How your KMSPracticeHealth Report™ delivers powerful profit benefits for you… Our track record is in showing law firm principals and management where hundreds of thousands of extra dollars in profits lay waiting for them with basic improvements to their practices utilised by hundreds of other similar law firms… 

We will apply our experiences with over 1385 legal firms to analyse your current situation, and in a written report, recommend priority areas for attention to lift your profits and market share in all key work areas, using proven KMS systems.

Emphasis will be placed on ensuring that the resources you already have are well used to increase your revenues without major increases in expenses, producing a better bottom line, and further strengthening your position in the market.

We will be happy to have a comprehensive  phone discussion about our recommendations… once you have all had a chance to consider them. This is included in your agreed investment.

Our payment terms since 1988 have been that 50% of your agreed investment is payable, please by EFT when you send the initial materials and background information to us…the balance by transfer into our nominated Bank Account when we send you the PracticeHealth Report™.

We have set out below the sorts of things we normally like to get from firms before doing our usual analysis and report, so we can consider your present situation thoroughly. (We realise that you will not have many of the items listed below… and of course we don’t expect you to try at this point to put together anything you don’t already have):

  1. Staff Training Plans and Manuals
  2. Staff (Professional &   Non-Professional) Payroll Summary including Partner salary and drawing   details – any spouse/partner salaries and employment details
  3. Budget for the Current Financial   Year…with full details of how the Income and Expenses totals are arrived at.
  4. Budget for the monthly creation of   Raw Work in Progress -by fee-earner and/or each fee-earner’s personal   Business or WorkPlan™… including rates at which time of each team member is recorded.
  5. Analysis of Firm Profitability last year compared to that year’s budget
  6. Billings per individual team member last three years
  7. Number of weeks intended holidays each year for each person in the practice
  8. The notional salary of each principal and actual salary of any non-equity principal.
  9. Example Agenda (and any supporting papers) from last two Management/Principals’ meetings
  10. Copies of personnel’s Job Specifications.
  11. Organisation Chart for the firm, showing all personnel, job titles and brief descriptions…details of days worked per week for each person
  12. The standard length of working day expected of each of your team members as a minimum or average.
  13. Accounts for all group financial entities for last two years for which you have them from your Accountants (Firm, Service Company, Admin. Coy etc.)
  14. Copies of time management records recently completed by all the fee earners, if any. (Firms usually send everyone’s sheets or computer printouts from the same day).
  15. Standard format(s) fee-earners use to request opening of a new file.
  16. Standard materials fee-earners currently have to complete to ensure Fees Disclosure is carried out, and Credit Control is in place when instructions are taken or shortly thereafter.
  17. Outline of the firm’s Risk Management procedures.
  18. Copies of any financial management reports regularly produced by the firm for the Principals from its Computerised Accounting system.
  19. Analysis of your present work mix, numbers of current files and revenue generated from every major area of work as a percentage of gross revenues…and history last two years
  20. Copies of all existing “promotional material”… in the broadest sense; i.e., stationery, business cards, brochures, advertisements, Yellow Pages ads, Website address etc.
  21. Partnership Agreement
  22. Business Plan
  23. Credit Control policy
  24. Marketing Plan…and latest copy of the usual periodic report of Marketing team leader to the Management Team…
  25. Pricing Policy…plus average fees per file for each key work type…include brief description of how you calculate charges in Injury matters of each type if you are involved in this type of work
  26. Details of the design of any client/referrer/contact Computerised Database you have

KMS Practice Health Report™…Your investment and payment terms… To consider preliminary materials, and prepare an assessment of the practice with recommendations, and discuss it with you on the telephone…requires an investment of different amounts depending on your practice size (plus 10% GST for Australian firms).

Please e-mail us with some background of your firm and we will send you an ActionPlan setting out the necessary investment. When you are ready to proceed, please just send us a deposit of 50% of the agreed investment in Australian Dollars, with such of the requested materials as you have.

The balance of 50% is payable by EFT on the next business day after we forward the KMS PracticeHealth Report™.

Because of our extensive experiences in other legal practices in Australia and New Zealand since 1974 we are sure a KMS PracticeHealth Report™ will assist you to clearly see the best options for taking full advantage of your current structure and position, pushing on to achieve even better market share and bottom-line results…long after our intensive involvement ceases…using the systems we have recommended for you.

If required by you, ongoing KMSManagementSupport is available… We are looking forward to working with you to achieve your desired outcomes.

KMS PROFITGAP™ ANALYSIS

In my wide experience of over 48 years since my Admission as a Barrister and Solicitor I have seen busy practitioners often wonder why they are so busy, seem to have good staff, but never seem to be able to break through into the realm of truly excellent profits… Salaries and other expenses just keep going up, but fee production never seems to grow at the right pace…

Cash flow often seems much tighter than it should be, and those never-ending cycles of tax payments can create periods of totally unsatisfactory stress… Overdrafts seem to be getting bigger without the apparently better returns to justify the extra risk and exposure…

Cutting to the chase, most private practice lawyers are very client work-focussed, and do not know what they do not know about the profit potential for their extraordinary efforts, so will really have very little idea what “excellent profits” would mean for them in their particular, unique, firm. 

So, what is the KMSProfitGap™? It’s a term I coined more than three decades ago to describe the difference between the profit potential of the investment and infrastructure you have now, and the profits you are actually generating from that…  

The critical importance of understanding how to close the ProfitGap™ is that almost every dollar you will in future generate properly from your existing investment and infrastructure belongs to you, because your overheads are already being covered…just!

