In a highly competitive market such as the legal industry, understanding and knowing who your major competitors are is crucial to the successful identification and implementation of your firm’s strategy.

When assessing this issue, most of us naturally look outward at our traditional, and even new, market competitors. In short, we try, as best as we can, to compare apples with apples.

That’s why the publication of results from a new survey in yesterday’s Legal Futures, one of the UK’s leading legal news websites, makes for an interesting read. Because, to my mind, understanding and deciphering who your firm’s principal competitor is would seem to  remain a misunderstood issue.

Why do I say this?

Well, in the article Legal Futures (quoting from a recently published market survey) states that:

“more than two-thirds [of London City firms] see other professional services firms as the overwhelming competitive threat among recent entrants to the profession.”

By “other professional services firms“, what they mean is the Big 4 accountants.

While the re-emergence of “other professional services firms” (and for that matter so-called “new law” firms) is concerning, they are currently a long way from being the “overwhelming competitive threat” to law firms.

No, that title belongs to another group much closer to home: your clients.

With the level of work that clients are now taking back in-house, or not bothering to do at all, they are without doubt the “overwhelming competitive threat” to the current law firm business model. And, this is not cyclical but structural.

Crucially, understanding this is of paramount importance if firms wish to survive the next 5, 10, 15 years. Because it reshapes everything we do. How we try and win work. The type of work we are trying to win. And even the nature of the relationship we have with our client.

In the long term it will determine the way we measure and reward. It will dictate how we charge, and it will determine whether we succeed or fail.

And for good measure, here is another thing that is rapidly changing: who the client is can no longer be taken for granted or assumed. Because more often than not, it’s no longer the person you have the working relationship with.

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