In this workshop, Corporate Anthropologist Michael Henderson will guide participants through the fundamentals of understanding and working with your company culture to leverage performance. Specifically, Michael will show you how to:

• Define clearly, what culture actually is and what it does in your business;
• Realise the importance of cultures impact on business performance;
• Understand the primary mistakes most organisations make with their culture and how to avoid them;
• Explore and evaluate the six primary areas that comprise a business case for culture. Which apply to your business? At what level of cost and/or contribution?
• How to use the six primary areas of culture as a quarterly audit of your many cultures and subsequently, how to align your culture for better performance and staff experience.

Most lawyers don’t become lawyers to sell; yet at some point in their career they are required to help win work and generate fees for the firm. For many lawyers this can lead to anxiety as it often sits outside their comfort zone. It can also create frustration for the leadership when lawyers push back on the firms business development requirements of them.

In this insightful workshop, business development advisor Michael Schiffner will share his experience as to how many firms have overcome the struggle to unlock the business development dilemma with his teams support.

Participants will be led through a series of activities and discussions to explore ways to overcome the complexities and constraints that typically limit the success of firm wide business development initiatives. Key takeaways include drafting a business development strategy for the firm and ideas on advising beyond clients and brand.

• Why: is innovation now a requirement? Why is the market now making innovation a strategic imperative for law firms?
• How: is an innovation capability created? What frameworks and journey maps firms can leverage to establish their innovation function?
• What: What do law firm innovation champions actually do? What KPIs can be used to measure the role’s performance?
• Who: Whose responsibility is it to innovate at a law firm? How do you galvanise the internal stakeholders to participate in this journey?

Matthew Grace brings a wealth of insight on the macro and micro forces shaping the legal industry, and strategic and tactical responses to these changes.

This session will look at why an understanding of how clients make purchasing decisions can be used to not only transform the purchasing behaviour of clients, but the lawyers’ perceptions of their own value.

It will bust some of the classic pricing myths:

• Clients always want the lowest price
• Certain legal work is a commodity and price is therefore crucial
• Discounts increase sales
• Clients are able to rationally compare offerings
• Corporate clients act rationally when choosing a law firm

It can seem daunting entering this space, given the multitude of new platforms and technology available to us.

We must be prepared to change tact quickly and focus on where the attention is for our ideal customers. We must be completely channel agnostic, leading transformation.

From platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn through to digital PR, blogging, websites and landing pages, all of these channels play a critical part and must be looked at to keep up.

Reverse engineering the attention of your customer and then applying a tailored and focussed strategy will allow companies to see enormous growth potential both for the short and long term.

Digital marketing is moving at an accelerated pace. If you don’t keep up, you may soon become irrelevant.

Whilst After Action Reviews (AARs) and ‘lessons learned’ have been transforming teams and operations in high-stakes environments (and accounting firms) for years, law firms have yet to exploit a practice that can capture profit, drive innovation and create client value.

Facilitated by Paul Lemon of Performance Leader, this interactive workshop will provide insight and inspiration on how to create the business case for change, plan your road map for success and navigate the roadblocks that may arise.

If the answer is ‘yes’, then this is the workshop for you! Join us for an interactive group session where we will employ a tailored ‘hack’ framework to rapidly develop and pitch some innovative ideas.

Teams (of 4-6 participants) will be randomly formed at the start of the session; their mission will be to build out a “worked idea” that will be pitched back to the group at the end of the session.

Each group will be provided with 2-3 “framing” questions drawn from feedback provided by member survey collected prior to the Summit to get the creative juices going.

This session is limited to 50 participants only. Registrations are on a first-in basis.

This session features lessons learnt by successful change agents to help traditional law firms develop a roadmap for adaptation. Global consultant Tim Corcoran joins former BigLaw partners and Valorem Law founders Patrick Lamb and Nicole Auerbach on a guided tour of life at the front edge of innovation. Pat and Nicole will discuss their move from BigLaw to leaders in value pricing; from “stalking horse” to contenders for high value work; how they earned client service awards; and what marketplace changes convinced them to join Elevate, a global law company. Tim, Pat and Nicole will demonstrate how OldLaw is competing with its own clients, with law companies, and the Big 4, and why this poses a grave concern. Pat’s and Nicole’s successes (and missteps!) provide a roadmap for law firms struggling with adopting change. We’ll incorporate hands-on use of continuous improvement tools that help convert experience into profits and client satisfaction.

