TLOMA Today

Fall is officially upon us. Pumpkin spice is back and so is being able to wear sweaters without suffering heatstroke from the ever-changing September weather. October also brings Canadians the holiday of Thanksgiving. When I think of October, images of turkey feasts, family gatherings, pumpkin fields and beautifully coloured leaves all flood my mind. I also try to take a little more time than usual to reflect on the things I am thankful for and count my blessings.

Why are we thankful during a global pandemic? We are all still stuck at home, complaining we have nowhere to go and missing all our extra curricular activities and social gatherings. Restrictions and rules seem to change weekly. We are back to the almost daily news briefings, which only seem to bring bad news and frustration. And truthfully, if I must prepare one more meal or snack, fold one more load of laundry, clean the kitchen one more time, sit through one more Zoom call…I may just scream! However, at the same time, all the things I complain about, I am truly thankful for all things. As I have said to my children, I am grateful to have a house we live in that needs cleaning, food on our table that needs prepping, clothes in our drawers that need washing and a job that provides for all of the above. And, most importantly, we are fortunate to have remained healthy these past 7 months. It’s easy to fall into a trap of only noticing the negatives in a situation and forget to look for the silver linings.

I am thrilled to announce the launch of the TLOMA Instagram page! Please take a minute to check us out @tloma_canada and be sure to follow us. Send us ideas of what kind of content you’d like to see or feel would be beneficial to our members, business partners or the legal industry in general!

Please be sure to join us for some of the informative webinars we are holding this month. I am especially excited for our Diversity and Inclusion session to be held on October 16. Stay tuned for more sessions on this topic in the new year. Visit our upcoming events page.

As we all navigate our way through whatever COVID-19 brings us this fall, I hope you are all able to take a minute to reflect on the things in your life you are thankful for, however big or small.

As always, I will leave you with a quote I feel sums up this month’s message: “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough” – Oprah Winfrey

Imagine this: You decide to reach out to a member of your professional network and ask her if she’d like to meet for a drink after work one evening. You craft what you think is the perfect email: professional but charming, confident, not too pushy, eager but not desperate. You’re excited to see her and catch up, to share some of your ideas with her, and hopefully to develop a deeper relationship. You hit “send”, you smile to yourself, and then…you don’t hear back.

Not so hard to imagine, right? We’ve all been there. And we’ve all experienced the anxiety that comes next.

Whether you’ve reached out to a client or co-worker, a member of your network, or even to a friend who isn’t in your line of business, most of us react to silence by questioning ourselves. Did I say something wrong? Did I offend her somehow? Those of us who are more prone to anxiety and insecurity in general might ruminate: Does she not like me? Does everyone else not like me?

Now that I’ve made you re-live that icky feeling, I’m going to ask you to think about your to-do list. Is there someone you’ve been meaning to email or call back, for days or even weeks or months?

I’ll bet there is!

I didn’t pose this question to make you feel guilty about failing to respond to someone. We’re all busy and we’ve all been overwhelmed. The point of the exercise is, in fact, to get you to feel a little bit better about the times when you’re the one left on someone else’s to-do list.

Most of us have found ourselves on both sides of this scenario at one point or other. We’ve been both the person who keeps meaning to finally sit down and return an email or phone call, but never seems to get to it, and the person fretting over the lack of response.

Keeping this in mind will help us navigate the often fraught matter of relationships. Because, let’s face it: while our lives turn on our relationships, they can be complicated and confusing. That applies to all relationships, personal and professional alike.

In the latter context, our interactions with our clients, co-workers and members of our professional network can have a significant impact on how we feel about our careers.

Shades of Grey

People tend to think about their relationships in black and white. Evolution has wired humans to appraise situations as “good” or “bad”, so that we could act on opportunities or threats, respectively. This is why we instinctively assess our relationships in either/or terms: good or bad, friend or foe. We also see them as fixed, taking the “good” ones for granted, while writing off the “bad” without making an effort to repair them.

The trouble is that human relationships –like humans themselves-- are grey. They are complex, nuanced, and fluid, and they exist on a continuum of “closeness” or “loyalty”, moving up and down it as time and circumstances unfold.

