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ABSs increasingly dominating lawyers’ thoughts but profitability is a concern

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Bull: small majority of firms think ABSs will be good for business

More than three-quarters of law firms have changed their plans to reflect the coming of alternative business structures (ABS), but firms seeking to attract investors will have to develop credible growth strategies, the Legal Futures Conference heard earlier this month.

Neil Kinsella, managing partner of Russell Jones and Walker (RJW), said his firm had already begun to draw up a list of potential law firm acquisitions, in order to build sustainable revenues and profits.

Revealing the results of a survey of lawyers’ attitudes, George Bull, head of tax and professional practices at accountants and business advisers Baker Tilly, found that while firms were moving to adapt to the new structures, many lacked confidence they would deliver benefits.

He said a combination of the global recession, client demand and liberalisation of the legal marketplace would “put a cap on the size of the largest international firms” and place “more stress on the financial models of firms”. Mid-tier firms in particular, while they might see some short-term growth, should be planning for more difficult times ahead, he advised.

A massive 78% of firms in Baker Tilly’s Legal Services Act Index, which has tracked attitudes to ABSs over six months, said they had either changed their plans or expected to do so. But while this was “a pretty good place for those firms to be in”, said Mr Bull, just 59% believed ABSs would have a positive effect on their business to a greater or lesser extent.

An overwhelming majority of larger firms – 91% – expected their business to undergo major change in the next 18 months. Mr Bull pointed out this was significant since many commentators had predicted large commercial firms would be the least affected by ABSs.

In other interesting results, 50% of firms said they had already lost, or would lose,  business to non-lawyer competitors, yet 44% said they didn’t expect to. Some 84% of firms said they already had, or planned to appoint, non-lawyer managers or non-executive members to their management teams. Only a third of firms were considering incorporation, while 56% were interested in external investment.

Mr Kinsella told the same session that RJW’s approach to ABSs was “just one way that we can begin to think about having a fair fight with some of the new entrants; a way of providing quality legal advice within whatever new regulatory environment there is”.

Speaking shortly before Irwin Mitchell announced it was actively seeking external investment [2], Mr Kinsella warned that there would “winners and losers” and that “ABS is just a means to an end, a way of facilitating capital that is required to get transformative change underway”. Firms that do want to seek outside investment need to consider the return that will attract investors, which means assessing what profits the firm generates after tax and salaries, he advised

RJW’s own search for growth opportunities was being hampered by profitability calculations, he revealed: “We’ve started to try and look at potential acquisitions of other law firms. But very few law firms have significant earnings after they have paid themselves their salaries.”

He added that firms will have to produce “compelling” growth strategies in order to compete in the marketplace after October: “Any credible winner in this new regime needs to have a profit margin, but they need to be able to grow that profit margin moving forward. Most law firms have neither.”

A possible alternative route for law firm tie-ups with private business was proposed by Mark Lovell, co-founder of A4e, the giant public sector contractor, that describes itself as a “social purpose” company and which runs two law centres in Hull and Leicester [3]. He said his business has dealings with some 350,000 people a year, generally those on low incomes and in receipt of state benefits, many of whom have need of legal services.

Mr Lovell said A4e was interested in collaborations with law firms for “front-of-house service” rather than “back-office integration”. He insisted that his starting point was “absolutely not about trying to create A4e as a legal services provider”, but instead about “A4e collaborating in a partnership”.

His aim was to bring together legal services, whether by telephone, online or face to face, “in a coherent manner within a fragmented market”, he said.

He concluded: “For us this is not about an opportunistic move into the market in which ABS brings a potential opportunity for our business; it’s about finding a group of organisations who share a similar vision, who are interested in growing a business and deriving value and a return through growth.”