The majority of legal firms in London would probably respond, "our lawyers," when asked about their greatest assets. If you dig a bit further, you'll probably find that what these executives really mean is the specific knowledge of their colleagues—their ability to perform top-notch legal work in areas like employment, M&A, tax, intellectual property, and so on. From one perspective, this is a simple response. It recognizes the special function that attorneys perform as technical specialists—experts qualified to identify certain legal issues and provide solutions (see to "Professionalism in the 21st Century"). Undoubtedly, the tendency toward increased specialization has accelerated along with the steady increase in the rate of knowledge transformation.
However, clients are attempting to go worldwide and are up against increasingly complex demands in terms of technology, regulations, economics, and the environment. Their worries have thus evolved into what is known as VUCA, a term derived from the business world (volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous). The majority of their issues cut beyond borders and jurisdictions, as well as typical practice areas and disciplinary silos.
When combined, these two trends—increased specialization and growing complexity in client matters—create a need for attorneys who are not only highly skilled in their particular fields but also capable of working across the firm and frequently internationally to resolve complex legal issues. The fact that most firms employ lawyers with subject-matter expertise is a riddle. The majority of elite legal firms in London have recognized that their clients increasingly view each of their attorneys as the foremost authority in a particular field, and as a result, they have fostered expertise specialization by designating practice areas that are specifically defined and by providing incentives to professionals who establish reputations in these fields. As a result, the collective expertise is now scattered among various individuals, locations, and practice groups.
Therefore, it presents a serious challenge to conventional models of law firm structure and business practices to address client issues that go beyond practice areas and disciplinary silos. To sustain, attorneys and law firms must work together internationally to handle the most complex legal matters for their clients. Lawyers must cooperate across organizational and professional boundaries due to the increased complexity of legal work, which is essentially cross-practice and multijurisdictional.
Research indicates that when attorneys practice in multiple areas, their businesses experience higher profit margins, their clientele remain more devoted, and individual attorneys are able to bill higher fees for their services. Firms may remove barriers to collaboration and land higher-value work by defocusing input events, like billable hours, and focusing more on output variables, such breadth of service per client (referred to as "proliferation" in certain firms).
It is important to clarify that the kind of cooperation that is being discussed here is categorically different from what the business refers to as "cross-selling" in the context of the legal scenario. When Partner A refers Partner B to his or her own client in order for Partner B to offer additional services, that is an example of cross-selling. It is unlikely that Partner A will probe further, even though he or she might offer a general overview to make sure the client is happy with Partner B's work.
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