The NonBillable Hour

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Lessons for Ford, and for Lawyers

In The Truth About Cars, Robert Farago offers up his prescription for an ailing Ford:

You want bold moves? Kill Jaguar. Kill Mercury. Sell Volvo. Sell Mazda. Sell Land Rover. Cut half the remaining models and plow money into the ones that survive. Re-invigorate your rear-wheel drive, box-frame car with new sheetmetal, a bad-ass motor and a killer cabin. Build a world-beating Lincoln luxury sedan. Make the Ford Focus the world’s best small car. Get the Explorer’s mileage into the mid-20’s. Develop a more powerful engine than the Hemi and stick it into everything-- including a new minivan. Set SVT loose on the entire model line-up. OWN quality interiors. Don't badge engineer ANYTHING.

Lose the glass fishbowl; redesign Ford showrooms to look like a modern retail outlet. Trim the dealer network and sell cars on the web. Undercut everyone’s price with every vehicle. Interact with every single customer on a regular basis via internet. Institute no-haggle pricing. Make financing cheaper. Drop 80% of your print budget and dominate the web. Do it all, and do it all at once-- regardless of cost. Then sell value for money. Ford: the best car money can buy.

Imagine a big law firm (or any law firm) making similar moves.  What would that advice be, and what would the resulting law firm look like?