What drives better value for money in legal services?
Graeme Johnston / 1 November 2023 Let’s start with an example of another complex problem with multiple, debatable causes. Western European countries have radically lower road traffic fatalities than the United States. And the gap has widened in recent years. Why is that? There’s clearly no single cause. Let’s take just three factors, which I’ll […]
Legal services downturn: survival or progress?
Graeme Johnston / 20 October 2023 In periods of reduced demand for transactional and financing work, the playbook for major law firms typically includes two main strategies reducing cost (mainly staffing) and ‘managing the equity’ (reducing partner numbers, or the share of some partners) targeting more of the kind of legal work that arises from […]
Ten conversations about LPM and LPI in UK law firms
Graeme Johnston / 8 September 2023 This article summarises ten one-to-one conversations I had in August and early September 2023 with people involved in LPM (legal project management), LPI (legal process improvement) or both in the context of UK law firms. The conversations were an attempt to understand and share, in a qualitative way, how […]
Legal costs in complex work: action and reaction
Graeme Johnston / 5 September 2023 This article discusses the development of ways to bill for complex, unpredictable work – in particular, hourly billing some of the ‘billing countermeasures’ (a personal usage, inspired by ECM) which have developed in response to concerns about the over-reach of hourly billing some emerging possibilities and a couple of possible […]
Three approaches to legal work
Graeme Johnston / 28 August 2023 Two established ways to approach legal work are: 1) Focus on substance: concepts, words, evidence, stories, negotiations, documents, solutions. That’s where the magic is. ‘Process’ is mainly about finding time to focus on them. It takes as long as it takes. Ideally you’ll manage to find ways to limit […]
Meanings of independence: legal services in Scotland
Graeme Johnston / 11 August 2023 Back in 2017, the Scottish government commissioned a review into regulatory reform of legal services. This was a decade after the passage of the Legal Services Act in England and Wales, and the Scottish review body (the Roberton committee) understandably had regard to what had been done there. The […]
The sacred and the mundane
Graeme Johnston / 10 August 2023 A conversation I’ve been having for many years now, but which always comes back, is the distinction in legal work between The complicated and the complex The standard and the bespoke The template and the matter The planned and the reactive The commodity and the unique The routine and […]
Minimum viable process in English and Scottish litigation
Graeme Johnston / 31 July 2023 [T]he key problems facing civil justice today are cost, delay and complexity, these three are interrelated and stem from the uncontrolled nature of the litigation process. Lord Woolf (English judge), Access to Justice: Interim Report (1995) (England and Wales) Litigants do not care all that much about stones being […]
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill
Graeme Johnston / 24 July 2023 Submission I made today to the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee for its inquiry into the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill. The background to the legislative proposal can be seen from Brian Inkster’s blogposts on the topic. Question 1a What are your views on […]
A simple taxonomy of legal fee types
Graeme Johnston / 20 July 2023* * Updated on 24 July 2023 to deal with paras 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 in a different way and to split out some content into para 4.2 This article proposes a draft simple, practical, neutral taxonomy for fee structures used in legal work. ‘Draft’: it’s work in progress and […]