“Efficient management without effective leadership is like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic” – from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
A key issue associated with legal practice includes lack of effectiveness. Most lawyers blindly follow any work that comes their way without having any plan or strategy in place.
After spending years for running a law firm without any strategy, lawyers face various issues like lack of quality work, negligible work-life balance, low / delayed billing etc.
One way to prevent such issues is to understand the lifecycle of legal services by deriving insights from consulting firms like McKinsey & Co.
Providing legal services to clients require executing different projects, which may fall under any of the 3 categories, Brain Projects, Grey Hair Projects and Procedure Type Projects.
Brain projects require expertise when clients face a complex problem for which they will not compromise on lawyer’s fee. For eg., to protect Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) based innovations that form core part of the business, clients will seek an expert patent attorney for drafting and filing patent applications.
Grey Hair projects require experience during high stake matters where expertise is still needed but clients focus on past experience to solve their problems. For eg., obtaining injunctions from court to prevent infringement of client’s patents and trademarks, on which client’s business is heavily dependent.
Procedure type projects require efficiency where clients face a routine or standard set of problems. Clients seek lawyers providing prompt services at low costs. For eg., keeping a track of grant patents and trademarks to pay renewal fee on time, or labour law compliance.
The key to build and grow a successful legal practice is to identify core strength and focus on achieving the right balance between different types of projects. It has to be understood that one cannot execute all types of projects at full scale successfully.
Advocate Rahul Dev is a Patent Attorney & International Business Lawyer practicing Technology, Intellectual Property & Corporate Laws. He is reachable at rd (at) patentbusinesslawyer (dot) com & @rdpatentlawyer on Twitter.
Quoted in and contributed to 50+ national & international publications (Bloomberg, FirstPost, SwissInfo, Outlook Money, Yahoo News, Times of India, Economic Times, Business Standard, Quartz, Global Legal Post, International Bar Association, LawAsia, BioSpectrum Asia, Digital News Asia, e27, Leaders Speak, Entrepreneur India, VCCircle, AutoTech).
Regularly invited to speak at international & national platforms (conferences, TV channels, seminars, corporate trainings, government workshops) on technology, patents, business strategy, legal developments, leadership & management.