Thank you all for coming this evening. In a moment I’ll introduce our guest speaker, but first I’d like to say a few words on how GoodLawyers got started, where we are now, and where we are going.

It has taken quite a few years to gestate the idea and to refine the model for GoodLawyers, a process that is still continuing.

I worked at Slater & Gordon in the early 2000s, not as a lawyer but running a large project, and I was impressed with how they were able to brand “Mum & Dad” litigation.

Clearly a brand name is missing in law, especially in the SME sector. The large firms deal with the top 500 companies, but where do the owners and managers of small and medium enterprises go? How do they find a good lawyer? The answer, as all lawyers know, is word of mouth, but clients have said to me ‘trial and error’!
There is a big difference in those two perspectives, which go to the very heart of what a brand is all about.

Most lawyers are only correct in nominating word of mouth as more important to their marketing efforts than branded law because there is no branded law firm in their space. In recent years some mid-tier law firms have been trying to change that, and I think in the long run they will succeed.

Once that happens, once the value of a brand and systems becomes significant enough that external investors can take a position in a law firm without fear of the professionals setting up down the road, a situation Slaters has made a reality, then access to capital becomes increasingly important in the business of law, and it becomes more difficult for two or three good lawyers to set up a successful practice.

Part of the purpose of GoodLawyers is to ensure that as branded law firms get stronger, lawyers in smaller practices have a brand name through which they can promote their own specific abilities.
I do not think it is good thing if law becomes corporatized and the vast majority of lawyers have no choice but to become employees of brands and capital.

Legal process outsourcing is becoming more important and through the Doha Round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) the Australian Government is pushing for reduced trade barriers in professional services. Already, managers of Australian law firms are being offered Australian-admitted lawyers for 20 days per month for $2,500 per month. That is a real threat to the future of some lawyers and law firms, and of course is an opportunity for others.

But branding is only one element of the genesis of GoodLawyers: We have also seen that collegiality is as important to people running smaller practices and there are many opportunities for cost cutting and the acquisition of quality services through collaboration.

For most of the twentieth century lawyers were able to concentrate on their legal skills, and the most effective marketing really was who you served with in the navy or who your father knew. Marketing is rarely part of the DNA of lawyers, and this is one area where small firms can band together to access professional expertise, especially in relation to web-based marketing which is still a black art, sometimes promoted by charlatans. This is part of the purpose of GoodLawyers, to provide the requisite expertise and to help distinguish to good guys from the others. It is related to, but separate from, the need for branding.

The web is currently good at helping customers to identify low cost goods and services, but in time it will get better at identifying high quality offerings, and eventually good value offerings. In the long run, there is no substitute for or short cut to being good at what you do, in the sense of delivering the service the client demands, but in the short term there is a real risk that the firms who spend the most money on advertising will secure the most clients, leaving other firms behind.

We think that specialisation is generally a good indicator of quality, and that in the long run specialists will deliver the best value.

As I hope you all know, Goodlawyers therefore has a three part approach to generating increased revenues for Partner members:
1. We are encouraging members to refer work to each other, so that the lawyer who has most expertise in a matter gets that matter.
2. We will invest in on-line and traditional advertising to bring work to our members.
3. We will invite in-house counsel to these meetings so that they can meet and eventually instruct lawyers whom they might not usually meet, reducing some of the stranglehold large and mid-tier firms have on the mid-tier corporate work.

Clearly this dovetails with the development of the GoodLawyers business itself: Our first task is to acquire members, because without you we have very little to offer clients. We think that the ideal size of a group like this, the Sydney group, is about 100 partner members. That ought to see about 40 members at each meeting, assuming we have ten meetings a year and each member attends four meetings on average. Currently we have about 36 members, and another 100 people waiting for me to meet with them, so we are on the way.
Some people have asked what the benefit is of being a Partner level member rather than an Associate, which is free. The answer is that being an Associate is designed for more junior lawyers where their firm would not pay their subscription. It helps us to build the scale of the business quite quickly, but the risk is that there are only two Partner slots per area of expertise, and if someone else takes your slot, you will not receive many referrals. There are currently six or seven Associate members. Associates are obviously a good source of referrals and of expertise if a Partner retires and a slot become available.

Not all of our enquiries have turned into jobs, and we are investigating why that is. It may be that we will need to appoint “GP Lawyers”, people who are willing to talk to potential clients and to introduce them to Partner Members. Currently I am doing that by telephone, but my job is really to design processes so that we are scalable, so we can deal with a large number of enquiries and so we can filter out the real clients from those in search of attention or free legal advice.

I think that all of this, together with the establishment of groups in Brisbane, Melbourne and perhaps Adelaide, will take up most of the rest of this year.

I am happy to take questions later, but first I’ll introduce Leigh Adams, a Partner Member who is going to tell us about the Personal Property Securities Act 2009.