• Security challenges in the Australian legal landscape
• Common phishing tactics and how to protect against them
• The impact of fraud on business
• Case studies in conveyancing with property deposit and settlement fraud cases

In 2019, bank products are simply a commodity – any bank can provide you with a finance facility and transactional banking accounts. However, it is possible to derive real value from your banking relationship. And not only is it possible, it is essential for any legal firm operating in an environment where margins are compressing, competition is increasing, and clients are wanting more for less.

By partnering with a financial institution that really understands the legal industry, as well as the specific focus of your practice, you can access so much more than a standard finance facility and transactional account.

The potential benefits of a true strategic partnership with the right financial institution can include:

• access to cheaper capital;
• innovative lending to facilitate new partner entrants;
• technology integration to mitigate against human error, fraud and double handling;
• a more efficient back office; and
• benchmarking data to assist you to make better informed decisions about your business.

Change is everywhere, life can be unpredictable and stress is becoming an inevitable part of working life. We need to be able to cope and bounce back from challenges in order to achieve success and happiness.

This highly interactive workshop is designed to boost your psychological resilience both inside and outside the workplace. It will equip you with a range of practical tools and techniques to help you deal with setbacks, cope with adversity and embrace change.

We will also look at common risk factors that inhibit resilience and discuss practical steps you can take to protect yourself against stressors at work and in your personal life.

While many legal practices treat cyber security as solely an IT problem, in reality more than 90% of cyber events succeed by deceiving the person in front of the computer.

Law firms are attractive targets because they hold clients’ funds in trust accounts and also store sensitive information, while often lacking the security processes used by other organisations holding information of similar sensitivity.

This session will focus on the business and professional aspects of cyber risk, and will recommend a holistic approach incorporating people, processes and technology, risk mitigation through contingency planning and risk transfer via strategic insurance choices.

In this interactive session, participants will be provided with an overview of the key facets all good business continuity plans must have. After a general overview as to what good practice is with respect to business continuity planning, the session will then transition to covering practical tips specifically related to disaster preparedness and response. The session will be interactive, placing participants in the decision chair, as an extreme, yet realistic but hypothetical incident scenario unfolds. Participants will leave with a better understanding of what crisis preparation and disaster response protocols should look like in a real life situation.

Delegates will hear how these firms improved productivity, their ability to make confident decisions, and to augment their firm’s performance.

Through a live demonstration, delegates will see what and how data from multiple sources across the firm is extracted, automated and visualised to present a single dashboard which is easy to access and navigate in real-time.

Using different datasets and user types, the session will explore potential scenarios and decision-making opportunities to demonstrate the benefits and ease of adopting a data-driven approach to managing their firm.

• How to position your firm and differentiate yourselves from the competition.
• How to use Thought Leadership and be seen as the expert in your given field.
• How to generate more inbound leads to your business.

This session takes a practical look at the business of making strategy happen. Drawing on experiences of implementing innovative strategies and firmwide change in her varied career, Katherine will share with the audience stories, ideas, tips, tricks and specific actions that will help law firm leaders make their strategic plans a priority.

No grand statements, just ideas for action.

After the #Metoo movement highlighted this issue, it is now more important than ever for firms to reflect on their culture, and to build a positive working environment.

In high-pressure, continually changing and challenging environments, all staff benefit from developing superior self-leadership and self-management skills to drive their own performance, maintain wellbeing and contribute productively to their team.

Michelle will provide insights into deepening skills in self-awareness, self-leadership and self-management so managers can give staff a productivity edge. Practical examples of transformative leadership styles that maximise peak performance and utilise neuroscience illustrate the easy to implement ways to ensure employees are functioning cognitively and psychologically at their peak.