“Sometimes in life you just have to take chances; to get where you think you should be…take a leap of faith.”

—From the song “Take a Leap of Faith” Performed by Blaze Bayley

In order to change you can’t remain the same. There must come a time when the desire to move forward exceeds the desire to hold on to what is. For a law firm to grow, at some point it has to let go of its current way of doing things. When that firm is run solely by its partners, a move to embrace professional administration is a tremendous leap of faith. And to be frank, some partnerships never reach this point—relinquishing any control is simply too much for them to contemplate.

This issue of Law Practice is devoted to those considering taking the leap of faith to hire a firm administrator, and to those considering expanding the scope of professional management already in place. For those readers who already have professional administrators, we hope the information in this issue will help you work better and make maximum benefit of your present administrator by growing that role along with the firm. And for those firms considering hiring their first administrator, this issue provides essential information you need before you make that decision. We have lots of tips on how the firm—and the people within it—can support the administrator to the betterment of all. Karen MacKay leads with strategic advice on designing your next administrator’s role, while Bob Denney notes the ongoing trends in professional administration in the legal profession. Tom Grella, the managing partner of a midsize firm, discusses what his organization went through when it chose its first administrator. And our case study places you in the position of having just hired your first administrator—now how can you best support the new administrator in assuming the role?

I am very proud of this issue and particularly of the efforts of our entire creative team of editors, writers and other contributors. I hope we have given you solid information to get where you think you should be.

Finally, please take a moment to visit www.lawpractice.org/magazine to complete this month’s reader survey on outsourcing legal work to foreign countries. Here’s the link:

www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227LHXMQCSZ

We want to hear from you.

David J. Bilinsky, Editor-in-Chief
info@thoughtfullaw.com