Efficiency can be defined as achieving more with the same or less resources.
Lean Thinking is a set of efficiency improvement tools and techniques that can enable firms to achieve more profit without increasing staff and other costs. It is the key to profitable growth especially if you are growing your practice through the acquisition of, or merger with other firms.
Increasing demands for FIXED FEES from clients and the government e.g., the Legal Aid Agency mean that a firm receives the same fee however much time the fee earner takes to complete the work.
Efficiency is therefore critical to achieve profitability.
At the heart of lean thinking is the identification and elimination of ‘ waste’ i.e., the inefficient elements within your process. Typically, unnecessary wasted activity can be a staggering 40% of the process activity.
If you could eliminate this unnecessary activity how much more work could your team achieve and by how much would that increase your total gross fees?
cpm21 has identified the following typical wastes in legal firms:
- Over production
- Mistakes and errors
- Unused or insufficient capacity
- Duplication
- Over processing
- Transporting/unnecessary movement
- Delay/waiting
- Wasted human potential
The problem is that these wastes are often hidden in plain sight. When we ask “Why are you doing it this way?”, the answer is, “because we always have”, or “I don’t know”. Repetition and familiarity makes the waste invisible to those working in, and managing the firm.
We have therefore developed a set of legal sector-specific tools and techniques that enable us to highlight the waste in your process and enable you to eliminate that waste.
Not only can cpm21 help you implement and maintain compliant processes (e.g. for LEXCEL) we can also help you make those processes more efficient too! including:
- We can map your process and show where the wastes are.
- We can train your partners directors practice mangers and staff to understand and implement sustainable lean thinking.
- We can help you achieve profitable growth.
- We can help you improve Cashflow.
- We can then help you continuously improve and remove variation bu using the tools of SIX SIGMA (Our Senior Associate, Paul Jones is an experienced SIX SIGMA BLACKBELT: https://sixsigmadsi.com/six-sigma-black-belt/)
