Are some traditional, 'general practice' firms living in cloud cuckoo land? In terms of how well they're managing their firms and especially their staff, and how they're going about marketing themselves, I'm beginning to think they are.While researching an outsourcing feature, I was leafing through a July survey by the 360 Legal Group (see news story), when I realised that what the numbers were telling me was that many respondents thought they doing a pretty good job but, strangely, also seemed to realise quite how behind the curve they were. As this is clearly contradictory, the only conclusion I can draw is that many people running general practice firms are, frankly, mildly deluded.

But let me lay out the numbers and you can judge for yourself. The sample is of 188 firms, 71% of which are either in 'general practice' or 'general practice with some specialist services'.

One of the report's key findings – that 64% of firms 'inadequately address' strategic planning – made sense, but it was arrived at by saying that any firm that didn't annually do strategic planning wasn't adequately doing any planning. Yearly may well be best, but what worries me is that 19% (nearly one in five) 'do not have a formal strategic plan' and 15% answered 'n/a' to the question. Maybe they don't even know what strategic planning is.

When asked which areas of business and practice management pose the biggest challenge to a law firm today, 56% said 'financial management', but only 13% said 'general management' – every area bar one rated as more of a challenge to law firms.

When asked 'in HR terms' what the greatest challenge to the firm is, 31% said motivating staff, 38% said succession planning and 45% said managing poor performance.

But when asked to 'score their firm's senior staff's handling' of certain areas out of 10, respondents marked their top people 6.9/10 for leadership and management, 6.8/10 for 'building leadership', and 7/10 for 'communicating with staff'.

Now either I've gone doolally or something's awry here: nearly half of firms say managing poor performance is a key challenge, but only 13% say general management is a challenge and people think they're roughly getting 7/10 for being managers. However, let's continue.

By far the largest number of firms – one-third – who were asked 'who is responsible for marketing' said 'a nominated senior partner'. Only 19% said they had a marketing team or even one marketing person in charge of marketing. Even more worrying, 14% said 'a nominated member of staff' was in charge of marketing, which means that that person is neither a marketing professional nor a partner – how little sway must they have when it comes to crunch?

However, 49% of respondents said their firm is 'actively marketing its services' and 45% said their firms would either be increasing or greatly increasing marketing activity over the next 12 months. So everything's fine. One can only wonder, first, what that poor 'marketing partner' will therefore have to do when they're trying to make rain as well and, second, what success that marketing will show with so few people employed who actually know how to do it.

One more thing: when asked what marketing methods firms currently use and which they are going to increase in the next year, 59% said they use a website to market the firm and 39% said they would spend more doing that next year. A quarter of firms use email newsletters, and one-third said they'd spend more on those next year. Nearly half (48%) said they 'actively encourage repeat business', and 34% said they'd spend more money next year on that.

But only 14% of respondents said their firm uses any customer relationship management (CRM) system – which can be basic or complex – and only 13% said they'd spend more money on those next year. Guess what kind of automated system binds websites, email newsletters, customer databases and actively seeking repeat business together? It's got three letters…

So I say these numbers show that while general practice firms do get that much has to be done to make themselves more competitive, more effectively financed and their staff better trained and managed, they think they're pretty cracking people and business managers. And though firms want to throw more money at marketing and sales, they haven't much idea how businesses in other sectors have worked out how to do that.

I don't know if this survey is really representative of the industry at large, but if it is, many more firms than I previously thought are fooling themselves into early retirement.

You can buy a copy of the survey for £49.99 (£39.99 for members) from 360 Legal Group's website, to judge for yourself. Rupert White