If you didn’t already know it, I’m a massive fan of Gapingvoid Art. Over the years I’ve purchased way too much of their stuff. But, what does this have to do with law firm business development you may be asking?

Well, the answer to that is that one of their pictures that I have not bought (to-date), also happens to be a picture I believe should be hanging from the boardroom wall of every law firm:

but not for the reason you may think – namely that practice areas and service lines in law firms don’t speak to each other.

For what it’s worth, my own view is this (partners speaking to partners) has actually improved in the past 10 years (although admittedly from a very low base).

Nope, my reason for say this picture needs to be hanging in the boardroom of every law firm is because law firm’s support services increasingly act with silo mentality.

As we have become bigger, we have lost the art of talking with each other.

We send 100s of emails a day, but we don’t pick up the phone and speak to each other.

We go to more meetings than is good for us, but we rarely invite the people who matter or, more importantly, could bring a useful and different perspective – HR, IT, KM, Marketing, BD, Operations, and the list goes on – to those meetings.

It’s my view that part of what is crippling Big Law (firms of more than 50 partners) is the fact that its support services are not talking with each other.

And, given we are the ones supporting the firm’s strategic directions, this is also happens to be why we cannot move to the next level.

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NB: anyone looking for a copy of this should contact Jason Korma, CEO of Gapingvoid Ltd

Earlier this month (April 2017) LexisNexis published the latest in its series of legal market reports. Titled ‘Amplifying the voice of the client in law firms‘ and edited by the brilliant Mark Smith (no relation), this latest report from LexisNexis purports to identify specific areas of disconnect between UK top-50 law firms and their clients, by means of seeking answers from both sides of the equation to the following three questions:

1. What are the points of disconnect between the client and the law firm?
2. Why does the disconnect occur?
3. What can law firms and their clients do to reduce the disconnect?

Among the report’s many interesting findings, the one that really stands out for me was the view of most in-house lawyers that, for the most part, solutions need only be “good enough”; provided they are delivered timely, and in a format that enables the in-house lawyer to make decisions quickly. But that, for the most part, in-house lawyers were not getting this service with most saying they received good legal diagnoses but very little by way of commercial solutions.

The findings here are reflective of what I heard Ann Klee, VP of Global Operations — Environment, Health & Safety, at General Electric Company say at a Big Law Business Summit in August 2015 – in describing how (in part) GE managed to reduce its outside legal spend by $60 million in a year – when she mentioned that the bottom line is that the role of a lawyer today is about managing more risk, it’s not about just being asked to do more for less, it’s being asked to do less with less.

So we are being told – by the clients themselves, from both sides of the Atlantic, that they do not need “gold standard” legal advisory services, but rather are not only happy to receive “good enough” advice, but would prefer it that way if the advice that was given was commercially applicable to them and provided in a timely manner (on this issue, see my recent post on ‘responsiveness‘).

And yet I have never seen any marketing or tender material produced by a law firm outside of the top tier in any country that says anything along the lines of “we are the good enough lawyers“. Conversely, I have seen more marketing material than any sane person should by mid-tier firms to the effect that “we provide top-tier gold standard legal advisory services at mid-tier [cheap] prices” – a service clients are repeatedly saying loud and clear that they don’t want.

To my mind, all of this adds up to be a massive billion dollar opportunity going to waste by any mid-tier law firm who would be happy saying to their clients (and, importantly, the clients of top-tier firms) “we’re the ‘good enough’ firm that will get you across the line at a fraction of the fee!“.

And I genuinely believe that the first firm that gets this – be it by unbundling, clause light reviews, collaborative teams, innovation, technology, knowledge sharing platforms, or a cross section of all and every, will make a motza!  

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As long-term readers of this blog will know, I’m not adverse to looking outside the world of law for ideas on how we might better position ourselves to attract and win new work. These same reader will also likely know that I have a very amateur interest in photography.

Combining these two was an article on diyphotography.net last week (4 April 2017) by Enzo dal Verme titled ‘How to encourage potential clients to work with you’, in which Enzo lays out 11 ways photographers can better market themselves to win work from potential new clients.

I really like Enzo’s suggestions and think that all but one would work well in the business development arsenal of any law firm. For that reason, I thought I give a high-level overview of Enzo’s 11 suggestions here:

1. Have something unique to offer.
2. Identify your potential clients.
3. Be a specialist.
4. Double check what you have to offer.
5. Make sure you have what it takes to prove that you could really be valuable to them.
6. Find a quick and impactful way to get your message across.
7. Follow up.
8. Be reliable, precise, professional.
9. Don’t be pushy!
10. Be creative.
11. Ideally, you let your clients find you, you don’t go looking for them.

I’ll leave you to guess which one of the 11 items above I don’t agree with. In the meantime, take the time out to read Lenzo’s post in full – I guarantee you you won’t regret it.

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Ask nearly every lawyer you know whether or not they are “responsive” and to a T they will say “yes”. Most will likely back this up by saying they respond to emails within 24 hours and phone calls within 3 hours. Great stuff, but very reactive.

But does how a law firm see ‘being responsive’ equate with how in-house lawyers view their law firms ‘being responsive’? More importantly, can a law firm be proactively responsive?

A partial answer to this question was provided by Bupa’s legal chief Penny Dudley in an interview she gave to Legal Week yesterday (4 March 2017) – Bupa legal chief Penny Dudley on stepping up, what she looks for in a law firm and Brexit challenges -when asked the question:

What do you look for in an external adviser?

she replied, in part…

…I am obviously very keen on a firm’s responsiveness; even up to the point of anticipating things for us.

Wait, “anticipating things” for you – that’s not responsive! Or, is it…?

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If you were not already aware of it, a train wreck is currently taking place in the Australian legal sector:- the partners of Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) are suing the departing partner leaving to set-up White & Case’s new Australian venture and nasty details of this divorce are being spread all over the Australian Financial Review on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis.

From yesterday‘s (Monday 3 April 2017) instalment we learnt that the departing partners collectively spent $364,000 on business development activities in the financial year 2016* on such things as:

• trips to the exclusive Barnbougle golf course in Tasmania,
• an $800 bottle of wine for a general manager of one of Australia’s leading energy companies (who is most likely hiding out in his/her office ruing the day they ever heard of HSF), and
• getting in on the next generation, gifts for the births of clients’ babies.

The most interesting part of yesterday’s nugget wasn’t, however, all the unscrupulous details of what the partners at HSF call ‘business development’; but, rather the news that HSF are claiming that as they spent the money on the BD activities, and not the departing partners themselves directly, the client actually ‘belongs’ to the firm – and, therefore, the partners are ‘not allowed’ to take the client with them to White & Case.

Wow, hold on there for a second.

Leaving aside the fact that most of the clients who have been named and shamed for several weeks in one of Australia’s leading business publications and whose wining and dining (literally) has been described in miniature detail in court papers are unlikely to want to go anywhere near either firm for the foreseeable future, with the level of lateral hiring that has taken place in the Australian legal market over the last few years, arguing that because the firm has paid the business development dollars the firm owns the client raises a very interesting and thorny issue for the courts.

The next round in these hostilities is due to take place June 5, but I await the outcome of whether or not a firm can ‘own’ a client with interest. Because if the result goes one way, it may just kill the lateral hiring market overnight.

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*  poor Ms Draper must be wondering what she has done wrong too, having only ‘spent’ $2,865 on business development activities during that period but being pulled to the confession box along with all the other naughty sinners