As in any kind of client service business, the winners of the tomorrow will be those who best react to the evolving needs of clients. Clients have long been unfulfilled with the cost of legal full service delivery and many have responded by taking more work in-house, supplemented by bringing individual lawyers in through ‘lawyer on demand’ providers. Their watchword is efficiency. At the same time, they want an integrated global service, simpler and more digestible output; providers with deeper understanding of their business, and processes to which their in-house teams can actively contribute. We believe now is the time for change, is your law firm prepared for this?
One of the biggest challenges for law firms in London will be determining what the best global strategy is for their firm in order to meet the demands of international clients. Determining which geographic markets are worthy of new investment and which established markets should continue to be supported/invested in is a strategic priority for all. The full service law firm of the future will be more diverse in terms of business model by bringing in offerings such as consulting, forensics, risk to support their overall offering. Innovative firms will think not only about making current offerings more efficient, but how technology can allow them to develop new services that incorporate their expertise in a different way.
These law firms in London will need to embed best in class technology into all of their legal processes, and will need to continuously innovate as better software tools are developed. Work will still be led by people but they will be augmented by technology, including Artificial Intelligence. Data will also be play a huge part in the successful law firms’ future. Firms will be able to have command over their unstructured data and this will enable them to develop a meaningful understanding of their client’s businesses and their legal risks. Decisions and actions will not only be driven by experience, but by data too.
The new way of providing legal services will depend on a range of professionals, not only lawyers and so having multi-disciplinary teams will be key in the future. Law firms will need to develop rewarding career paths for these people in order to attract and retain them. Offering different career/work options so that it can retain access to the best talent while benefitting from a more flexible staffing model will also be necessary. Finally, the law firm of the future may not be a partnership of lawyers, but instead be a multi-disciplinary partnership, a public company or a financial investor-backed private company. The transformation required to thrive in the new order will be costly and firms will look to alternative sources of funding to pay for it.
Clients will work with fewer law firms globally and relationships will be long-term and deeply embedded. Clients will put firms through challenging procurement processes before selecting them for their global legal panels or for exclusive provider status for certain areas of legal service. Engagements between law firms and clients for ‘business as usual’ law will look more like outsourcing contracts – designed to meet long-term needs. Law firms will have analytical insight across the breadth of their clients’ activities which will make them more valuable to clients and extend relationships beyond the legal department.
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