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issue for many, if not most, law firms over the next three to five years," says Norm Clark, an American lawyer and a founder of Walker Clark LLC, a Florida- based consulting practice that special- izes in legal practice strategy and lawyer performance and profitability. A former trial lawyer, trial judge, and law professor who has managed legal services on a global scale — notably as a U.S. Navy lawyer managing 800 lawyers in 50 locations on three continents — Clark ant who works with law firms here and abroad. "The responsibility is on the part- ners to provide them with the teaching and tools they need to reach that goal. Partners should make it their mission to do that. In addition to being generous to associates with their time, they need to work on learning or honing the skills that will make them better leaders." It is already happening at some Canadian firms. Susan Clarke, a partner in Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP's Consortium. "But there are bigger things like the six hours of training in group settings with senior associates [and three hours of online training] to teach business development skills and then giving them opportunities to practise those skills in the field. Often associates work in teams and they don't get a chance to work with clients. Client service is the bottom line and improv- ing their abilities to provide that helps to raise revenues." Consultant Clark says principals in "Associate profitability could be the most important management issue for many, if not most, law firms over the next three to five years." NORM CLARK, WALKER CLARK LLC every firm should be asking them- selves three key questions: How pro- ductive are our associates? How do we judge productivity? Do we have an effective quality assurance in place? "Productivity involves more than just working hard. It also involves produ- cing quality legal work that produces a fee. One of the biggest risks in alterna- tive fee agreements, for example, is that associate productivity will not support the lower fee that the firm had to accept in order to get the work." In terms of quality assurance, he is both a pioneer and a leader in applying manufacturing and business-based man- agement concepts and methods to the practice of law. It was a once-obscure field that has become mainstream since 2008 when the recession forced fee-challenged firms to cut costs, lay off associates, and rethink and redesign their ways of doing business. According to Clark, upgrading the skill sets of young lawyers is the best return on investment, but also the most overlooked, that a law firm can make. "One of the central features of law firms that have managed to increase profits against declining fee revenues has been a serious inquiry into the profitability of the ways in which associates prepare and deliver legal work for clients," he wrote in a recent blog post on martindale.com. "These firms understand that the bet- ter response to hard times is usually to improve the productivity of fee earners, rather than to get short-term savings by slashing payroll." "More skill and more productivity is the goal for associates," says Robert Gilfoyle, a Vancouver leadership consult- Toronto office and the firm's director of professional development, says there has been both a growing awareness and a push over the past decade, from asso- ciates and partners alike, for more legal and knowledge learning opportunities. "We're now at the point where we're putting emphasis on mentoring and teaching of substantive legal topics and skills," says Clarke, a one-time Supreme Court of Canada clerk and former full- time lecturer in legal research and writ- ing at Osgoode Hall Law School. This year, for example, she says Gowlings has instituted a new program that features a mix of one-on-one learning initiatives. "Some are small things, like giving cof- fee cards to partners as an incentive to spend time with the associates they are mentoring [and] help them learn things about the firm's governance structure or how to handle clients," says Clarke, who relies on her own experience and the ideas she picks up from fellow lawyers — such as BLG's Letalik — at monthly meetings of the Toronto chap- ter of the Professional Development believes a huge amount of the work being done by associates — particu- larly younger ones who are still learn- ing on the job — can't be billed to cli- ents because of inefficiency and errors. "Firms waste hundreds of hours of asso- ciate and partner time fixing mistakes that could have been avoided," he says. "Doing rework and catching mistakes after they are made can account for any- where from 40 to 60 per cent of the lost profit potential in associate work. That is especially true in cases where the client is a sophisticated user of legal services. They are simply not willing to pay for errors." The solution, says Clark, is for part- ners to shift away from spellchecking and reworking and focus on helping associates avoid making errors. They should also look beyond associate inexperience and consider other facets of the firm that may be the root cause of errors — notably poor performance knowledge management and other inad- equate or slipshod practice habits that are ingrained and systemic in many law firms. "Many firms are handicapped www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com JUNE 2011 29