A simple example…A very small firm I looked at was producing net income of just under $100K for the Principal. That’s not even a Principal’s salary these days! Just one simple idea I gave the Principal consistently, year in year out, ever thereafter, added $115,000 to his income…more than doubling his rewards, and finally generating him a true commercial profit. He’s now very happily retired!

You’ll be surprised to hear that not only did it not require any additional work, but it also cut his average daily time interviewing prospective clients by half overnight, saving him nearly two hours every working day. 

In looking at over 1385 firms in consulting in the last thirty-five years I have developed strong insights into the key problem areas, and have specific inexpensive proven solutions… I’ve helped reduce the gaps between potential production and potential fees…and firms’ actual results…in large numbers of firms, with dramatic results for per Principal profit…

Recently, for example, we assisted a small firm in New South Wales and identified a fixable Principal’s ProfitGap™ of over $500,000 a year… A ProfitGap™ in excess of $200,000 a year is a very common outcome of the analysis. 

Your Investment… You invest just AUD$2442.50 plus GST as a deposit when you agree to having me do the KMS ProfitGap™ Analysis for you, and the same amount by EFT the next business day after I deliver your analysis to you…

Your usual KMS “Absolutely No-Risk” Guarantee… We’ve done so many of these types of analysis we know we can achieve what you are expecting in terms of a heads-up, and are happy to back that up with our usual guarantee…in place for 35 years!

If for some reason you are not happy with our KMSProfitGap™ Analysis, call/email me personally within 2 working days, and discuss any concerns you have with me before you pay the balance of your investment. If I cannot address your concerns promptly for you at our cost, we will refund your full investment… 

Here’s all you need to do now… Just e-mail me and in the Subject line type “Yes Please KMSProfitGap™ Analysis”. We’ll e-mail you a Tax Invoice, and you electronically pop the agreed deposit above into our Bank Account.

We’ll then urgently e-mail you a short questionnaire and promptly complete your KMSProfitGap™ Analysis for you when you e-mail the completed questionnaire back to us…it usually only takes a few days to get you the completed Analysis.

This is a great opportunity for you to head forward with a sensible clear KMSActionPlan™ to secure to yourself the sorts of rewards from your practice that you so richly deserve…from experience I’m sure you’ve already built most of the infrastructure…now for getting you the benefits that have not been flowing properly and consistently to you…

I look forward to the opportunity to identify for you the key causes of the ProfitGap™ that exists in virtually every modern legal practice, large or small…so you can begin to address the right issues, and enjoy the very substantial additional income every year for the rest of your practising career…

To read what some existing clients have to say about my impact on their firms, check out the testimonials on my LinkedIn profile.  

Facilitated Planning Retreats

What KMS Planning Retreat clients say…

 

Ian Heathwood, Partner, McKays  “Three years ago we admitted a new partner upon the merger of our firm with a smaller firm in Mackay.  In order to get to know the new partner better and for him to get more of an understanding of what we are about we decided to have a Partners’ Retreat held in Mackay.

We had discussed whether we would ask Rob Knowsley or someone else to be a moderator and decided it wasn’t worth the expense as, after all, we knew what we wanted to do and had some pre-conceived ideas of where to go. The result was that when we met most of the time was spent with the two partners in charge of our two branches, one being myself, continually arguing over various points – none of which probably mattered one way or the other.

It must have all been quite a shock to the new partner.  He saw the two partners responsible for the firm’s management heatedly arguing with each other without actually getting anywhere.  It was all friendly as far as we were concerned but for a new partner it would have been quite intimidating.

The net result of the retreat was that we did decide a couple of things which we have gone on to follow but, generally, it was really a wasted opportunity. One year later we had another ‘Partners’ Retreat’ when one of our existing employees became a partner and another, a letterhead partner.  Basically, we played golf and drank beer and decided nothing and did nothing thereafter.  Another waste of time and money.

This year, however, we had a Partners’ Retreat in Brisbane with Rob as our moderator.  The difference was quite dramatic – the difficult issues were discussed, solutions agreed on, committed to and implementation strategies devised.

Using Rob as a moderator made all the difference.  Not only did we reap the benefits of his experience in dealing with hundreds of other legal firms, but he was able to quickly put us back on track whenever we started getting off-track. If you want to conduct a retreat and actually get something out of it, I strongly recommend you employ the skills of a good moderator.  For a legal practice, I don’t think there are any better than Rob. Finally, the key is to ensure you involve Rob in following up regularly with the implementation of what was decided at the retreat.  If you leave it to yourself to do, the chances are you won’t do it!” 

Chris Quilter, Partner – Bull Son & Schmidt, Sydney, NSW “When you have a Firm Planning retreat, you’re crazy if you don’t have an excellent facilitator, to ensure the time is well-used and everyone is focussed throughout on the expected outcomes. At Bull Son & Schmidt we have used Rob Knowsley from Knowsley Management Services to facilitate many of our Retreats over the years and we’re delighted we did.” 

Principal, Small suburban practice, Sydney, NSW “On a personal level, Rob is readily accessible and comfortable to deal with across all levels of practice.  He has a practical, common-sense, and hands on approach which all of our professional and support staff find beneficial.  His ideas are straightforward, always relevant, and easily applied. Time spent with Rob in intensive analysis of firm challenges and opportunities is time particularly well-spent. We are both wiser and happier for having worked with Rob.  We look forward to our continued association.  If you decide to work with Rob, your investment, both in time and money, will be returned to a significantly greater degree than you ever imagined. The writer would happily elaborate on any issues.”

Your Venue

Rob Knowsley allocates slots every year for firm planning retreats around Australasia…some firms hold them every year.
To discuss Rob’s availability, organisational details, likely outcomes, and your level of investment, please email Rob now via Contact Us…