international law firm

3 more surveys on the state of the legal market were published this week

Hot on the heels of a post I posted two weeks ago summarising three reports on the state of the legal market, the last week of August has seen the publication of a further three survey reports.

1. The US Survey Report

The first survey report (Surveys Find Mixed Demand, Moderate Pay for Corporate Counsel) is out of the USA and summarises the findings from a questionnaire sent to 1,300 chief legal officers (CLOs) of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) – who now have a Chapter in Australia.

This ACC survey covered wide ground, including pay rises (3%) and areas of in-house recruiting growth (compliance, contracts and corporate generalists), but probably my favourite take-out was the following two paragraphs:

“Organizations are looking for corporate counsel who can facilitate the business process, according to Peters. Counsel should become familiar with what the company does, take an interest and act as a support, instead of simply focusing on the legalities of whatever is presented to them, she said.

For example, corporate counsel might tour the company’s plant and observe the manufacturing process to better understand how the company works, according to Peters. This might allow the lawyer to help get the product to market quicker. “It behooves the lawyer to be involved and become an integral part of the company. Partnering with the business, you add and keep value,” she said.”

Private practice lawyers could move a lot further along the trusted advisor paradigm just by following that piece of advice.

2. The UK Survey Report

The second survey report (Mind the Gap: GCs, Firms Wide Apart in Perception) is actually a one-page infographic [downloadable here] done by the team at Briefing Magazine in the UK and provides further evidence, if ever we needed it, that there is a growing ‘value gap’ in the perception of the relationship between in-house counsel and their outside law firms & law firm managers.

This survey polled 125 GCs, 67% from companies with more than £1.1 Billion in revenue a year and more than 1000 employees, along with 86 managers (NB: Briefing Magazine‘s target readership is law firm leaders and managers) from the top 120 law firms in the UK.

Two take-outs from this survey of note are:

on whether the process of buying legal services had moved to the in-house legal team’s procurement department, 80% of in-house GCs said they – and not the procurement department – had the say on who to send legal work to, whereas almost three quarters (74%) of law firms said exactly the opposite (ie, procurement had the say here).
on the issue of AFAs (alternative fee arrangements), 76% of law firms believe that in-house GCs want to move away from the billable hour, whereas only 58% of GCs said they do.

Interesting as they are, both of these responses really highlight to me that most law firms out there are not having proper conversations with their clients around how legal services are being procured and, importantly, paid for.

3. The Australian Survey Report

The third survey report of the week was the most comprehensive.

Authored by Joel Barolsky and published by The Melbourne Law School and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor, the 2015 Australia: State of the Legal Market report sets out the dominant trends impacting the Australian legal market in 2015 and the key issues likely to influence the market in 2016 and beyond [a copy of which is downloadable here].

As you would imagine, a survey report of this nature (15 pages) packs a punch and there are way too many take-outs to summarises them all here so if you are interested in the finding of this report, but don’t have the time to read the whole thing, I would like to suggest you take a look at Joel’s post on LinkedIn – Key takeouts from major new legal market report – summarising the findings.

For me, it was interesting to see the survey confirm a trend I identified last year in the market, namely that the biggest competition private practising lawyers have these days is actually in-house counsel. I think this is further evidence that private practice lawyers are not doing enough to explain to their in-house counsel the benefits of using outside counsel.

In short, to my mind the conversation should not simply be: “I’m spending $150,000 on external legal each year, I can hire a lawyer and bring this work in-house“. Although I very much fear that is exactly the conversation that is taking place. And when you keep in mind that the two principal areas of concern for in-house counsel are compliance and risk, you’d think this provides external legal with exactly the right platform to have the conversation around why taking work in-house should not be a growing trend.

‘Technology Can Help Lawyers Add Value’

If you haven’t seen it, SeyfarthLean Consulting LLC – a wholly subidary of US law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP – Seytlines Changing the Practice of Law blog for the 18th August by Kenneth Grady was on the issue of ‘Lawyers Need an App for That‘.

Overall a really good read, but in my opinion the gem takeout of this post comes under the final paragraph headed “Technology Can Help Lawyers Add Value” and reads:

“As technology noses into the delivery of legal services, lawyers must become more focused on where they add value. Understanding the core human thing, the social experience, is a defining difference. By using technology creatively, such as an app to speed communication on matters in ways that enable continuous improvement, lawyers can facilitate client problem solving and higher quality communication. This type of differentiation will separate lawyers from minute-counters.”