The Relationship Dance

Relationships are made up of small gestures or behaviours, both conscious and unconscious. While each of these actions might seem insignificant in and of themselves, together they are the steps that comprise the relationship dance. Because relationships really are like a dance: you take a step, she takes a step, and each step, or misstep, can change the direction or character of the relationship.

You rush into a meeting with a co-worker, late, flustered, and apologetic. She is understanding and offers to get you a coffee while you organize yourself. You feel relieved and grateful, and your meeting gets off to a great start, albeit a bit behind schedule. Your relationship has taken a positive step forward. Then you go back to your desk and read an email from another colleague that you perceive to be curt. Offended, you fire off a cool or chippy response. That relationship has just taken a step backward.

Obviously not all behaviours are created equal. A raised voice might have a greater impact than a text message of questionable tone. Holding the door for someone and smiling at her might have less impact than a thoughtful message after a meeting. But all gestures, however small, have the potential to shift a relationship.

Another thing to keep in mind is that positive and negative actions carry different weight, with those that harm relationships being both easier to make and more powerful in their effect. Research has shown that the effects of “bad” interactions are stronger and last longer - 4 times longer and stronger - than the effects of “good” ones. So if you think that you’ve taken a step that may have set one of your relationships back, it will likely take more than one positive one to offset the damage.

To complicate matters further, not everyone reacts to things in the same way. One person might react well to a colleague’s praise of his work, seeing it as a compliment, while another might view it as patronizing. In fact, the same person might even react differently to the exact same behaviour from one day to the next, depending on what else is going on in her life that day.

While this might make you want to throw your hands up in frustration and never communicate with anyone again, there are few principles that I find helpful.

Consider the situation from the other person’s point of view. If you are the one stewing over an unacknowledged email, stop to think about what might be going on in the other person’s life. Personal or professional, we all have busy lives involving multiple moving parts. Most of us, at one point or another, have found ourselves barely keeping ourselves afloat in the midst of overwhelming responsibilities and obligations. It might seem backwards to exercise greater compassion toward others when we feel slighted by them, but it can be helpful in gaining some perspective or peace of mind.

Also keep in mind that the impact of that person’s silence on you does not likely correspond to an intention to hurt or offend you. To circle back to our first exercise, take a look at your own to-do list. You might see that you too owe someone a response, and in most cases you will have to acknowledge that your failure to respond to that other person is about you, and not him. That will really help put your own frustration in perspective, calm your anxiety, and keep the relationship from snowballing in the wrong direction. (It might even prompt you to finally sit down and send that darned email and knock it off your to-do list once and for all)!

Give people the benefit of the doubt. Our behaviours are not always or even usually intentional. And with so much human interaction now occurring via text or email, inferring tone when you can’t see the person addressing you further complicates things and can lead to misunderstandings. Keep in mind that your own texts and emails can be misinterpreted just as easily as you might misinterpret the ones you receive. If your contact agrees to meet you for coffee but doesn’t sound that enthusiastic about it to you (this can be due to something as silly as her not using an exclamation point in her email where you would have used one), give her the benefit of the doubt and meet her with a positive attitude. If it’s something more serious, reach out and ask. It’s always better to communicate and get things back on track than let the relationship drift backwards based on a misunderstanding.

Step outside of the relationship. Sometimes it’s hard to really see a relationship until we take a step back and try to look at it from an outsider’s perspective. One of the easiest ways to gain clarity is to imagine the advice that you would give to a friend in the same situation. We are often far more honest with others than we are with ourselves.

Reflect on your relationships through journaling. Journaling can have many benefits for our personal and professional lives, including helping us create deeper and more meaningful relationships. If one of your work relationships is troubling you, take some time to think about and write down the gestures, big or small, that you and the other person made toward each other in your most recent interactions. This might help you pinpoint where your relationship dance took a wrong turn. Over time, journaling can also help you to identify patterns in your relationships and the behaviours that tend to improve or harm them. 

