Several issues need to be clarified before talking about this issue
1. As an organization, a law firm must have management.
As long as it is organized, hierarchy, management and being managed are indispensable. Even in the most free social activities, organizational management is indispensable.
The lawyer's knowledge structure determines that this profession emphasizes personal freedom and the pursuit of fairness and justice. Lawyers will resist anything that limits these values. But any organization will have a hierarchy, where we come from, where we go, and what our mission is. This is a problem that lawyers and law firms cannot avoid.
2. There is no best law firm management model, only the law firm management model suitable for you.
The law firm's corporate management is good, as well as the integrated management, there is no universal law firm management model.
The corporate management model of Jindu and Junhe is regarded as an industry model, but it is not necessarily suitable for all law firms.
Whether to choose the management mode of solitary soldiers, whether it is a highly centralized management mode, or to choose an intermediate mode depends on the specific circumstances of the law firm.
Each law firm should choose a management model suitable for its own law firm based on its own partner structure, professional development direction, value concept and other comprehensive factors, and gradually and gradually improve it.
3. The significance of the concept, vision and strategy to the law firm is far more important than we think.
Philosophy, vision and strategy seem pragmatic, but reality is crucial to the development of the law firm.
The law firm must have a unified concept, and everyone must agree with this concept and organize and manage around it.
The development of a firm must plan not only the current but also the future, and must have a development plan of three to five years.
Before thinking about the issues of law firm management, we have to ask ourselves a few questions: Why does the law firm exist? What is the vision of the law firm? Where is the law firm going?
If the goal is to build a small-scale boutique specialty and eat all over the world, it is very important to cooperate. If the goal is to create a national or regional comprehensive institution, the scientific management system is even more important. Although the partnership model of the law firm has extremely strong interpersonal characteristics, the larger the scale, the greater the need for a scientific management system to guarantee such interpersonal characteristics.
We may be familiar with the following scenarios
· The flow of lawyers is frequent, the law firms are opening smaller and smaller, and there are constantly lawyers or teams leaving the law firms to open new ones;
· The law firm lacks talents. When it comes to suitable talents, there is no lawyer to recruit him. When trying to recruit good talents, it is hard to find them;
· The law firm lacks public accumulation and has no money to hold large-scale events; the law firm has no administrative team and lacks awareness and ability to build public brands;
· The partners of the law firm are both investment partners and managers. The management of the law firm brought about by the integration of the negotiation and the management is unprofessional and opaque;
· The law firm lacks knowledge management, and it is difficult to form a series of knowledge deposits such as a unified and standardized case handling process, text library, business guidance, and practical skills.
The above are caused by the lack of management of the law firm. Therefore, lawyer Wang Zheng of Shanghai Hongqiao Zhenghan Institute said that the traditional commission law firm is a profitable gang that works independently, eats from the sky, and co-operates under the same firm.
The commission model has a lot of drawbacks
The commission system can stimulate the enthusiasm of lawyers to the maximum extent, but this kind of incentive is obviously an over-excitation.
1. The commission system model leads to unregarded public affairs and low-income cases in law firms
The biggest problem in assessing lawyers on a commission basis is that there is a correlation between the income generated by the lawyer's business and the lawyer's own work, but there is no necessary correlation. As a result, lawyers are reluctant to do complicated business, and they are even more reluctant to do low-profile cases, which makes their competitiveness less competitive. Lawyers started picking business, picking up good jobs, getting fat, and making profitable partners. They were reluctant to work in profitable cases. Legal aid cases were also a last resort. Some business related to the development of law firms but not high fees No one wants to care. At the same time, no one is responsible for the public affairs of the law firm, because the public affairs of the law firm cannot bring direct economic income to the lawyer.
2. The commission model leads to conflicts of interest in the law firm, making it difficult to form a joint force
Lawyers of commission law firms are all oriented towards the source of the case and income generation. Unless everyone’s professional areas do not converge too much, when the law firm reaches a certain scale, lawyers with comparable internal competitiveness will form a natural competitive relationship, regardless of Whether it is in the internal management authority, the source of the case, or the customer will fall into competition. It will cause quarrels, dismantle each other, and rob business among colleagues. This is a common occurrence in law firms.
3. It is difficult to form a professional division of labor under the commission system
Most of the lawyers in the commission law firm are scattered soldiers. In order to meet the diverse needs of different clients, this requires that the lawyers understand everything about the business, but it is difficult to have the time and energy to conduct special research in a certain field and become a professional in this field. expert. As a result, it is impossible to carry out in-depth professional field research and division of professional collaboration within the institute.
