On this page you will find

Summary of Capabilities and Experience
Nick’s Working Philosophy

About Nick

Nick Jarrett-Kerr LL.B  is a specialist adviser to law firms world-wide on issues of strategy, governance and leadership development as well as all important business issues facing law firms as they compete in difficult market conditions.  In the last nine years, Nick has established himself as one of the leading UK and international advisers to law firms.  He was a founder member of the (England & Wales) Law Society’s Law Management Section and served as its Chairman for two years.  He is also a member of the UK Association of Partnership Practitioners.

He is a regular writer and speaker on management and leadership topics with an emphasis on strategic and business planning, as well as issues of governance and structure and partner compensation.  He also has a particular interest in management/leadership development, financial management, business development and project implementation as well as partnership performance criteria and partner development.  He regularly leads or facilitates retreats, partner conferences, practice group retreats and away days. Prior to becoming a consultant, Nick (who is a solicitor by training) was for eight years the Chief Executive Partner of Bevan Ashford, a leading regional firm in Great Britain, during a period of enormous growth starting in the depths of the 1989-1992 recession.

In the last five years, he has consulted to firms in eighteen different countries on four different continents

Nick is the author of a Law Firm Strategy – After the Legal Services Act (2009) Law Society Publishing.  He is also currently writing a book on Strategy Execution in law firms.  He is also joint author – with Friedrich Blase and Michael Roch – of the Managing Partner Best Practice Report on Financial Management in Law Firms.  Nick is Visiting Professor to Nottingham Trent University in the Nottingham Law School, College of Business, Law and Social Sciences where he is a module leader for the Nottingham Law School MBA strategy modules and a core MBA faculty member. Nick lives near Bristol; he loves cooking, skiing and sailing though not all at the same time.

Summary of Capabilities and Experience

Strategic Planning

Nick has regularly advised law firms internationally of all sizes on their strategic planning, and in addition has conducted both full and abbreviated strategic and operational reviews.  This work has sometimes been conducted as part of – or leading up to – a Strategy Day or Partners Conference. Nick has proved that an intensive review or audit of a law firm’s existing strategic plan always adds huge value.  His intervention has, for example, led to modifications to bring the plan up to date or has provided the impetus necessary to drive implementation.  Such planning involves updating the facts and assumptions on which the plan was created, evaluating implementation and accomplishments to-date and bringing a new focus to the efforts.

Nick regularly conducts strategy reviews with Boards and Management Committees.  Typically the shorter or lighter versions of this will involve a financial and practice group review followed by two separate full days with the Board of Management Committee.  This can then result in the preparation of a strategic framework for further consultation and agreement in the firm

Governance and Management

Many law firms increasingly find that the structure of their firm was built to cope with historical challenges and is no longer fit for the firm’s current strategy or its size.  Nick has done much work in this area. First, Nick has recently been involved in assisting more than one firm in Asia that is essentially controlled by a small group or partners.  His work includes structuring the firm’s equity that will allow the gradual empowerment and eventual transfer of control to the firm’s next generation of partners, along with the implementation of all the required changes in governance, performance measurement and compensation that are related to this issue.  Second, he has acted for one of the 100 largest US firms in changing the firm’s equity and remuneration system from purely financial factors (including originations) to a system that encourages and rewards the right behavior across a spectrum of performance and to illustrate non-finance related behaviors in a tangible way so that they are understood and accepted by the partnership.  Third, he has been advising UK law firms on their equity and governance structures.  A typical assignment has been to advise on the adjustment of partnership tiers and lockstep to keep the equity tight at the same time as meeting the career needs of the current and future generation of equity partners.

Nick has adopted an approach which seeks to find for each firm a structure and constitution which facilitates strategic and operational decisions, manages risk, and provides business units that match the strategy as well as linking decision-making with the point of implementation.  Equally, Nick’s approach takes care to provide a means of assessing responsibilities and accountabilities throughout the organisation and to ensure each business unit has clear and unambiguous business objectives, in line with the strategy.