While relationships can be frustrating in all of their complexity, the nice thing about the fact that they are so “grey” is that we can always work on them. Our relationships with our clients, our colleagues, members of our professional network, or new contacts who we’d like to add to our network, are dynamic. Every time we interact with someone, we have countless opportunities to shape and reshape the relationship. That’s a wonderful thing! Positive relationships can be nurtured and deepened, and negative ones can be repaired. With an understanding of the small steps that make up the relationship dance, we can build the professional relationships that we want. And that, in turn, can have positive impact on how we feel about our careers.

Global response to COVID-19 proves false the notion that change is slow. When push comes to shove, restructuring happens fast. 

For many professionals in the legal market, the beginning of the end starts now. For some, it will be their own damn fault. For others, it won’t and they’ll suffer collateral damage.

Warning signs have been in place for many years. Legal industry consultants and observers have persuaded and harangued about it forever. Smart law firms took steps to change how they face the market and do business. Others chose to ignore the signals. Now, the difference between the two will be made clear. As Warren Buffet said, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”

The global pandemic has created a perfect storm: uncertain economics causing clients to withdraw work combined with legal market upheaval. This combination is causing a shuffling of deck chairs on many legal Titanic’s and it’s inevitable that some will go down, just like that ship.

The Legal Business ‘Social Club’

Much of what happens could have been avoided if traditional law firms had ditched the notion that they were glorified social clubs – some with partner lounges! – rather than hard-nosed, laser-focused, bottom line-driven businesses.

The truth is simple: Legal service is a business. Business is about commerce. Take your eyes off the money and your margins, and you’re in trouble fast.

Canada’s Heenan Blaikie LLP collapsed in 2014 for a number of reasons, one being that it was run more like a social club than a business. Proof is in Norman Bacal’s book, Breakdown, in a description of a meeting with Coopers & Lybrand where the firms compare philosophies. It reads: Roy (Heenan) began, explaining how “Heenan Blaikie is about the practice of law at the highest level in a collegial atmosphere among people who genuinely like working with one another. We take care of clients and one another and let the bottom line take care of itself.” A few minutes later it was the turn of the chair of Coopers, who said, “We run a business with a view of maximizing our bottom line.” He had nothing more to add.

That’s because there was nothing more to say. Heenan failed and Coopers & Lybrand became PwC that like other Big Four professional services firms, includes legal among its business offerings.

We’re All Legal Service Providers Now 

Lines are blurring further between Big Law, Mid-Law, Small Law, solos, Big Four, ALSPs, LPOs, paralegals, technology, etc. Clients who have WIP with any of them want it done efficiently. Otherwise, collection problems will become worse than they are now.

Clients are caring less about professional designations of who does the work. This started playing out last year in the U.S. with Arizona, California and Utah considering changes to law firm ownership rules. This situation is already entrenched in the U.K. and, obviously, it’s spreading.

Those stealthy opportunists, the Big Four, will keep making big plays. Last month, Ernst & Young announced intentions to manage the supply chain between corporate law departments and legal service providers of all stripes. This is a business-based, finance-oriented management role for which EY is and always has been well suited – as are other Big Four members because their first language is money and by handling audit, tax or advisory work, they have a CFO’s ear.

Restructuring and Retooling

Legal service providers that went into this pandemic in a weakened state are vulnerable. Some will continue to drag their historical legacy like a ship drags an anchor and the results will mete out.

Those that are determined to survive and thrive will need to do three things fast: face the market by industry, spin off non-core practices, and adopt a sales culture. All require resolve to release traditional operations and lawyer controls. They also mean business.

I speak from experience. During the 1990s, I was hired to lead two business turnarounds involving restructuring divisions that struggled for years: one for nine, the other for 19. Both required fixating on the core business, eliminating anything ancillary, maximizing profit margins, enabling change based on hard data and exact timing, and keeping intact a team who embraced the vision. These turnarounds took six and 19 months respectively and caused sleepless nights, but both entities remain solvent to this day.

I didn’t win any popularity contests while getting these jobs done. Neither will you. But with grit and guts, the results will be well worth it.