4. The commission model is difficult to form a public accumulation
One is the lack of public funds, and the commission system lawyers are dedicated to pursuing higher commissions and more dividends. They generally do not care about the firm’s long-term planning and goals. After the annual distribution, there is almost no surplus that can be used for the future development of the law firm.
The second is the lack of a systematic training mechanism for young lawyers. The training of young lawyers can only rely on the masters "belt", and there is no systematic and standardized training mechanism at the law firm level.
The third is the lack of knowledge management of law firms. This point has been mentioned before and will not be repeated here.
The integrated management of law firms is the development direction of law firms
At the Guike Annual Conference in 2019, Mr. Cheng Shoutai, the director of Taihetai Law Firm, said that no one in the lawyer industry is discussing the commission system or the company system, but integrated management must be the development direction of the law firm.
So what is the integrated management of law firms?
Some people think that the most important feature of the integrated law firm is the ability to integrate the resources of the entire office, do unified knowledge management of the entire office, establish a unified service standard for the entire office, and establish a unified brand without letting the law firm depend on a lawyer. This view does not seem to summarize the essence of integrated management. I very much agree with the opinion of Dongying Dong, the director of Shanghai Yingdong Law Firm, "Integrated construction, first of all, let everyone be a community of destiny in terms of property rights, and in scientific governance, supporting the corresponding management structure and system. Through negotiation, decision, action Reasonable erection of supervisors, clear division of labor, and separate duties, to make up for the integration of partners and lawyers in management and operation, let lawyers return to lawyers, professional return to professional, and management return to management."
The integrated management and corporate management we are talking about are not the same concept. It is generally believed that the counting system is an important symbol of corporate management. The counting system can effectively solve the integration of distribution, and to a certain extent, the integration of law firm resources, market development integration, administrative management integration and professional team integration. But if one firm does not fully implement the point system, but it actually guarantees the other four integrations, it can also be said to be an integrated management law firm. Of course, we must admit that without the integration of distribution, it is indeed difficult to achieve the integration of the other four aspects.
The competition of law firms is actually the competition of law firms' management capabilities.
With the continuous expansion of the scale of the law firm, the industry competition is also increasing, from the law firm's administrative management, customer management and knowledge management, to human resources, technical tools and cultural construction, etc. all need professional operation. How to integrate law firm resources and strengthen competitiveness becomes the core competence of the law firm. Therefore, the competition of law firms is actually the competition of law firms' management capabilities.
Integrated management must first solve the problem of value concept
To solve the lack of law firm management, the first is to solve the three problems mentioned above, that is, why does the law firm exist? What is the vision of the law firm? Where is the law firm going?
The process by which law firm partners discuss these issues is the process of forming unified law firm values and development strategies. If a partner of the law firm conflicts with the law firm’s development philosophy, development strategy, or distribution mechanism, it may break up twice. Based on the current apprenticeship team, it is likely that the aforementioned team will leave the law firm. Happening.
Specifically, the so-called value concept of building a law firm is to use the vision to outline the direction of the law firm's development and adjust it to changes in the market and strategy; use a sense of mission to call on lawyers and employees to turn their work into Career, full of energy, full of passion; use values to adhere to beliefs, and constrain possible deviations in the realization of the vision and mission; finally, through training and review, guide lawyers to form a culture-driven way of thinking, and strengthen the above vision and mission And values.
How to realize the integrated management of the law firm
1. Integrated distribution system
For law firms to achieve integrated management, the first thing to be solved is the distribution system, and income generation must be decoupled from the income of lawyers.
The first is to change the loose partner distribution system, with points or salary levels as the main basis for distribution. This can be borrowed from the counting system of Shanghai Hongqiao Zhenghan Law Firm and Beijing Zhonglun Law Firm. Take Hongqiao Zhenghan's counting + salary + bonus model as an example. The counting points are based on seniority and contribution. Salary is based on work time, and bonus is based on work achievement. (For details, please refer to the related article of Hongqiao Zhenghan's public number and "The Secret of Zhonglun")
The second is to change the incentive mechanism for lawyers from taking profit commissions to an annual salary system. As mentioned earlier, under the commission system, lawyers naturally prefer to do high-paying businesses and relatively simple businesses at the same fees. The result is that it is easy for lawyers to pick fat and thin, so lawyers are naturally more willing to follow quality business. 1. Cooperative (cooperative) people who can make money can do more and get more commissions. Weak cooperating (cooperative) people cannot get support. Through the reform of the annual salary system, lawyers should be managed from each partner to be managed by the firm. The specific approach is to divide all lawyers into different grades according to their graduation and working hours. Lawyers do not need to think about how much money they can earn before doing something, but more about how to do their business well, because the bonus depends on the effectiveness of the firm and the usual performance of the lawyers. The lawyers did not have their own abacus, and everyone went to one place.