Partner Profit Sharing and Remuneration

About one-third of Nick’s working life has recently been spent in helping firms internationally in the challenge of ensuring the optimal method of profit sharing and partner remuneration. He has assisted several firms to create a balanced scorecard approach to partner development and assessment.  He has also facilitated the drafting of partner criteria for accession, promotion and development, and has helped identify Key Areas of Performance for firms to concentrate on the critical areas where partners are expected to perform – and to assess and value such efforts.  He has designed lockstep, intolerant lockstep, and discretionary rewards systems and hybrids of them.  He has also helped firms to draw up Partner Development Programmes to help partners to develop and grow.

Strategy Execution

Even where a carefully crafted strategic plan is in place, its implementation is frequently poorly done.  Nick often sees strategic planning exercises ending up with a list of initiatives and action points which land firmly in the laps of the managing partner or top management team. Partners then exhale a huge collective sigh of relief that they have ended up with nothing to do, no changes to make and no initiatives to pursue.   The Managing Partner in turn ends up with an impossibly large list of initiatives.  Even firms with deep investment pockets or appetites find that money cannot always buy success and that most winning strategic initiatives require, throughout the organisation, substantial internal change, huge personal pain and large investments of time and effort.  Nick helps firms to take a serious and methodical approach to strategic planning and implementation.  One way has been to help firms formalize their approaches including the role of the Top Management Team in implementing strategy.  Another approach is to help firms resolve their strategic intent into a prioritized list of strategic initiatives accompanied by detailed action plans and performance indicators.  In some cases, Nick has assisted the Top Management Team to help plan and implement projects on a monthly retainer basis

Law Firm Economics, Funding and Profitability

The pursuit of profit lies at the heat of every partnership endeavour and the strategy of every firm needs to be tested against the imperative to improve the firm’s overall economic position.  It is no surprise, therefore, that law firm finances is one of Nick’s core capabilities – virtually every strategic or structural assignment undertaken by Nick over the last few years has contained elements of financial analysis and economic advice.  Nick has undertaken many partner and associate workshops on subjects such as working capital management, pricing and the levers of profitability.  He has advised boards and managing partners on profitability optimization and long term funding and investment plans.  Deep and shallow dive economic analysis is also undertaken with the assistance of Nick’s colleagues Harriet Hall and Joanne Fellows.

Nick’s Working Philosophy

Nick has one driving objective – to help law firms in tackling their urgent and important strategic and business issues

Who Nick works for

Managing Partners, Chief Executives, Boards, Management Committees, Practice group Heads and Top Management Teams at

• Law firms worldwide
• Legal services providers of all types ( for example, Patent Attorneys, Barristers’ Chambers, Legal Hybrids)
• Alternative business Structures in the legal services market
• Law firm alliances and network

Nick’s Guiding Philosophy

Nick’s guiding philosophy is to provide clients with superb value and where he can to give more than the clients expect and more than anyone else would provide under the same circumstances. He lives that philosophy by extending to you his “satisfaction guarantee” that allows clients always to assess whether the fees match the results being achieved, and by Nick’s commitment to provide ongoing support even after the formal assignment has concluded

Retainers and Pricing

As mentioned in our terms of business, our services are usually designed around fixed prices or guideline estimates, rather than hourly or daily rates, so that clients can access our accumulated knowledge to help achieve their firm’s goals.

Retainers: regular retainer arrangements can be provided by way of strategic counsel or coaching and mentoring advice for Managing Partners, Boards, Management Committees and Department Heads.

Fixed Price Engagements:  Nick is committed, wherever possible, to carry out engagements on a fixed fee basis.

Hourly or Daily Rates: In appropriate cases Nick will work (with client agreement) on an hourly or daily rate basis.  For guidance, Nick’s rates are roughly equivalent to a senior partner in a regional law firm.

Reduced Rates: Nick is often able to offer reduced rates to small firms, sole practitioners and not-for-profit organisations.

Confidentiality

All sensitive information that we receive prior to or during the course of an engagement, along with information that we develop for clients based on that information, will be treated confidentially.  Unless first approved by the client, we will not disclose any of this sensitive information to any third party, and we will use all of this sensitive information only for purposes related to our work done for or proposed to be done for the client, for internal quality control purposes and for the internal development of our professional capabilities