For many, January is the start of a new year with plans for new beginnings and resolutions – perhaps too much spent with the extended family?  Not me - I have always been partial to September as the point in time for new beginnings.  It’s the academic versus the calendar year that always struck me as more meaningful – it’s the end of summer, the weather shifts from muggy to temperate, time to add a new sweater to the wardrobe, attending new courses, perhaps a new school – heck, new school supplies!  For me, it was a time to reengage my mind and develop new skills after the summer break. 

This mindset hasn’t changed in over five decades and it is no different this year.  Except - the world has turned on its head with the global pandemic and the social unrest around the world.  It forced me to reflect on how things will be different when children return to school and we plan for a physical return to the office.  In both cases – there will be a hybrid approach that includes in-person and virtual participation.  My mind turns to how do we keep everyone informed, included and engaged.

Our clients have shared many success stories about staying connected early in the pandemic with virtual townhalls, firmwide or practice groups updates and Zoom socials such as cocktails and even a virtual poker game.  It worked in large part because we had a level playing field – almost everyone was working virtually and communication was consistent across the standard platform – ok, where Wi-Fi was weak, or did not exist – we had to rely on audio solutions.

But now – as many of us transition back to the physical office we need to revisit how we will collectively work together to ensure that everyone has the same access to information and opportunity to engage, - virtual or otherwise.  We also need to be mindful of the recent call to action to build a better and more sustainable inclusive culture.  In a recent McKinsey article “Sustaining and strengthening inclusion in our new remote environment” the authors’ focus on taking this moment in time to imbed broader inclusive practices into the workplace.  They identify seven practical steps that personally resonate with me as we look to broadly build both in-person and virtual engagement.  I was inspired by their practical suggestions and identified three practices that would translate into law firm management.

3 Practices To Support Law Firm Workforces

1. Keeping people informed while building and sustaining inclusive work environments

• Develop a communication plan to ensure that all members of the firm are included in updates. This will be a combination of emails, broadcast voicemails, live meetings and perhaps video recordings. We can’t rely on walk abouts to ensure the message was heard across the firm.
• Solicit agenda topics and rotate the “chair” responsibility rather than repeat the standard agenda.
• For planned meetings, circulate the agenda in advance, draw on both in-person and virtual attendees to share their thoughts – and yes, that may mean a shorter agenda to allow for more discussion.
  
  

2. Keeping everyone included while building and sustaining inclusive work environments

• Seek input when scheduling meetings to ensure everyone is able to attend and participate. Always start and end on time – perhaps, end 5 minutes early to allow for a break before the next meeting.
• Continue to engage the whole group to build social connections. Solicit volunteers to generate a broad range of inclusive options (e.g., cooking/baking lesson, virtual concert or perhaps virtual movie night)
• Be mindful of the whole team when delegating work or building new work teams – is everyone getting the opportunity to grow their skills and experiences – or just your immediate network.
• Create a platform where everyone can share their goals/commitments and the opportunity to call out behaviour that detracts from an inclusive work environment.
  
  

3. Promoting engagement by demonstrating curiosity and a commitment to collaboration

• Continue to demonstrate empathy and share your personal situations.
• Include a poll question at the start of each meeting to see how everyone is managing – something as simple as a visual thumb’s up/down.
• Continue to engage in personal outreach to be mindful of individual distractions (e.g., parent who opted for home schooling or adult child moving home to provide elder care) and seek input on how best to accommodate - when and where required.
• Look to accommodate hours of work and focus on project deliverables. Do we all need to be working 9 to 5?
• Actively demonstrate curiosity and ask individuals to hold us accountable – (e.g., understand why someone has opted to avoid public transit rather than assume you know the answer).
  
  

My list summarized above pales in comparison to the details the McKinsey’s authors included in the article.  However, I hope that my summary sparks your curiosity to secure a copy and read the article in its entirety.  There are no easy solutions to the challenges we face in the coming months, or perhaps years with the global pandemic .  It’s also obvious that there is no silver bullet as we look to build and sustain inclusive work cultures.  As an immediate take-away, let’s commit to taking stock at this point in time to set one personal goal to make the next few months an opportunity to learn from each other and build on the successes you have achieved to date.  As a challenge goal – how will you move the dial forward to build an inclusive work environment?

