VeraSage

Jay Shepherd

Founder, Prefix LLC
CEO, Attorney, Shepherd Law Group, P.C.
+01 617.213.0067

Twitter www.twitter.com/jayshep

Jay Shepherd is on a mission to save the world from lawyers, and to save lawyers (and other professionals) from themselves. He runs the Boston employment-law boutique Shepherd Law Group, which made headlines when it abandoned the billable hour and timesheets in 2006. As an employment litigator, he has been protecting employers in and out of court for the past 17 years. He specializes in noncompetes, trade secrets, and social-media law.

Jay also founded Prefix, LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to pricing professional knowledge. Prefix helps professionals like lawyers, accountants, and consultants value and price their services, and helps clients get more value from their professionals.

Jay is a prolific blogger. He writes the workplace blog ”Gruntled Employees,” which Human Resource Executive magazine called the best HR-law site. The American Bar Association named his other blog, ”The Client Revolution,” to its Blawg 100 list of the top lawyer blogs. “The Client Revolution” focuses on reinventing the business of law. Jay is also a columnist for ”Above the Law,” America’s leading law blog. Law and Politics magazine named Jay one of the top 100 lawyers in New England.

He lives outside of Boston with his wife (also an employment lawyer) and two young daughters (not employment lawyers).

John Chisholm

John Chisholm Consulting
Victoria, Australia
M +61 0 419 763 391
B +61 3 9578 3500

www.chisconsult.com

My life changed when he met the late-and great-Paul O’Byrne in Sydney in 2005.

Until then, I had always struggled with the concept of billing clients in 6 minute increments even though, as Managing Partner and CEO of large law firms in Australia, this was for all intents and purposes a pretty successful business model which I embraced.

When I left mainstream law firms in 2004 and set up my consultancy practice I was determined not to price my services by time (perhaps I was just too lazy/too old to record time in my own consulting practice?) but really had no idea how I would price myself. That is until I met Paul.

The rest as they say is history. Initially through Paul and then Ron Baker and the whole Verasage family I have become an advocate, zealot and many of my colleagues would say a terrorist for the destruction of time based billing in professional firms in Australasia.

Viva la revolution!

Background:

John Chisholm was previously a partner and Managing Partner at Maddocks, Chief Executive of Middletons and Executive Chairman Melbourne PKF Chartered Accountants.

John established his own consultancy, John Chisholm Consulting, in 2005 to share his expertise and experience with professional service firms in Australia, New Zealand and worldwide who look to maximise their business performance. He now speaks, trains, facilitates, coaches and consults.

As a practising lawyer, managing partner and chief executive John was well placed to experience first hand both the benefits but also the drawbacks of the profession pricing their services solely by reference to time. He now works with many professional service firms (and their clients) around Australasia assisting them with both a mindset change, and the practical implementation and application of, moving towards value based pricing.

John has studied and works with professional firms in UK, US and Australia who no longer bill their clients in 6 minute increments of time. He has written numerous articles on value pricing and has presented and spoken to over a 1000 lawyers and accountants in the past three years on this topic. He is regularly invited as a key note or guest speaker at legal industry events including for the Law Council of Australia, Australian Legal Practice Management Association, Law Institute of Victoria, Law Society of Queensland, CPA Australia and Leo Cussen Institute.

Michelle Golden, CPF

President, Golden Practices Inc.
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
P: 314.416.1201

Twitter: @michellegolden
Blog: www.goldenpractices.com
Website: www.goldenpracticesinc.com

Michelle delivers marketing results and improved operational health in professional firms. She began consulting in 1999 for firms needing tools and guidance with planning and implementing their strategic and marketing initiatives. She works with firms throughout the United States and internationally.

In Michelle’s 25-year career, she led the marketing departments of an 80-person CPA firm and a 400-person law firm. For ten years prior to her professional firm work, she was an accountant in the corporate headquarters of two public healthcare companies.

As a senior fellow of VeraSage Institute, she influences change through promoting the practice of pricing in advance versus hourly billing; specializing versus generalist practices; replacing pursuit and tracking of lagging metrics such as productive hours and realization with more meaningful predictive metrics; and educating about effective methods of attracting and retaining talent. For her thought-leadership, she’s named one of Ten Most Powerful Women in Accounting in Accounting Today & WebCPA (Oct, 2009) and is one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today (Sep, 2010).

She speaks frequently for organizations including AICPA, Association for Accounting Marketing, state CPA societies, and law and CPA firm associations. In 2010, she was commissioned by the AICPA to develop a Social Media Toolkit for their PCPS members, and she authored her first book Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms published by John Wiley & Sons in 2010.

Michelle’s work and opinions appear in publications around the globe including: Journal of Accountancy, National Law Journal, Accounting Today, Recovery Magazine (UK publication), and Syriez Magazine (a Japanese accounting publication).

Michelle is a former board member and US Regional Representative for the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). She also served several terms on the board of Association for Accounting Marketing. She grew up in Orange County, California and relocated to Missouri in 1990. She attended Santa Ana College, Irvine Valley College, and Columbia College majoring in Business with a dual emphasis in Marketing and Management. She is mother of four and “gramma” of one. Her eldest serves in the US Army.