Winners in the Battle for Restructuring Legal Work

No one has a crystal ball when it comes to this downturn. Every day, more and more of the "experts" are admitting that they have never seen anything like this before. I know that I haven't previously seen anything like this. Nevertheless, I do see emerging signs as to the likely characteristics of the winners in the battle for market leadership in the restructuring legal market.

Below are ten characteristics that I believe will be present in the winners. You can use these ten to score yourself, as well as a competitor(s), by using a ten point scale for each characteristic. Of course, for the scoring to be of any value, you need to be honest about your own practice and objective about that of your competitor(s).

Here are the first five, with the second group of five to be in the next and final post in this five part series:

1. Quality and Depth of Your Practice Group

A practice with a single star is never going to be a restructuring market leader in a major market. And yet, the practices at so many firms have just a single star. Truth be told, many stars just aren’t comfortable being surrounded by other stars (ouch!).

So just how good is your #2? Your #3? Of course, an easy answer to this question is to see how an objective evaluator like Chambers views your practice. It is easy to argue with individual ratings of Chambers, but overall I find that they do a very credible of rating leading bankruptcy lawyers. Score yourself well if you have a high percentage of your team highly ranked in Chambers.

2. Ability of Your Group to Operate as an Effective Team

Just as in sports, having a team of stars is only of value if the stars work well together. And, here is the Achilles heel for many talented restructuring legal teams. Many firms have stars that just don’t plain like and respect one another. They delude themselves into thinking that the dislike is not apparent to the market. Seldom is that the case! And, some firms sub-optimize their performance by putting up with one or more techno-bullies described so well by Seth Godin in his blog yesterday. The market, and these times, are just too damn difficult to prosper with a team that really doesn’t like working and winning together.

3. Extent of Leveraging of Other Firm Resources

Is your practice an island in your firm? Or, is your practice that gains leverage from the marketing efforts of others in the firm outside your practice group. And, do you return the favor by leveraging service through talent beyond your practice group. I am a big believer that life is a two way street. If you want to get, you first have to give. Is your practice a “giver” to other practice groups in the firm? Does your group regularly draw on other technical resources in the firm, or does your group more often do tasks that could be better done by lawyers outside your group in order to maximize chargeability of your group?

4. Extent of Leveraging of External Restructuring Resources

Winners leverage not only internally, but also externally. The winners have two way street relationships with the leading restructuring advisory firms, whether consulting or investment banking. These firms have an abundance of choices as to whom they refer into a situation and, not surprisingly, they direct their referrals to quality firms that have done well by them. Is your practice on the top of the referral list of the leading national and regional advisory firms? And, how active are you at referring these firms into cases, or helping them in other ways?

5. Continually Market Focused

One of the many changes in this market, in this downturn, is the speed with which cases end. For a variety of reasons, many cases go from very active to shutdown, in a heartbeat. The result is that the peaks and valleys of the rollercoaster of business are more severe. The winners will be those firms with the discipline to market continuously…even when they are full bore busy. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we all find the time to do the things we like to do. For example, even when we are very busy on client matters, we find the time to eat. Because many practioners don’t like marketing, they use client service as an excuse for not doing that which is critical. Winners have the discipline to do what is important. Losers have excuses.

So, how is your score at the midway point of this ten point list? (Give yourself a score from one to ten [ten high] for each of these points.) And, have you taken the time to score your leading competitor?

Coming next: This five part series concludes with a look at the remaining five characteristics of the winners in the battle for market leadership in the restructuring legal market. The series started here.