“Sustaining and strengthening inclusion in our new remote environment” By Diana Ellsworth, Ruth Imose, Stephanie Madner, and Rens van den Broek McKinsey July 2020

On-line reviews have been a hot button for some time and have become incredibly important for professionals to build their client base. Entire industries have been built on the notion that one person’s experience – even someone you do not know – will be used to judge ones abilities. We do it all the time with restaurants, stores, apps, and reviews are being used more often when people choose service providers.

It used to be when you needed a lawyer, you would reach out to someone you know and hope they knew someone. This may have led you to a tax lawyer when you were really looking for a real estate lawyer but eventually a name would be shared and you would have someone to work with. With Google, this is obviously much easier and you are able to pinpoint the type of lawyer you are looking for in the area you need them. You still need to make a decision on which one to choose which is where on-line reviews come in.

Client reviews come in many forms. Potential clients will look at your LinkedIn profile and read your recommendations; they look at your Google Business page to see what people have said about you; they may look up award or accreditation sites. With COVID, we are spending less time together to share our experiences so what other people say about you online is more important.

The obvious route to get the best reviews is to only ask those people that you know had a great experience. Depending on your practice will determine where the best place for the review to be. For example if you are with a large corporate firm, LinkedIn is likely the best place. A small generalist firm may emphasize reviews on Google to drive traffic.

Taking reviews to the next level is adding video. Video provides a unique perspective for potential clients that a written testimonial has difficulty conveying. However, unless you can find a way to do these professionally and socially distanced, you may want to shy away for the time being.

Rarely will a client simply provide a review either on-line or offer to do a video. You need to ask them. Let them know why you are asking and what it will be used for. Stress to them that their opinion matters not only to you but to others who may require similar services.

Asking for a referral should not be awkward especially if you ask once you have solved their problems and made the experience a great one, there is a good chance they will have something positive to say about you. Let your past clients help you find your next client.

Name of Organization / Company: Global Exchange Payment Solutions

Organization / Company Overview

Global Exchange Payment Solutions works exclusively with law firms throughout North America.  We focus on helping firms improve the AP Process both internationally and domestically.  Our services help firms improve cash flow and cost recovery while integrating AP and Billing to reduce manual entry.

a) Expertise & Growth

Global Exchange focuses on 2 keys areas of the AP function:  integrated foreign payables on the international side and migrating paper checks to electronic remittances on the domestic side. We provide our services to close to 300 firms throughout North America.  Since our services are scalable both large and small firms can take advantage of   the increased AP efficiencies and cost savings our tools and services provide.  Our customer service is great, firms maintain complete control of the process and banking relationships are not changed.

b)  Service Overview

On the international side we provide firms with an easy to use web-based portal for invoice processing, management, payment, reconciliation and reporting.  We also provide firms with the ability to simply integrate FX payment data into time & billing systems in their matter billable currency to automatically create and close costs.  Our services also eliminate billing adjustments and write offs, eliminate manual entry and provide full visibility into the foreign payment lifecycle for both the finance and legal team.

On the domestic side we help firms eliminate the tedious process of paper checks.  In partnership with our sister company, Comdata, we help firms migrate domestic payments to either card or ACH payments with the opportunity to earn monthly rebates on spend. This data can also be fully integrated into time & billing systems for automatic reconciliation and like our FX solution firms maintain complete control, have full visibility into the payment lifecycle, and banking relationships are not changed.      

How many years have you been a Business Partner of TLOMA? This is our first year

What has been your partnership experience with TLOMA over the years? Our company has worked closely with Loretta Hoi formerly of Bereskin & Parr and her team for a number of years, she always spoke highly of TLOMA and suggested we get involved.

Favorite TLOMA memory? Working with Karen Gerhardt has been awesome!

Where was the last place you vacationed? Cape May, NJ

What is your favorite movie? The Godfather(1 & 2)

What was the last movie you saw? JoJo Rabbit

What is your favorite book? In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 

What is your favorite sports team? The Philadelphia Eagles