If you forget everything else this week, remember this.

#BigLaw is far from dead

Has the death knell of #BigLaw been rung too early?

Despite all rhetoric to the contrary, three reports published within the past week would suggest that the business model of #BigLaw is far from dead.

1. Citi Private Bank’s Law Firm Group report*

The first, published in the American Lawyer, was Citi Private Bank’s Law Firm Group‘s quarterly report on financial performance in the legal industry.

While this report headlined as ‘Despite Growth, Law Firm Forecast Dims for 2015‘, it is worth noting the following three paragraphs from the report:

“Looking at the results by firm size, the Am Law 100 firms saw demand and revenue momentum build. For the Am Law 1-50, part of the positive momentum is due to some moderation in 2014 results from the first quarter to the first half. The Am Law 100 firms are also better poised than smaller firms for near-term revenue growth, given that they had comparably larger inventory increases (especially in accounts receivable) at the end of the second quarter.

The Second Hundred was the only segment that saw a drop in demand. It also had the lowest increase in inventory (2.3 percent), so the third quarter will likely be particularly challenging for these firms.

Despite the momentum generated by the largest firms, it was the niche/boutique firms that had the strongest first half overall. Revenue was up 7.0 percent on the strength of a shortened collection cycle (compared with a lengthening for the Am Law 100 and Second Hundred segments), as well as modest increases in demand and rates. The niche/boutique firms also posted the smallest increase in expenses, 1.9 percent, creating a substantial widening of the profit margin. Because of the accelerated inventory turnover and only modest improvement in demand, however, inventory for these firms was up only 2.8 percent. These smaller firms may therefore find the second half of the year more challenging than the first half.”

So, while mid-tier firms appear to see revenue in decline, the top-end of town was actually seeing demand and revenue momentum build.

[* The results of this report are based on a sample of 177 firms (83 Am Law 100 firms, 45 Second Hundred firms and 49 niche/boutique firms)]

2. BTI Consulting report**

The second report is a snippet from BTI’s Annual Survey of General Counsel and goes under the bye-line: ‘Large Law Edges Out Mid-Sized Firms for New Work, with Higher Rates‘.

Here, BTI Consulting’s research found that:

“60% of law firm hires went to larger law firms (650 lawyers or more) in the last year. Clients report hiring large law as a result of increased and more pointed attention—think industry knowledge and more specific discussion of company issues. Think less about your firm statistics and more about the people to whom you are talking.”

Possibly more damning, however, was the observation that:

“The onus is on mid-sized firms to do better. Clients expect mid-sized firms to bring more client focus and more business understanding than large law—but are not always getting what they expect. And, mid‑sized firms have to demonstrate vastly better understanding of their potential clients’ targeted objectives than large law.”

[** Research is based on 280 in-depth interviews with corporate counsel at companies larger than $750 million in revenue as part of BTI’s ongoing Annual Survey of General Counsel.]

3. CommBank Legal Market Pulse Conducted by Beaton Research + Consulting

The last report is a little closer to home, Q4 2014 results from CommBank’s Legal Market Pulse conducted by Beaton Research + Consulting.

I’ll most likely review the findings of this report more closely in a post later this week – and it may even be interesting to compare them against previous Q2 & Q3 reports – but for the purposes of this post I believe we don’t really need to go past the following infographic from the report:

which would certainly seem to indicate that “top-tier” firms are far happier with overall FY2014 results than their “mid-tier” cousins.

Bringing it all together

So, what does this mean?

To my mind what these three reports cumulatively evidence is this:- while #NewLaw may have arrived, and while it may be here to stay, what is increasingly clear is that #BigLaw is not the market segment that needs to be concerned with this development.

Nope, dig a little deeper and I think you’ll find that it is actually Managing Partners in firms with revenue in the A$20-A$70 million range who will be having a lot more restless nights sleep…

“… we are being asked to do less with less”, Ann Klee of GE

Work in the legal profession for more than 5 minutes and you’ll hear someone say that clients today are asking the law firm to do “more for less“. It is probably one of the fastest terms to become a cliché in the English language.

So imagine my delight, when watching a video of a presentation given by Ann Klee, VP of Global Operations — Environment, Health & Safety, at General Electric Company at the recent Big Law Business Summit, in describing how (in part) GE managed to reduce its outside legal spend by $60 million in a year, she says 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 (see 16 minutes and 15 seconds into video).

This absolutely spot on.

