Transforming Legal Services for Greater Efficiency
The Business Challenge
The UK’s legal sector faced unprecedented changes due to the Legal Services Act 2007 introducing new entrants and increased competition. Higgs LLP, amidst these external challenges, aimed to address internal inefficiencies, enhance workforce effectiveness, and innovate pricing and service delivery. These involved improving processes and procedures that were not efficient, removing reticence to approach clients directly, fully understanding clients’ needs, improving competitive pricing with a multiplicity of fee arrangements, and reducing reluctance to selling clients additional services.
To overcome these challenges, Higgs needed more expertise in: streamlining operations for process optimisation and redesigning services, better people management practices to foster innovative thinking, assistance in designing new pricing strategies replace or complement hourly billing, better project management for effectively delivering large and complex legal services and an innovative management team to steer the company to meet evolving client requirements.
To achieve this Higgs has joined forces with Aston Business School through an externally funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project.
Systems Thinking and Action Research
The PrOH Modelling Methodology was used to understand the status quo of operations and improve them for the better. This holistic approach provided high-level insights into legal processes, enabling visualisation, analysis, and conceptualisation of end-to-end legal services. PrOH Modelling’s unique storyboarding feature facilitated structured inquiries with key stakeholders, enabling data gathering for service process redesign. The PrOH Modelling Methodology was delivered in action research cycles, enabling impactful changes within legal departments in a short span of 8-10 weeks.
Benefits
The practical benefits to Higgs were: the development of new tools changing lawyers’ perspectives on pricing and service (e.g. the ‘case assessment radar’ and the ‘fee seesaw’) more direct engagement with clients so lawyers were more easily able to see how their actions impacted firm’s overall performance, improved staff perception and orientation towards strategic change, time saved as a result of redesigned and streamlined processes, elimination of inaccurate pricing impacts on the top and bottom line, increased conversion rate in personal injury cases (67% to 93%), enhanced recoverable value of time recorded on accurately priced transactions and reduced time spent pursuing new opportunities.
Further Details
• Winner ‘Achieving Cultural Transformation’ Award 2014. College of Law Management Practice (USA). 20th COLPM InnovAction Award, Suffolk Law School, Boston, USA
• Shortlisted. International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) for the ‘Innovative Law Firm of the Year’ final. Washington D.C. USA. 2016
• Finalist. European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). Excellence in Practice, winner of the ‘Organisational Development’ category for teaching cases, 2014
• KTP “Outstanding” level of achievement. 2014. This is the highest-grade award.
• Best of the Best Awards. Innovate UK. KTP Project named in top four from 800 live projects in the UK “Best Partnership” at the annual “Best of the Best” awards, 2014.
• The Lawyer Management Awards. 3rd place for ‘Excellence and/or Innovation in Law Firm Financial Management’ for applied research. 2013. London.
• Innovate UK “Business Leader of Tomorrow”. Finalist (Krishna Balthu) for high performing KTP Associates, 2013.
