LawMaster team members attended the 2019 ALPMA Summit in early September at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, and it was an excellent opportunity to network, learn and re-energise for year ahead.
This year’s theme was ‘A Road Map to Transformation – Move Forward with Confidence’. A range of presenters from around Australia and Chicago discussed future-proofing legal practices, innovation, peak performance and achieving balance.
There were so many excellent presentations, but four speakers, in particular, were stand-outs.
Chris Riddell – This awarded Global Futurist defined businesses as either Banana Plantations (traditional businesses) or Rainforests (start-ups and entrepreneurs). Chris spoke about the difference between the two, and the ways that Plantations can learn from Rainforests. He also outlined why businesses need to reinvent themselves and adopt VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) to be the next wave of disruption and innovation.
Rabia Siddique – We heard the moving and triumphant story of this international humanitarian and former Australian Lawyer, who served with the British Army Legal Services. She spoke of her journey to be recognised for her contribution in negotiating the release of two British soldiers in Basra, Iraq.
Matthew Grace – Matthew, Principal and Innovation Consultant at Alpha Creates, gave an interesting presentation about starting and measuring your firm’s journey. He talked about the importance of innovation methodologies being flexible and scalable tools aimed at increasing your firm’s competitive advantage. Key messages included setting and measuring KPIs specifically for your firm’s innovation, for example the amount of time your firm spends on innovation, the number of workshops held, the average time from idea to review, the number of employees contributing and the number of ideas implemented.
Matthew Schlyder – As the Founding director or FWO Chartered Accountants, Matthew spoke about financial KPI’s and accessing data from your practice management program. He recommended setting five financial KPI’s:
1. Productivity – ratio of billable hours to hours staff work
2. Write-offs – value of time worked to write–off
3. Average rate – hour of labour paid vs average rate billed out
4. WIP days
5. Debtors days
He also discussed accessing and using information from your practice management software, and included a demonstration of building a PowerBI dashboard to access financial KPI’s without the need to run endless reports. LawMaster is seamlessly integrated with PowerBI, and users can access this feature through Dashboards. For more information about how you can use Dashboards to measure your firm’s performance, contact your Account Manager.
All of these speakers were very well received by the delegates. We look forward to the next Summit in September 2020 that will be held at RACV Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast.