Frankly speaking, the distribution system is the most difficult and most sensitive reform. Many law firms also fell apart due to the failure of the reform of the distribution system. However, in order to realize the integrated management of law firms, the issue of reforming the distribution system must be considered. Even if it cannot be achieved overnight, it must also find ways to increase the public funds of the law firm to support the cost of the integrated management of the law firm.
2. Integrated administrative management system
A strong law firm administrative team is also an important symbol of the law firm's integrated management. Facts have proved that administrative management is not a legal person's strength. As the scale of the law firm expands, professionals are required to be responsible for the law firm's brand management, customer management and human resource management. This is what lawyers often say "let professional people do professional thing". The rise of the Jindu Institute, Zhonglun Institute, Junhe Institute and Dacheng Institute has also proved the importance of professional administrative teams for the development of law firms.
The brand promotion department of the law firm is responsible for the unified image of the law firm, VI design, document template, and a special operation department to cooperate with the lawyers to complete the market activities; the client management department of the law firm is responsible for assisting the lawyers in customer maintenance.
3. Integrated knowledge management system
The so-called law firm knowledge management refers to collecting and sorting out the knowledge and skills of lawyers for the purpose of improving the quality of lawyer services and working efficiency, establishing a reasonable knowledge structure for each knowledge application scenario, and then reorganizing the original content to The corresponding architecture is combed a second time, and these knowledge and skills are output and reused. If a law firm wants to develop for a long time and wants to gain a leading position in market competition, it must attach importance to knowledge management and realize the value of knowledge management through a series of processes such as knowledge sharing, refining, preservation, evaluation, and reuse.
It is necessary to build a learning law firm as the theoretical basis for knowledge management in law firms. Let each lawyer share the knowledge resources and the experience of other lawyers while actively sharing them. Print these knowledge resources in the minds of each lawyer and provide a knowledge map for each lawyer. Yes, this is the purpose of knowledge management.
The law firm shall establish a unified knowledge management department, which is responsible for the quality control, business research and development, theoretical research, internal training and file management of the entire firm. (For the knowledge management of the law firm, please refer to the article "On the Difficulties and Breakthroughs in Knowledge Management of Small and Medium Law Firms")
4. Integrated talent management system
The competition of the law firm is the competition of the management ability of the law firm and the competition of talents. As mentioned earlier, law firms often have to face such an embarrassing situation: when they meet the right talent, there is no lawyer to recruit him, and when they want to recruit good talent, they can't find it hard.
Therefore, the law firm should establish a long-term talent introduction system.
The experience of Guangyue Institute is worth learning from this point. The talent policy of the Guangyue Office is uniformly recruited by the law firm, and it is a long-term recruitment, that is, "the introduction of talents". New talents must first be trained in the law school for four to six months. The training content is mainly training in practicing skills. After passing the training, they will be assigned to specific legal affairs departments according to the characteristics of the talents. At the same time, the law firm also attracts outstanding talents with a salary standard much higher than the local law firm, and screens talents with the standards of future partners.
Finally, review the issues discussed today
First, we have clarified several prerequisite questions. That is, as an organization, a law firm must have management; there is no best law firm management model, only the law firm management model that suits you; the meaning of the concept, vision, and strategy for the law firm is far more important than we think.
Secondly, we analyzed some of the chaos that existed in the management of the law firm, and also analyzed the drawbacks of the commission system model.
Again, we pointed out that the integrated management of law firms is the development direction of law firm management, and briefly summarized the meaning of integrated management, and proposed that the competition of law firms is actually the competition of law firms' management capabilities.
Finally, we proposed how to establish a law firm's integrated management model. That is, we must first solve the problem of the value concept of the law firm, and on this basis, establish an integrated distribution system, administrative management system, knowledge management system and talent management system.
About the author-Peng Lei
Director of Criminal Legal Affairs Department of Guangdong Baoxin Law Firm
Assistant Director of the Strategy and Development Committee of Zhongshan Law Association
Member of the Criminal Professional Committee of Zhongshan Law Association
He graduated from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in 2004 and worked in the Law School of Hubei University and the People’s Procuratorate of Zhongshan City; in July 2015, he worked in Guangdong Baoxin Law Firm. He specializes in criminal defense and criminal compliance review, and is good at handling crime cases.
After studying law for 20 years, he has published more than 20 papers in Chinese Criminal Law Journal and other journals. He has successively been invited by Zhongshan Lawyers Association, Shiyuan Real Estate Company and other units to give lectures, and all of them have been well received. He has been awarded the Outstanding Committee Award, Caring Public Welfare Award and Theoretical Achievement Award by the Zhongshan Law Association for many times.
