Key Values of the Client Partnership Model: Broad Focus
In my post describing a yardstick for vendor partnership, I suggested that vendors who have a broad industry focus are more viable partners than those who see only their own technology. This kind of broad focus is important for vendors not just in order to stay on top of competitors and ensure their product stays ahead of the curve, but for many additional reasons including that a focus on the broader industry may reveal trends that give rise to future product opportunities, and the fact that community involvement is both ethically admirable and likely to lead to additional client contacts. Overall, a modern law firm will be more inclined to partner with a vendor who knows enough about the industry to stay relevant and ensure that the firm similarly stays relevant.
By extension, in order to properly serve clients into the future, law firms have to embrace a broad focus that proves they are aware of what is going on in the industry around them. Every firm spends money and resources on understanding where it sits competitively in the market, in terms of financials, brand, offerings, clients, and marketing. But truly seeing and understanding the broader industry, and engaging in it meaningfully, is about more than mere market presence.
For the most part, clients are the entities currently driving transformation in the market. Firms are reactive to the edicts coming from their clients, who are calling out for change by issuing RFPs demanding technological, process and pricing advances, by making explicit requests for all kinds of collaboration, and by expressing a desire to work with their law firms as business partners first and lawyers second.
How much more powerful a position would it be for a firm to take the lead, embracing forward momentum, proactively moving in pace with or ahead of the market instead of waiting to be pushed?
How to adjust for it: Make a strategic decision to engage with the legal industry more broadly. This can be at the firm-wide level, creating programs that involve clients and even other firms participating in joint broad discussions around topics of change in the industry, participating in transformational activities beyond core strategy. It can also be at a micro-level, encouraging every individual within a firm to take a broader approach to their role. Make it known from the top-down that the firm values innovative, creative thought that is in line with industry trends, and that it is important to the firm that its staff are giving back to the community through engagement across the industry.
It has always been critical for lawyers to be across changes in the law. No partner wants to be caught out by a client who knows about a legal development of which they are unaware. The circulation of internal educational updates have therefore been essential at firms. It’s now equally important for lawyers to be conversant on topics of change in the industry. With the level of hype attached to the evolution of legal AI and data analytics, it’s to be expected that clients will be familiar with these subjects. No firm wants its lawyers to be caught out at a cocktail party with clients asking in vain how the firm is reacting to certain progressions in legal technology, or how the firm is responding to the obligations of technical competence that are now enshrined in the rules of professional conduct for many states. Being unaware of these developments is now almost as bad a look as ignorance of a significant change to the law.
To avoid this, firms should be creating internal educational programs that equip their lawyers to discuss these topics both broadly and as they relate to the firm itself; that teach lawyers how to speak about the firm’s use of technology, the firm’s client collaboration program, how the firm is in the vanguard of legal innovation instead of lagging behind. This is not just a good look for clients, it is also increasingly part of mandatory compliance with professional obligations. Moreover, it will empower associates to view their careers in context – which is of no small significance given that new associates are potentially facing very different careers to those of their predecessors.
The firms that will outstrip others are those that don’t just succeed in showing some understanding of industry trends, but take a leadership role in driving change. It’s all too easy to forget that our customers themselves also have customers – our clients are being pushed to innovate continuously (better, cheaper, faster!) and so they want to see the same effort employed by their service professionals and business partners. Firms that show they deeply understand the broader industry and are leading change across it will succeed both in retaining existing clients and attracting new ones who see this future-facing outlook as insurance against their own potential obsolescence.
Lead the way