Is subscription pricing having an impact on the legal profession? Based on our guest — Matthew Burgess — the answer is a resounding YES!
Let’s Start with Matthew’s Biography:
Matthew Burgess co-founded View Legal in 2014, having been a partner and lawyer at one of Australia’s leading independent law firms for over 17 years. Matthew’s passion is helping clients to successfully achieve their goals. Matthew specialises in tax, estate and succession planning, providing strategic advice to business owners and high net worth individuals, and recognised in the ‘Best Lawyers’ list since 2014 in relation to trusts and estates and in ‘Doyles’ either personally or as part of View since 2015 in relation to taxation. In 2017 he was also nominated as Tax Partner of the Year (Lawyers Weekly). In part leveraging off the skills he has developed working in the SME market space, Matthew has been the catalyst in developing a number of innovative legal products for advisers and their clients. As an author, Matthew is widely recognised as an expert in his field, who constantly creates bespoke revenue related strategies for the growth, management and protection of wealth. Matthew is regularly published in Australia’s leading monthly tax journal, The Tax Institute’s Taxation in Australia (11 articles since 2012) and the leading weekly tax journal, Thomson Reuters’ Weekly Tax Bulletin (20 articles since 2012). He is the author of 23 books, and is a Practicing Fellow at VeraSage Institute.
Here are Ed’s Questions from the Episode:
You have an interesting LinkedIn profile, going all the way back to grade school. Give us the Matthew Burgess background story.
While you were at Big Law, you read The Firm of the Future and you said it was a two-year journey, what was that process like? Was it a sudden realization, or just over time that you concluded this 18-hours billable per day was nuts?
So did you try to change it inside the firm for a while?
Was that the build-up over time, or was there one incident that was the coup de grâce for you?
Talk to us about the transition, did you have a plan for creating your own firm?
You founded View Legal in August 2014. Were you solo or did you have a couple of partners?
Before we move on to talk about subscription, I wanted to ask you about one more bullet point under “Our Approach,” since it involves my experience in project management in the IT space, having to do with quality:
Old View: Quality is defined by the law firm
View Legal: Quality is defined by the customer
There are a lot of lawyers, and other professionals, who have a big problem with that one?
You were well ahead of even Ron and myself and other thinkers at VeraSage on this whole notion of subscription. One of the things I heard at VeraSage Down Under when I did my presentation on subscription pricing was that it could not work in law. What does subscription mean to you, and how is that different from pure value-based pricing?
What other adjustments did you need to make it sustainable for both you and your customers?
The whole notion of allowing your price to justify your expenditure of costs in the future, this allowed you to create, from a technological perspective, a better experience for those customers coming on?
We might have to combine subscription with something Ron has talked about for years, the TIP Clause.
If you to break your revenue down by percentage of subscription vs. standard fixed pricing, can you give me a percentage on that?
It’s a dual-gated model, the movie theater popcorn situation?
If you look at other industries, such as Amazon Prime, or other subscription models that are out there, are there any that you look to that you’re using to base your future on?
Here are Ron’s Questions for Matthew Burgess:
Your “Why” [Purpose] at View Legal is laid out on your website under “Our Approach.” Describe how you came to your Why:
“At View Legal our mantra is to build the firm our friends would choose.”
Also, “OUR VISION”:
“To achieve our vision, we have set out to fundamentally and radically revolutionise access to high quality legal advice, in our areas of deep specialisation – structuring, tax, trusts, asset protection, business sales, estate and succession planning.”
In a table below the Vision, you contrast the “Old View” of law firms with that of View Legal, with “significant inspiration provided by VeraSage. Partly adapted with permission of George Beaton, Beaton Capital, 2014.” We could spend the rest of the show on this table, but I just want to ask you about a few of the items.
Old View: Bill clients on hourly rates (or various, increasingly elaborate, permutations on the theme) and have no particular interest in client perception of value
View Legal: Customers provided up front ‘SPS Guarantee’ – that is service and price satisfaction is Guaranteed with all work undertaken following upfront fixed pricing
Explain how the guarantee works and what impact it has had on your customers.
When the trigger is pulled by a customer, and you do have to compensate the customer, one of the benefits is you get to fix the underlying problem that happened. Has that been your experience?
Having that guarantee does make you more selective about who you take on, doesn’t it?
Another item:
Old View: Revenue growth the #1 goal
View Legal: Exceeding customer expectations #1 goal
Another one on this table I just love, since diversity is such a hot topic right now in the professional firm space, you contrast:
Old View: Constant focus on the ‘need for diversity’ of gender
View Legal: Only focus on diversity of thought
And I love this one:
Old View: Intellectual property is how we make money and should be guarded jealously
View Legal: Intellectual property is how we create trust and should be shared freely
From Ron: I love that philosophy because I think Paul Arden wrote this in one of his books: I give away all of my intellectual capital because that forces me to replenish it.
View Legal participates in B1G1, 1.2 million+ impacts on your website, as of this morning. Our VeraSage colleague Paul Dunn is involved with B1G1. Describe that, and how it is seen by your customers, team members?
You’ve written 23 books. How many of those are children books?
One of those books, which I just loved, is The Dream Enabler (2014). Ed and I are going to do a show on inequality, and you point out in there that the most common problem faced by high net wealth families is alcoholism? Is that true?
You cite the rule “rags to rags in three generations:”
1st generation makes the money
2nd generation holds or keeps the money
3rd generation loses the money
And you quote Warren Buffett: “A very rich person should leave their kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.” How do you think about inequality? Does it trouble you?
You also sent me a copy of your Best Ever 101 Lawyer Jokes [2015], and I love the Warning on the cover: “Content May be Considered Offensive (Particularly by lawyers!).” My favorite joke in there is: How many lawyer jokes are there? And people will inevitably respond with, “Millions, infinite.” No, there’s just one, the rest are true stories.
Need more information?
This was a GREAT episode, no doubt. We also have another episode on a law firm that uses subscription pricing, #274.
Bonus Content is Available As Well
Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.
The bonus episode after Matthew Burgess featured……..Matthew Burgess! He was able to stay on with us for an additional hour and it was just as great as the first hour.
Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about bonus pricing and member benefits.