Every year we perform an annual survey to legal firms of all sizes across the UK. The content covers current trends, investments and challenges from the previous year and predictions for the year ahead. Now that the survey has closed, we are pleased to provide you with the highlights of what we found, providing a useful benchmark for the industry.
Investment for Growth
In the plight to help grow practices, over 60% said that the biggest areas of investment they are looking to make to help support practice growth are around:
1. IT software to better support their workforce and IT strategies
2. IT hardware to ensure efficiencies and economies of scale are being implemented; and
3. Practice refurbishments due to expansions and acquisitions
With the move towards software acquisition in 2014, we can expect legal firms to be adopting solutions that will enable them with the right tools and practices to increase the level of efficient working techniques.
Many legal enterprises are anxious to ensure that they have the latest technology in place this year to support the growth of their business. With developments in technology taking place at a rapid pace, some firms have fallen behind during the recession and are seeing this year as an opportunity to get their systems up to date.
Head count to rise
Other areas of increase this year are expected in salary (it may be time to start planning a nice holiday) 67% of respondents said they would be looking to increase the growth in heads and 62% said they would be looking to increase wages this year.
Employee satisfaction is a key part of this year’s growth strategy, as firms seek to retain staff and boost office morale. This in turn will help to incentivise good candidates to the firm and strengthen the firms overall competitive bargaining power.
Challenges
A large majority of firms, 70% in fact, said that that they were finding it increasingly difficult to recoup payments.
While it may prove a challenge to develop the capability to enforce the payment regulation, it is something that is increasingly becoming a necessity, as many firms are feeling the dent in their cash flow and this is causing significant financial strain on many firms. If this is not enforced, it could have a serious impact on the running of the business – so how do you best manage these delayed payments?
In our January newsletter we provided a few tips on how to try and overcome these cost objections and recoup your payments successfully and efficiently – click here to read Syscap’s payment recouping tips.
Compliance to pay needs to be addressed and we hope firms use the tips above to help protect themsleves against the damages that delayed payments can result in.
Final Remarks
There is generally a positive outlook for 2014, with has come across in this year’s survey. Firms are investing more in people and technology and are finding ways to combat delayed client payments.
