Are lawyers really worthy that money

April 14, 2008 at 9:45 am | In Business | Leave a Comment
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Business professionals, lawyers, accountants, engineers and others are sometimes viewed as a necessary evil. Each profession has offered a lot of material for jokes and comedians over the years. We have the bottom dwelling lawyers, the charisma by pass, cardigan wearing accountants and the geeky computer dorks to name a few. As well as jokes these professions have something else in common. It is the ability to charge relatively high fees for their services.

Do businesses and individuals get value from these high fees? To answer this question I reviewed the 2008 Beaton Consulting Annual Business and Professions survey. This survey looked at the demographics of the business professions and client perceptions of the value that these professions provided. The professions were:

  • Legal
  • Accounting
  • Actuarial
  • Patent and trade mark attorney
  • Architecture
  • Management Consulting
  • IT Services
  • Consulting Engineering


The demographic part of the survey found that there are more female lawyers than male lawyers and that females also dominated in the accounting profession. At the other end of the spectrum 82% of consulting engineers are male as are 72% of IT service professionals.

The survey asked clients what they looked for in their professionals that they used. The two keys attributes overall were “proactive innovation” and “excellent service, communication and client focus”. However there were significant differences between how theses were valued in the different professions. “Proactive / innovation” was rated much above the average in the IT services professions while “service, communication and client focus” rated much lower in the IT and consulting engineer’s professions. The Legal and actuarial professions rated very high on this client focus attribute.

The clients were then asked how the professionals performed in providing innovation. In the IT world innovation was valued highly. However. The survey found that the IT profession was a relatively poor performer in delivering innovative solutions. The high performers in providing innovation were the Patent and Trade mark Attorneys and the Legal profession.

In regards to client relationship management the professions are focusing on the following.

  • Making Efforts to build personal relationships
  • Providing a client relationship contact
  • Acting on feedback

The areas of relationship management in which clients indicated there had been the least amount of work were:

  • Providing metrics on the service provided
  • Identifying opportunities and referring business

Fees were typically viewed as high; however, this did not naturally lead to a perceived deficiency in value provided. It was suggested that fees were only one component that determined overall value. The ones perceived with the highest fees were management consultants, accountants and lawyers. Patent and trade mark attorneys were perceived as having the lowest fees and providing the highest value. However, the IT profession who were ranked second lowest in regards to fees were ranked last in regard to value. Also lawyers who were perceived as charging high fees were also judged as providing a high level of value.

What are some of the take aways from this survey?

  • There is a huge opportunity for IT professionals

Unmet demand from clients in regards to innovation

  • Lawyers may cost but they are satisfying their client needs
  • Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys are potentially exceeding client expectations
  • Generally these professions do have a high cost but overall they are delivering value

A message from the survey for the business professionals with a strategy of developing client relationships is that to differentiate yourself from competitors you will need to do more than develop a personal relationship. Referring business and providing metrics are two opportunities to help retain those valuable clients.

As with most business decisions it is important to start with the end in mind when engaging a business professional. This should be communicated to the professional and ideally done in writing before work commences. This will help clarify expectations and keep the professional focussed on solving your issue. This perhaps painful process up front will increase the likelihood of you extracting the value that the professional offers.

Why create time to be alone

April 14, 2008 at 9:42 am | In Life | Leave a Comment
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A friend last week was telling me how much she had enjoyed living in London in the early part of this decade. She had enjoyed the vibrancy and the culture but a strange image made her question whether this was the long term lifestyle for her. Each day while going to work she noticed more and more people with white pieces of wire hanging from their ears. It was the time of I Pods and each day it seemed that more and more people were joining the revolution. This innocuous observation triggered something in my friend’s mind that made her question this lifestyle, the pace of life and her priorities.

This again made me think about finding time to be alone and how difficult this can be living in a large city. Running has been my time alone for over 30 years and it has helped me make some sense of what is happening around me from the hormone driven teenage years to the mutli vitamin driven middle age years.

But what is the value of spending this alone?

Neither the Dalai Lama nor the massage therapist let me know their thoughts, so I did a bit of research. One of the articles that I discovered was by Keith Renninson. He is a Vietnam vet turned motivational speaker and author. He talked about using the time alone to develop a personal life philosophy and then to check in with ourselves on a regular basis to confirm what is working and what isn’t working. This seems like a good idea but I was never taught how to check in with myself to develop my own personal philosophy. I was taught how to get high marks so that I could do whatever I wanted to do.

In hind sight it seems a bit strange that there was not more emphasis on how to develop my self knowledge. This would have helped determine what it was that I wanted to do.

So in the absence of self knowledge I did the next best thing and that is did what my family, friends, media, politicians or teachers told me is the right thing to do.

As a dad I see this is a challenge to help my kids work out their own philosophies, to determine what they want to do with there life.

One of the things that I will encourage is for them to spend time alone. I will probably have to get over being called a freak but I will actively make opportunities for them to have those deep and meaningful solo conversations.

The following are some specific thought starters that I intend to share with my kids to initiate this solo discussion:

  • Reflect on your past present and future. What makes you happy? What makes you angry?, How can you get more of the former and less of the later
  • Discover how you really feel about issues without anyone else’s input.
  • Listen to your thoughts.
  • Compare your ideas and options.
  • Appreciate that you can make good choices.

How to create this time alone in our life? A real commitment needs to be made. There is no need to become a monk or a nun or sail solo around the world. Renninson asks himself each morning if he is happy with the direction of his health and fitness, his professional life and his social life. I use my time running or doing yoga to have that inner conversation about the status of my life. For some it is really tough to find that time that can be spent alone. This is usually because of family and work commitments and when any time is available being deep and meaningful is not at the top of the “to do list”.

However just like an advertising campaign “take the challenge”, you may find that the time you give yourself helps create time in your life overall. Set 15 minutes in your diary or in outlook or your PDA or whatever time management tool you use 4 times per week over the next 4 weeks. You may find it helpful to have a pen and paper handy to write any insights or decisions that you make.

You will then have your own answer to the topic of this article “Why create time to be alone”.

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