Law firms today need to:

partner with the business to empower their clients,
always be looking to deliver on outcomes, not to be following procedure for procedure’s sake (or, worse, following procedure to blow out legal fees),
through the use of legal project management, agile or some other mechanism that works for you: identify and eliminate any workflows that are adding no value to the deal/advice.

In short: we need to be doing ‘less for less‘, but we need to be doing it in such a way that is “faster, better, and smarter” for our clients.

At the end of the day, clients like GE are already doing this – so law firms today can either get on board with solving their clients’ problems from their clients’ perspective, at a standard of accountability that their clients are being held to; or they face the very real prospect of becoming irrelevant.

Loyalty programs revisited

Back in March of this year I blogged that loyalty programs were likely an under-utilised means by which Australian law firms could differentiate themselves in a highly competitive legal market. I was, then, particularly happy to see that recently Australian Government Business (www.business.gov.au) blogged on a similar issue – ‘Customer loyalty or reward programs‘ – which looked at, among other things:

What customer loyalty programs are.
The benefits and risks of a customer loyalty program.
Tips when implementing a customer loyalty program.
Legal and compliance issues for customer loyalty programs.

A lot of which is directly relevant to law firms looking to implement a customer loyalty program.

Why you should think of implementing a customer loyalty program in your firm

As far as law firms are concerned, the perennial question has been:

How do we make sure that our customers [clients] understand the benefits of being exclusive to our brand?

Here, while we have known for a long time now that the ‘customer experience‘ has been the bedrock of customer loyalty, it has only been in recent times that we have been able to show that loyalty programs can, and do, add to this overall customer experience.

But customer experience isn’t the only reason why law firms need to think carefully about implementing a loyalty program. Other benefits include:

gaining a better understanding of the customer buying behaviour – which practice groups are they using, when, how often, why? Are they using more than one partner in a practice group or the same partner?
increase you brand recognition within your existing customer base – putting in place a formal loyalty program should go some way to helping you promote you law firm internally within your client’s business; if for no other reason than water-cooler chat.
increase your word of mouth referrals.
provides an added incentive for clients to give you work rather than a like skilled and experienced firm (i.e., all things being equal).
can be used to help recognise referrers to the firm – if you include referrers in the program, all things being equal they will more likely refer clients to your firm than a competitor.
it can help you implement formal and informal customer listening and feedback programs (as part of the program offering).
it will help members of your firm get to know who your key customers are and what they do.
it should provide your firm with a platform to cross pollenate into other service areas without looking like a hard sell.

You could also find that putting a customer loyalty program in place leads to greater use of your much underutilised CRM systems!

All that said, a word of caution for those who are intending to implement a customer loyalty program in their firm:

customer loyalty marketing must start with the law firm demonstrating loyalty to the client. Much like the trust it is built on, you cannot expect loyalty from your client if you are unwilling to offer the same type of loyalty to your client,
the foundation of a customer loyalty program is a promise. If for any reason whatsoever you are unable to fulfil on that promise, then you shouldn’t implement the program, and
always keep in mind that while the lawyer inevitably gets the credit when things go well, it is the brand that gets the blame when things go wrong – so make sure that at the heart of you customer loyalty program is always a dialogue between you and your client.

Get it right though and a well implemented and executed customer loyalty program could be just he thing your firm need in order to differentiate itself from the market.

China, #Auslaw firms, and the $400 billion lost opportunity

Last week I blogged that Australian law firms were missing out on a massive opportunity by not being better at selling Australian law, and Australia more broadly, as an alternative venue to London and New York. One of the things that I commented on in the post was how Australian law firms were falling short on their ability to sell venues such as the National Stock Exchange (NSX) and Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) as alternative venues on which Asian, and Chinese in particular, companies could look to to raise capital.

It could not have been more timely then that later in the same week Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Glenn Stevens added a monetary value to the opportunity being missed here – $400 billion.

Yeap, Stevens is quoted in this article as saying:

“…capital markets should prepare for a world where China invests $400 billion a year offshore.”

So, the question I asked in my blog last week remains:

“What is your law firm doing to capitalize on this opportunity?”

Because there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that while we ponder this question others in the region are touting the benefits of Singapore, Hong Kong or a whole raft of other suitable offshore venues.

Is a law firm in your pocket the next big thing?

