An article by Neil Rose on Legal Futures website today (15.5.2023) has a statistics that should have every law firm business development expert shaking in their boots.

To quote:

45% of clients changing which practices they allocate work to in the past year

Nearly half of companies swapped external lawyers in last year

Taken from the latest ‘State of the UK Legal Market 2023‘ by Thomson Reuters, Rose’s report contains even more damning news for those marketers and business developers who thought law firms outranked lawyers in client choice selection:

Reputation has also dropped “dramatically” in importance for keeping a firm top-of-mind

On the positive front,

In the UK, more than in many other regions of the world, clients are focusing on the quality of the whole relationship with their advisers.

But, backing up the reputation comment above, the big takeaway for me has to be,

In a major shift over the past 10 years, the historical reputation of a law firm is no longer enough to keep it top-of-mind in the market. The message is clear: firms need to re-consider how they present and deliver value to clients…

I have deliberately bolded that part of the quote because if this is something that is likely to be concerning you, or if you feel this provides your law firm with a great opportunity, then feel free to reach out to me and let’s have a chat about how you can to work on this!

rws_01