Are law firms not yet ready for performance management?

Are law firms still in their infancy when it comes to measuring their performance in general? Is it not only KM that lacks action based on insight gained from measures?

I received several emails in response to my previous posting on lack of KM metrics in law firms and the common ground of all emails is that law firms do not only lack the measures for KM but a sense for performance management of any kind, really.

At least in continental Europe a possible explanation for this could be that law firms of the size they have today did not exist in the last century. A large law firm in Germany for example used to be an association of 20 lawyers and of course at this scale it is easy to manage it via a "gut feeling" and common sense but at the scales of today, this is no more feasible.

And it is not only internal performance measures, really: With LLP conversions around the corner for many large law firms it will be interesting to see what data will come out of that. The same is true for the growing importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) but it remains to be seen whether this will only be some beautified numbers on gender and ethnics or whether this will also extend to more sensible stuff such as e.g. the client list. Anyone serious about CSR should also compare client lists with lists environmental organisations or politically minded NGOs provide on companies that ruin our planet or have ethically dubious business.

Anyone up for comparing your client list to the lists published by Friends of the Earth or amnesty international?

Two interesting publicly available exercises I have come across are the CMS people report and Freshfields CSR website.