Juggling vocation and profit

Streamlining and cutting back are the current watchwords for the legal profession.

This week we report on an avalanche of advice to solicitors' firms of all sizes on how to survive the economic slow-down.

According to the experts, even the large company-commercial superpowers are not immune; they are advised to take a hard look at their partnership books to assess whether all the players are pulling their weight.

Those who are not should politely and humanely, but firmly, be told to go so that the remaining partnership can survive any looming recession.

Indeed, it is now recommended that a similar hard-headed business approach be applied to client lists.

This is a message aimed more at the high street and smaller to medium-sized firms: shed those clients who are high maintenance and low profit.

And better yet, when 'dumping the dross', ideally push it towards your competitors.

All this cut-throat modern business talk will jar many ears in the legal profession - even those in the hard-bitten square mile.

Reconciling the need for law firms to be astute businesses with the longer-standing view of a profession is not easy.

It is not so long ago that a solicitor partnership was approached more as a marriage than a hard-boiled business relationship.

Likewise, dumping 'unprofitable' clients undoubtedly makes sense in corporate boardrooms, but for a profession that is still treated by many as being public service vocation, the idea is more difficult to swallow.