Welcome to The One Minute Manager. Our goal is to provide you with quick tips that will enhance the success of your practice. Within 60 seconds you will gain an idea that will increase your profitability or simply ease the burden of a difficult management issue. We hope you will find this a valuable resource.

The One Minute Manager . . . . .

An expression has been coined for the law profession that may be the underlying cause of many client complaints. ?Lack of Slack? describes the frantic pace of law firms where there is little time to deliver the level of service that all lawyers are interested in offering their clients.

A heavy workload takes its toll on lawyers but the anxiety level builds further when clients complain about the time it takes you to return their phone calls. Clearly the number one complaint of clients is promptness of communications either by telephone or email.

Client service is often the only differentiator that law firms can offer in a marketplace filled with highly competent lawyers. Today?s business and consumer clients demand ?super-service?. A telling statistic is that 60% of clients that shift to other firms were generally satisfied by the service level of their previous firm. Just providing client satisfaction is no longer a sustaining factor.

The dilemma is that high billable hours is the economic driver for a profitable firm. However, if you focus your practice on the higher margin clients and reduce your marginal clients, you may gain a more effective delivery model. The 80/20 rule suggests that you earn 80% of your income from 20% of your clients.

We again see that improving the quality of your client base is an important critical success factor. Adept business development skills will allow you to become selective and purge those clients that consume time and cause a ?Lack of Slack?. Building in a slack factor will better serve your key clients and reduce lawyer anxiety levels.