Lexcel or no Lexcel?

Virtually every firm in the country must have considered this question in recent years. I would particularly welcome thoughts from others but these are my own, as briefly as possible:

1) If you are already LAFQAS accredited you will find, frustratingly, that the two systems are not the same. How much easier it would have been all round if the standards for one could have matched the other! The differences are not great though and you will be familiar with much of the procedure.

2) Lexcel is rather too paper-based for some. It requires all its various quality measures to be carefully documented and reviewed regularly. However, without these records it is actually quite difficult to see how it could achieve its aims. Talk to the production manager of any factory these days and you will hear of records being kept that, in context, are remarkably similar.

3) All the requirements for Lexcel, the Practice Management Standards, are actually only good management. By far and away the bulk of the commercial world would find absolutely no difficulty with any of them and are all applying similar techniques anyway.

4) If you decide to go for it you need to find yourself a lead person to manage the process. They need to have enough authority, or have been clearly given it by the partners with everyone made aware, to drive this though. They will have to insist on things that will take some FE and support staff time up and they need to be willing to make that happen.

5) I prefer to do this quickly. Some firms take an age, with the result that it is hard to maintain momentum. People don’t always remember what it is that they were supposed to be doing. Some firms have gained accreditation in a matter of three to five months and although it may not suit everyone it does seem to work.

6) Don’t bother unless all the partners are fully signed up to it. You are going to need everyone and especially all your departmental heads to do things on time. One uncooperative partner can undermine the entire scheme and waste the efforts of everyone else.

7) You should gain a real benefit. Work should be done in a more structured way, checks on the quality of that work will become routine (something that in some firms has never actually been done before), and risk management gets an enormous boost. Your PI premiums should fall.

8) It should also help your marketing. When you get it, display the logo with pride and refer to it as often as you can. It has yet to be instantly recognised but it will come.

9) It will also improve your financial control. Budgeting and cash flow forecasting should be routine in any commercial organisation but are still not done in many law firms. They should be and you will find a valuable spin-off in your relationship with your bankers, who are always far more helpful if they can see good, tight controls and thorough monitoring.

10) Use a consultant? That is up to you. A consultant may help you to drive the process, will save you some of the learning curve, and will be able to assess your progress accurately against the standards, but then there will be fees. It is by no means impossible to do this without one but if you are uncertain, or don’t think you have a good, determined internal person to drive this, you may feel it is a good idea. The Law Society can provide a list of approved consultants.

11) Don't be tempted to think "Oh, we will go for it but there are just so many other things to do first." The real danger with this attitude is that you will simply put it off, those things will never get fully sorted, and you will never get round to doing Lexcel. In fact, in getting Lexcel you will do many of those things anyway. The discipline of getting Lexcel, especially if you do it on a tight timescale, will make you deal with things in your business that might otherwise take an age to resolve.

12) Finally, communicate! Tell everyone what you arec doing and why, spend time with all your staff in small groups so that they and understand exactly what it is that you are doing and why, and get their full support. It will take some extra effort from everyone and you need their enthusiastic co-operation.

13) And when you get it, have a party! Let everyone know how much you appreciate their efforts and give them pride in the result and in their firm.