When you don’t know which harbour you’re aiming at, no wind is the right wind’ is a saying amongst sailors.

There is no difference amongst us in practice. It is hard enough to develop and continue to run a law practice when the captain of the ship is clear as to the direction the firm is heading.

But when a practice is just plodding along from day to day, without any direction, the chances of it getting anywhere by choice is virtually non-existent.

Charting the course of our law firms must therefore be a priority for all of us, whether we are small, medium or just mega. And, as with all good businesses, what with lawyers being risk identifiers, risk avoidance should be a premium concern.

Worldwide, quality of service standards are being set, and the buzzword these days is certification. It is therefore no longer sufficient to merely meet adequate standards, although there can be sanctions if professional standards are inadequate. We have to heed the call to strive for practice excellence.

In a saturated marketplace, we cannot rely on price cutting or worse, undercutting, to get another piece of that, I must say, ever-shrinking pie. We have to rise above that. And that means having a quality mark. It means innovating, finding new and better ways to provide the same services. It means embracing technology. It means not just paying lip service to good practice management, but also actually walking the talk with client care and case management.

Increasing competition and globalisation have focused attention more than ever before on the need for law firms to ensure they have in place first-class management systems and procedures. The key is for practice excellence to be achieved as a standard for all law firms, not just a handful.

Now more than ever before, it is imperative that firms seriously consider putting in place systems and procedures designed to achieve service excellence not only to benefit our clients, but also ourselves in risk avoidance. Until and unless we believe that we can and do deliver services of a consistently high quality, we will not be able to hold ourselves in esteem nor expect our clients or the public to do so.

But it is not easy to sell a product to a person if he is sceptical about what the product can do or the benefits that it can bring him. It is the same with telling our lawyers that they need to have some basic practice management systems in place. The common reaction would of course be, ‘what’s in it for me?’

It is my belief that practice excellence will be good for the bottom line. Delivering consistently excellent service is the best marketing you can ever do, with your ambassadors being your satisfied clients, returning to you again and again, and referring you to others. Being able to boast of such goodwill goes to the core of a successful practice, and gives one a cutting edge above others.

The most common cause of a complaint against a solicitor stems not from incompetent work or lack of legal knowledge but from a failure in administration and service delivery. Lots of man-hours and resources go into investigating a single complaint, even for a complaint of inadequate professional services.

And we are talking about some 35 complaints on ‘Inadequate Professional Services’ (‘IPS’) in a year.

The experience of having to go through this process is tedious and harrowing: the former, for the members who serve as mediators of an IPS complaint, pro bono; and the latter, no doubt for the solicitor whose actions/behaviour are being held up to scrutiny. Such negative portrayal of client-solicitor relationships unhelpfully drawn from a minority of cases that go wrong does not augur well for the profession.

Regardless of the outcome, that also translates into one less client knocking on your door with a repeat order, if not one less client going away with a bad impression of you and our profession. Much of this grief could have been avoided or rectified by having a proper system and procedure in place in one’s practice, and making an effort to implement them properly and consistently. Not only can this lessen our exposure to the risk of a complaint from a client, over time it brings about many other attendant benefits such as:

• increased client satisfaction;
• management efficiency;
• higher profitability;
• effective risk management;
• lower risk premiums charged by insurers;
• fewer mistakes;
• greater accountability to partners and stakeholders;
• improved marketability; and
• competitive advantage.

At the end of the day, no matter how big the firm, you as an individual digit should be interested in the quality of management and make it your mission to up your service. Ultimately, it is a question of management and monitoring procedures that are in place. Don’t try to protect yourself behind a professional indemnity policy or an LLC; nothing replaces good management.

Everyone in the firm must play a meaningful role in reducing risk levels and no one can do it better than partners and directors who make it their business to monitor the firm’s direction — otherwise, pricing premiums will become rising premiums. ‘The future is always risky, try ignoring it’ cannot be the mantra of comfort.

Indemnity insurers have identified the key causes of claims against lawyers as being: missing specific time lines, taking inadequate instructions and poor supervision. In short, silly and avoidable mistakes which can be eradicated with good practices, such as ensuring effective and efficient diary control, making risk management a management responsibility and ensuring that lawyers continue to upgrade their skills and knowledge and, therefore, possess the relevant expertise to deliver their services.

In the past months, the Law Society has been setting the groundwork to help our firms do just that. We were in talks with the Law Society of England and Wales to carry out a knowledge buy-out of their Lexcel Practice Management Standards. This is being finalised after which we hope to develop these standards within the local context.

In addition, the Singapore Law Gazette carries a column every month on risk management. The Law Society has also been holding regular seminars on good client care, good accounting practices, credit management, responsibilities of directors, etc, all designed to get our lawyers up to speed on the basics and, hopefully, keep them out of lurking trouble.

Also on the cards is a proposal for a pilot voluntary point system for continuing legal education (‘CLE’) programmes to encourage members, young and old, to upgrade their skills and knowledge. The scheme is being proposed to start off as a pilot next year on a voluntary basis.

Elsewhere, the medical profession is already seeing compulsory skills upgrading being put in place next as a condition for renewing their practising licences, and this in the wake of only 40% of the 5,000 registered practitioners having fulfilled requirements to score the requisite minimum number of points. Making things mandatory is, dare I say, very Singaporean and often leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but I urge our members to look behind the spirit of our CLE programmes and see the benefits as being more far-reaching than just a point-collection exercise.

John Mason in his book An Enemy Called Average says: ‘Mediocrity is a region bonded on the north by compromise, on the south by indecision, on the east by poor thinking and on the west by a lack of vision’.

For the good of the profession, let us not leave our ships to be piloted by the unknown forces of nature to unchartered destinations, or be steered into whirlpools through our own inaction or mediocre skills.

Be inspired to look beyond the north, south, east and west, and plan your journey ahead with vigour and confidence. The rewards over the horizon are well worth the efforts of a planned win.

Palakrishnan, SC
President
Law Society of Singapore

Your President Listens Members of the Law Society will continue to have the opportunity to meet Mr Palakrishnan, SC, President of the Law Society, at his fortnightly Saturday sessions at the Law Society's premises between 10.30am and 12noon.  The sessions for next month will be on 12 and 26 October 2002.