Four years ago, the Law Society began to look at creating an integrated management system to help law practices meet the new challenges of running a law practice. The new challenges as we saw then, and now, were that law practices had to be run in a business-like manner; law practices had to deliver legal services in a fast paced globalised business environment and law practices had to learn to work with information technology.

Dale Carnegie, a pioneer management thinker, said, ‘From my point of view, people worry because they feel a need to control their world, which is impossible.’

The Society’s mission to create an ISO type quality assurance system for our law practices was never about controlling change, but rather to provide a tool to help law practices cope better with change and ease some common worries and fears of practice in the brave new world.

The Law Society’s initial study quickly made us realise that simply imposing an ISO quality type system was not suited for law practice management and we had to look at a unique management system for law practices.

The Law Society was conscious during this whole study that the majority of our practices were small firms and, therefore, any voluntary quality assurance standard created for the profession by the profession had to meet the specific management structures of our smaller practices.

It was during the Law Society’s Practice Management Committee’s study that the Society came across systems adopted by law associations in England and Australia.

It was the English Practice Management system called Lexcel that the Law Society finally settled upon in late 2001 as it was viewed by the Practice Management Committee to be the most comprehensive and tested model from which to develop our own standard.

It was also clear to the Law Society, from the experience of other jurisdictions, that any administration of a successful quality management system needed the direct support of the Bar Association or Law Society.

Negotiations began in 2002 between the Law Society of England and the Law Society of Singapore to purchase the Lexcel standard know-how for development by the Law Society here. Negotiations took nearly a year and, by 2003, a contract was signed between both our Law Societies and the relevant secretariat staff in Singapore were trained by the Law Society of England on the Lexcel standard and its certification process.

In the same year, the Law Society appointed Bizibody Technology Pte Ltd of Singapore and Alexander Forbes Professionals London, to work on the modification of the Lexcel standard for the Singapore legal profession with an ad hoc committee comprising a few members of the Practice Management Committee.

The Birth of PrimeLaw
PrimeLaw was soft-launched on 11 December 2003. At its launch, Philip Jeyaretnam SC, then our Vice President, said:

At university we learn the law, not how to run a business. So management skills get picked up on the job, if at all. The Society recognised this deficiency a decade ago and so began the focus on practice management skills.

PrimeLaw is a culmination of the Society’s efforts to impart practice management skills by creating systems and processes to achieve practice organisation, financial management, business planning, marketing and case and risk management.

The name PrimeLaw, chosen by the Society for its own standard in late 2003, simply means Practice Management Excellence in law. The open book logo in a flowing upward movement reflects the benefits a practice would gain from the standard and a commitment by that practice to constantly learn and improve.

PrimeLaw consists of four standards a law practice must satisfy to obtain the quality mark:

• Forward Planning.
• General Management.
• Financial Management which includes Client Accounting.
• Case Management.

These four principal standards when met by a law practice of any size will certainly lead the practice to:

• Manage its practice efficiently.
• Increase profitability.
• Identify and monitor risk issues associated with the practice.
• Improve client care.

Conscious of the needs of smaller practices, our Guidelines will describe how each standard can be achieved (which at the time of writing of this article was being finalised for publication) and specifies in appropriate sections how it can be attained by a sole solicitor’s practice.

The Law Society is also working with its consultants to publish a precedent Office Manual especially for smaller law practices which can be used as a template to implement the systems and processes necessary to achieve PrimeLaw certification.

Essential to any management change is the ‘human factor’ and this is not forgotten by the Law Society in its standard. The standard will require law practices to look at the performance and training needs of everyone that works in a law practice. This is covered under General Management. I make special mention of this as people are the most powerful source of competitive advantage for any business.

We hope to award the PrimeLaw mark for a three-year period to a law practice which would be assessed on compliance each year as is the case of any quality mark. In the following pages, Ms Sylvia Low of Bizibody Technology Pte Ltd explains what PrimeLaw standards are and how these standards can be achieved for a law practice.

Let me conclude with what will be the many roles of the Law Society as we gear up for an official launch of the standard later this year.

Nurturing PrimeLaw
The Law Society has many roles to fulfil as a developer of PrimeLaw. The Society, as the developer of the standard, will help law practices prepare for the standard through professional development training. We will also market the standard, create public awareness of its benefits to a consumer of legal services, train approved consultants who will be authorised to consult for our law practices, develop assessment guidelines, establish the assessment system and train assessors in Singapore of other quality marks to be qualified as approved assessors for PrimeLaw.

Training and approval of consultants and assessors by the Law Society are essential to ensure consultant and assessor quality assurance for the profession.

The Law Society will also ensure that law practices that apply for the mark do not have a record that indicates concerns that could undermine the credibility of the standard. The Law Society will, therefore, require law practices that apply for the standard to disclose their professional civil liability claims history and the Society would conduct a good standing check on the proprietors, partners and directors of each law practice. This is a vital part of the application process in England carried out by the Law Society of England for its Lexcel mark.

On the training front, the Law Society has decided on a unique programme to help make a real difference to members who begin the journey towards improved business, management and client care performance. The Law Society announced last year that training subsidies of up to 50% would be given by the Society to small law firms (with less than six lawyers) who participate in PrimeLaw foundational courses that would be introduced from this year. Our foundational courses would impart to lawyers the basic principles of business planning, financial and risk management, and upon a commitment to know more about the PrimeLaw mark, enable a small law firm to obtain the training subsidy.

The Law Society will look at working with the Singapore Standards and Productivity Board (‘SPRING’) to develop and promote PrimeLaw and obtain relevant financial subsidies for consultancy for our small and medium-sized law practices. The Law Society has been in discussions with SPRING on this project since 2002.

There is much work ahead for the Law Society and Council has, therefore, appointed PrimeLaw as a new standing committee of the Society, chaired by Vice President, Mr Leo Cheng Suan who has worked on this project for nearly three years.

The Law Society must thank Ms Corinna Lim and Ms Belinda Co of Bizibody Technology and Ms Jane Ridley of ASP Consulting for their patience and commitment to this project as our consultants. I must also thank PrimeLaw committee members for working on this project with my colleagues and myself at the secretariat. They are Mr Leo Cheng Suan, Mr Lim Seng Siew, Mr Muthu Kumaran, Mr Patrick Ang, Mr Naresh Mahtani, Mr Douglas Leong and Mr Stanley Jeremiah.

The Law Society must finally also thank Alexander Forbes Singapore Private Limited for their unstinting support of this project, in particular, Ms Flora Chin, Managing Director and Ms K Sarogenei, Director of Liability.

As Albert Einstein said, ‘In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity’; PrimeLaw was born amidst the swirling winds of change as a chance for our law practices to better cope with the uncertain winds of change.
 
Yasho Dhoraisingam
The Law Society of Singapore
E-mail: yasho@lawsoc.org.sg