yesterday, we began our recap of the Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing webinar with Tim Corcoran and Kevin Colangelo. Today, we continue the discussion.

Who is Doing this Successfully, and How?

Tim said that one of the challenges he’s heard from law firms about outsourcing is that their work is unique, their firm is unique, and as such, their work is hard to routinize and find a common way to deliver the services. So he asked Kevin to comment on how others who have done this have found that there are practices that can be improved through this approach – and not just the low-end, simple document reviews, but some high end work as well. 

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ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part I

Last week, we had the final session in our Business of Law Series, on the topic of contract lawyers and outsourcing. This time, Tim Corcoran brought in a co-presenter, Kevin Colangelo of Yuson & Irvine.

Tim began with a few minutes to recap some of the topics we’d discussed in the first two webinars, so that the audience could understand the main drivers behind these changes.  For those full recaps, please take a look at Legal Project Management Part I and Part II and Alternative Fee Arrangements Part I and Part II

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ILN Webinar Series – Alternative Fee Arrangements Part II

Yesterday, we began with the first part of Tim Corcoran’s webinar on the strategic role of alternative fee arrangements. After Tim’s elephant analogy, he gave the attendees a short economics lesson. Using a graph with two parallel arrows, Tim said that essentially, we charge a rate that is higher than our cost to deliver. Price needs to be higher than the cost, and profit is derived from the difference between the cost and the price.

But law firms do a poor job of calculating costs – other than their overhead and real estate, they don’t know the cost of the delivery of their legal services. 

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ILN Webinar Series – Alternative Fee Arrangements Part I

Part II of our Business of Law webinar series with Tim Corcoran took place in November, but things have been so hectic with travel and hurricanes and holidays that I’m only just getting to the recap! So without further ado…

The topic of the second webinar was the strategic role of alternative fee arrangements, which was a natural sequel to the first session on legal project management. Tim re-emphasized that the industry has changed, and we need to adapt to the changing times. 

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