A 54-page report out last month [July 2015] by UBS analysts in London, New York, Hong Kong and Japan, working with consultants at KPMG, titled “Is a bank in your pocket the next big thing?” (extracts of which have been published in today’s Sydney Morning Herald), that surveyed 67 bank management teams in 18 countries, predicts that as much as 11 per cent of Australia’s bank branches are threatened by closure over the next three years as a result of the proliferation of mobile banking.

According to numbers cited in the article, on the latest data available from the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (the relevant governing body), an 11 per cent closure of local bank branches would amount to circa 603 branches closing.

Thinking “this is banks, what have they got to do with law?“; or “law is different“?

If so, take a second to process this: we are no longer talking disruption of an industry here, we are now talking about transformational, fundamental technological change in society.

As the UBS report says:

“Going forward, emerging technology and innovation will further enhance mobile banking functionalities that aim to develop deep customer relationships and superior mobile banking experiences, such as communication enrichment, a comprehensive ‘mobile wallet’, and content monetisation, (for example) revenues related to music and e-book downloads.”

… not seeing it?

How about this quote from Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) chief executive Ian Narev at a lunchtime function in July:

“These days, you have to understand in real time what your customers are doing and react in real time,” Mr Narev said. “And that aspect in the use of technology to drive customer engagement will be our number one priority.”

For any doubters out there, the final nail in the coffin for me was this:

“The report also showed how the mobile channel is catching up to the internet channel, with mobile expected to be used by more customers than internet web pages in three years.”

So, how are your customers buying your legal services? And how confident are you that they will still be doing the same in three years from now?

Because you never know, your law firm could very well be the next app in your client’s pocket…

“A bridge too far” : When international law firm mergers turn sour

“There were a lot of people who thought there wasn’t a very deliberative process around the decision, and a lot of people wondering how it would help us,” one partner said. “And when it didn’t go well, there were a lot of people who thought it was a bridge too far.”

The above quote is attributed to a K&L Gates partner in a recent Above The Law post by David Lat (‘Barbarians At The K&L Gates?‘), which was then linked to in Bloomberg BNA’s Business of Law overnight (‘Wake Up Call: What’s Going On At K&L Gates?‘), and is said to relate to the firm’s biggest single merger to-date, its deal with Middletons two years ago, which, apparently, has “has failed to bear fruit.”

First off, I don’t think K&L Gates’ merger with Middletons is alone here. Market chatter would indicate that a number of partners at international law firms who merged with prominent Australian law firm brands have since wondered what they got themselves into. On the flip-side, a number of the partners in the prominent law firms who merged with the international firms have felt likewise and since moved on.

So while not unique, what probably differentiates the K&L Gates situation is also, in my opinion, one of its greatest strengths – its transparency and openness.

In any event, to my mind what this story highlights is two issues:

mergers between international law firms are akin to the courting stage in any joint venture arrangement: a lot of trust is given on both sides without much due diligence.
when things turn sour in international law firm mergers, lots of reasons get cited by all parties; but rarely, if ever, is the reason that they hadn’t discussed the merger properly with the clients of both (all) firms to see if the client had any perspective on this merger (e.g., commercial conflicts, lack of trust, etc.) and whether they would support (financially) the merger.

I will add that it would be a great shame if the K&L Gates / Middletons merger turned into a public spat, because I really liked the legacy Australian firm of Middletons and given Australia’s interaction with the US market I believe there is a place for K&L Gates here.

That said with the A$ tipped to go below US70¢, its lowest level since the merger, the partners on both sides of the Pacific need to:

reiterate why they merged,
communicate this with their clients,

and move forward on that basis.

And do this quickly [preferably at, or before, the next global partners’ meeting] – something law firms are not known for!

Again though, I doubt very much that K&L Gates will be alone among international law firms in Australia having these discussions.

The battle for Asia’s inbound investment

I was interested to see that The Lawyer has an article today [27 July] by David Rennick, the head of Pinsent Masons’ relatively new Australian outlet, on the competition between English and Australian law firms for prize Chinese’s infrastructure investment work (‘Never mind the Ashes: England and Australia are battling for the Chinese investment prize‘).

When I first arrived in Asia back in the early 1990s, most of the conversations we had with governments and businesses around “investment” in the region nearly always took the path of inbound [into Asia] investment: in that investments largely moved in one direction, from West to East, and appropriately attractive and protective legislatively schemes around those investments were always being sought.

