Respected US legal management consulting firm Fireman & Company has joined forces with lean practice management and process improvement specialists Gimbal Canada in a joint venture aimed at providing an entirely holistic service to law firms and corporate legal departments.
The Performance Excellence Group will advise on areas including pricing, legal process improvement and legal project management.
A statement announcing the joint venture said: “When these strategies are integrated, carefully planned, and executed as part of a comprehensive initiative, the result is profitable, measurable, and sustainable performance excellence.”
“Until now, law firms have been forced to pick a solution before understanding the specific pricing, project management, and process improvement problems they are trying to solve,” said Fireman & Co’s president, Joshua Fireman. “Firms have been asking ‘Why bring in a pricing expert if it will drive down profitability? Why project manage a flawed process? Why improve without the ability to execute and deliver the improved process?’
“We concluded that the newly formed Performance Excellence Group could best partner with law firms and corporate legal departments to answer these questions.”
Specifically, the Performance Excellence Group will assess legal service delivery models in key areas including pricing, process efficiency, project management, knowledge management, technology, financial analysis, and staffing. The objective then is to build an implementation plan for short and long-term improvement and partner with clients to select, prioritise, manage, and execute recommended projects.
Partners in the new group will include Tom Baldwin, who joined Fireman & Co in March 2016 to lead KM, pricing and LPM and was previously chief information officer at Cadwalader, Wickersam & Taft; Gimbal co-founders Karen Dunn Skinner and David Skinner; and Fireman & Co consultant Ron Friedmann.
“Together, we have the ability to mix and match elements to better meet the needs of law firms and in-house legal departments in a way that single-offering consulting firms simply cannot,” said David Skinner.
“Frankly, there’s not a team like this anywhere else out there,” Fireman added.