Remaking Law Firms: Why and How

The traditional law-firm business model has delivered technically excellent service at seemingly whatever cost. But the times have changed, with the global financial crisis only accelerating the price-down pressures, commoditization, and client demand for efficient, business-relevant services. To respond, law firms will have to go beyond cutting costs while preserving the general way they win work, produce work, and govern themselves. Law firms need to adopt business models that are better adapted to serve their clients not just today, but well into the future.

To succeed under the changed circumstances, law firms need to remake their business models in accord with the needs of their commercial clients. This book provides examples of innovative and successful business models from remade law firms. Ultimately, this book is meant to fuel a desire for change in law firms that goes beyond thinking and planning, and leads straight into the messy, frustrating, exciting world of implementing change, and ultimately to better client service.

George Beaton MD MBA PhD has guided clients through a wide variety of business and strategic decisions in his 25 years as an advisor and researcher working with law and other professional services firms. Evolving from his medical degree and advisory work in the health care sector, today his practice is focused on corporate advisory, client-centric performance improvement, and trouble-shooting engagements for firms.

George's background in teaching business strategy at Melbourne Business School and Melbourne Law School, both in The University of Melbourne, combined with his work in public and private companies, professional service firms, universities, and governments, has given him deep insights into the challenges and opportunities facing law firm leaders and their firms. He frequently shares his insights through social and print media, and published the e-book NewLaw New Rules: A Conversation on the Future of the Legal Services Industry in 2013.

He is widely regarded as a leading independent authority on professional services firms, and law firms in particular, reflected in his frequent keynote and media appearances. Based in Melbourne, Australia his work now covers Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, the U.S. and the U.K. He counts the world's largest, as well as Slater & Gordon, the world's first publically listed law firm, among his clients.

Imme Kaschner JD, MD was admitted as an Australian lawyer in March 2015, following her graduation from the Melbourne Law School JD program in 2013. Her interest in how complex systems, including the legal services industry, work and change, led to the cooperation with George, first project managing the compilation of the e-book NewLaw New Rules: A Conversation on the Future of the Legal Services Industry, and now coauthoring Remaking Law Firms: Why and How.

Imme has tutored Marketing Law at the Department of Business Law & Taxation at the Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University. She is also a member of the Intellectual Property and Information Technology Committee of the Law Institute of Victoria.

Prior to her move to Melbourne, Australia with her daughter and husband in 2010, Imme worked as a researcher and medical doctor at Boston Children's Hospital and Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.