Mission

It is said we learn from our mistakes.  If true, few organizations have more opportunities for enlightenment than law firms.

LawFirmCFO blog is dedicated to every managing partner and administrator who has ever asked the question: “Why me?”

 If Fitzgerald and Hemingway had been partners in a small law firm, they might have had the following conversation:

Fitzgerald: “The big law firms are different from you and me.” 

Hemingway:  “Yes, they are.  They have a lot more money.” 

Large law firms devote significant amounts of that money to annual investments in back office operations to improve productivity and efficiency.  According to law firm statistical data, large law firms spend more than $39,000 per lawyer each year to support their accounting and IT operations.  Meanwhile, law firms with 20 or fewer lawyers manage the same services for $12,000 per lawyer annually.  Spending $39,000 versus $12,000 is a big difference.  Yet small and midsize firms require the same actionable financial information and the same robust technologies as their large firm competitors!  So, here's the rub:  How can small/midsize firms spend less on their back office and still achieve the same resources necessary to compete against their large firm brethren?

The goal of LawFirmCFO blog is to level the playing field for small and midsize law firms.  We will accomplish this by sharing ideas and solutions intended to assist managing partners and administrators as they push, prod and cajole their lawyers to become more efficient and productive as well as transform their firms so they become easier to manage and increasingly more profitable.

Edited by Mike Marget, a former large law firm COO and CFO, the blog is written in the style of internal firm memos -- so the format will be familiar to the reader.  A few of the postings you may find amusing; ideally this will be limited to those written intentionally so (e.g., Mike's inane Top 10 Lists).  Be forewarned -- anything appended with Mike's name is solely his world view.  (The last sentence is included here at the request of several potential "guest contributors" who wish to disassociate themselves, in advance, from Mike's frequent convoluted sentence structure, overuse of semicolons and footnotes, and bizarre attempts at humor.)

By the way, the memos in this blog are the work product of the law firm of Parsley Sage Rosemary & Ginsburg LLP, which exists solely in Mike's mind.  [All rights reserved.]