3 Ways PD Leaders Can Contribute to the Firm’s Bottom Line
We all know that Professional Development (PD) organizations contribute meaningfully to the knowledge, skills, and readiness of lawyers and staff every day. But many PD leaders are asking, “Is there more we could be doing to contribute value to the firm and impact the firm’s bottom line? That is, to (directly or indirectly) generate more revenue for the firm and/or reduce expenses?”
At the most recent NALP PDI conference, SkillBurst CEO Steve Gluckman co-led a session sharing a variety of ways that law firm PD leaders can meaningfully contribute to their firm’s bottom line.
Here are just a few of the many interesting ideas and examples shared during the session.
Understand what’s important to the firm’s leadership. One of the first things that one PD leader did when she assumed her new position was sit down with the firm’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to learn what was important to them – and what the PD group might be able to do to help. What did she learn? Many of the firm’s invoices were not being paid by clients because lawyers weren’t accurately and consistently recording their time and demonstrating their value. The CFO essentially said, “If you can solve this problem, it will make a meaningful difference to the financial position of the firm.” She quickly rolled out mandatory online training on Timekeeping Best Practices along with a short Levers of Law Firm Profitability course, to ensure all associates received a consistent message on the importance of timekeeping and its relationship to firm profitability. (Both of these courses were leveraged from SkillBurst’s Professional Essentials library.)
Recognize opportunities to connect and innovate. Two lateral hires with extensive experience holding live training for their clients joined the firm and were interested in taking their Title IX training online, but they didn’t know how – or where to even start. They didn’t want to use the traditional live or recorded webinar approach but, instead, envisioned an approach that would allow them to create sophisticated on-demand courses once, sell them to many different clients, and then keep the courses updated periodically as laws and regulations changed. They also needed a way to offer certificates of completion and track and verify individual course completion. With significant knowledge and experience in creating and leveraging on-demand courses for internal use within the firm, and with her knowledge of the marketplace, the PD leader recognized an opportunity for the firm to use a similar approach to realize the attorneys’ vision. Just a few months later, the firm began marketing its new subscription-based, on-demand compliance courses to clients, creating a brand new revenue stream for the firm. (Learn more about Subscription-Based B2B training for clients.)
Look for opportunities for everyone in the firm to be contributing at their highest and best use. Do you have the same attorneys deliver the same live internal training year after year? There’s an opportunity cost to that time; every hour spent on internal training (and associated prep) could have been client-facing and revenue-producing. Could you potentially automate that training so that next year (and every year thereafter), the attorney could use that time for client-facing activities instead? Or could you use an external source to deliver online training that has been vetted and approved by your attorneys? Many PD groups are at the center of their firm’s annual compliance training programs and have added value to their firms by transitioning away from live attorney-led sessions to an automated on-demand solution that has been approved by their attorneys. The result for many has been increased engagement, improved completion rates, and a significant reduction in the labor costs necessary to coordinate, schedule, and deliver the training. (One example: On-Demand Harassment Awareness training with its accompanying compliance platform.)