The Global Age of More for Less
The Practice
November/December 2014
Fundamental changes in the worldwide delivery of legal services in the wake of globalization and technology are inevitable, and they’ve already begun.
November/December 2014
The Global Age of More for Less
Is the legal profession undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift of radical transformation—or a temporary correction, albeit one somewhat more medium term? Given current market conditions, it is too early to tell. But the future of the market for legal services is unlikely to be either boom or bust.
Lean Efficiencies and Innovative Thinking
Client concerns about legal cost and efficiency are becoming increasingly emphatic. Indeed, more than 90 percent of law firm partners in a 2014 Altman Weil survey said they think greater efficiency in legal services is a permanent part of the market—and the same overwhelming percentage has said so for the past four years the survey has posed the question.
Corporate Purchasing: A Center on the Legal Profession Study
Law firms’ relationships with large corporate clients are relatively durable, ensuring a reliable flow of revenues over time, absent serious lapses. Convergence has already run its course, and there is little more companies can do to win now preferred provider lists without causing excess dependency on a small set of law firms. The bad news is that CLOs are more informed and savvy purchasers of legal services than ever before.
Avoiding Oxbridge Bias; Law for Undergraduates
Clifford Chance, a British “Magic Circle” firm and the fifth-largest law firm in the world according to revenue, has adopted a “school-blind” hiring policy—and seen its incoming associates’ diversity of educational background rise sharply.
Pricing Legal Services in Uncertain Times
Individual firms will approach pricing arrangements in unique ways, but firms can gain insight by examining client requests. A Harvard Law School case study brings up issues of risk-sharing and partnership between firms and their clients, and how one can encourage firms to consider options beyond traditional models of pricing professional work.
A Response to the More for Less Dilemma
During the economic downturns of the early 1990s and early 2000s, law firms tightened their belts and priced themselves more competitively, but did not change the way they worked. In contrast, this recent recession has spawned alternative ways of sourcing routine work, innovative uses of technology, new entrepreneurial suppliers of services, and different delivery and business models.