Possibly due to the GFC, although I would be more inclined to say as the likely result of a progression in time and a growth in Asian economies post the Asian Financial Crisis troubles, a shift has taken place: today when we are in conversations around “investment”, this conversation has taken on a new life and we are just as likely to be discussing outbound [from Asian] investments into the West or into other developing nations/areas (such as Africa) as we are about inbound [into Asia] foreign direct investment.

I love infographics and clear evidence (if it was ever needed) of the shift taking place in the conversation taking place here can clearly be seen in two amazing recently published infographics: one by the South China Morning Herald (‘Chinese outbound investment to rise to another record‘) and the New York Times (‘The World According to China‘).

And while both of these show a massive increase in outbound direct investment by China and Chinese companies (and people) over the past decade, decade and half, what they don’t necessarily show is the different reasons/discussions that are taking place for/around these investments.

To be clear, while Asian (including Chinese) companies and governments are investing overseas for a multitude of reasons, they largely centre around two principal reasons:

On the one hand, the governments – including State Owned Corporations – need better returns on their investments than they would otherwise be getting at home or else they need to diversify this investment. We typically see this type of investment with Singapore’s Temasek and GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation). More recently we have seen foreign pension funds investing in Australian infrastructure in this way.

On the other hand, we see investments in western businesses by Asian companies and organisations looking to purchase technical knowhow in order to up-skill themselves. An example of this can be seen with today’s announcement that: “A major Chinese venture firm has launched a US$5 billion fund devoted to buying up Western technology, internet and biotech firms that are looking to enter the Chinese market.”

And it is for this reason that unlike David Rennick I don’t believe English or Australian law firms should be strategically looking at the Chinese for inbound infrastructure investment work (with the caveat that this doesn’t include strategies around the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)), because I believe that type of inbound infrastructure investment work (once Australia can work out a suitably attractive investment vehicle for foreigners to invest in infrastructure) from Asia will more likely come from Korea, Japan and Singapore (under relevant FTA provisions with these countries).

For Chinese related inbound investment work, English and Australian law firms would do far better to be courting M&A and R&D work, and in this field they will find a much hungrier and more sophisticated competitor – the US law firm.

“You actually need to be in Asia to understand Asia.”

“You actually need to be in Asia to understand Asia. You cannot look at it from a distance, or certainly run a business in Asia from a distance. So, unless you are actually in Asia and focused on Asia and the different markets in Asia, it’s very difficult to understand the different markets, their stages of development, and how you need to run your business in those markets. And certainly you can’t do that from London or New York. That’s a fundamental point.” – Stuart Fuller, King & Wood Mallesons

The above quote, which I couldn’t have put better myself, is from an interesting interview between columnist David Parnell and Stuart Fuller, Global Managing Partner of King & Wood Mallesons (‘Stuart Fuller Of King & Wood Mallesons, On Vereins and Succeeding in China’s Legal Market‘) posted to the Forbes website on 20 July 2015.

A lot can be said about the ‘Mallesons’ strategic approach to Asia (or, probably more to the point, the lack of it) in its days as ‘Mallesons Stephen Jaques’ – when the firm was rumoured to be heavily courted by the likes of Clifford Chance and Linklaters in the UK – but since the tie-up with King & Wood (and the subsequent merger with SJ Berwin), the firm that is KWM, as it is now affectionately known, has certainly turned a corner, got its strategy ducks lined up and come a long way.

To my mind evidence of this is clear in the following two paragraphs by Fuller:

“Secondly, it’s a business model issue. If you come into Asia and run a Western business model, then you are likely to lose money. That’s quite difficult for many of the international firms because they have such powerful and strong business models in their home markets, and they export them to the rest of the world.

Thirdly, some markets are more developed than others, so if you come into Asia and think that because the law firms are younger, that they are less developed, or frankly, in some ways less professional, then you’ll be surprised. There are firms here — us for instance — who have 1200 lawyers and 2000 people across 12 cities in China alone. We have an impressive international business in China operating at an international standard. There are a number of firms across the market like us, and I think that is a surprise to Westerners.”

Absolutely spot on!

Indeed, probably the only thing missing from Fuller is the strength that relationships play in the overall marketplace throughout Asia – both at government level and in many of the region’s family run businesses.

Then again, possibly that’s what Fuller is eluding to when he says:

“And for Western business coming into Asia, the big thing you need to know is how to get things done. The system is different. It’s the lore as much as the law.”

In any event, it is clear that KWM has moved forward a long way since 2012, and I’m not sure the rest of the pack are giving this firm the appropriate credit they deserve.