Law firms need to be culture vultures: it could be key to the future of legal services

There has been much talk about the future of legal services, from legal process outsourcing to alernative business structures (ABSs), disaggregation to talent networks. One word seems to link all of these disparate themes together: process. But, one could equally say 'mechanism' or 'operations'. It is the answer to the question: "how can we slice, dice and package up units of legal service more effectively?"

The response usually has the client front-and-centre, but the solutions always manage to favour the firm too and, indeed, why not? But, in this picking-over of the carcass of OldLaw - as I will henceforth refer to the tattered remnants of the legal profession/sector - I wonder if law firms are sometimes missing a trick. They may sometimes be rushing too quickly to answer the same old question ('how can we maintain partner profits/fee rates in the face of continual downward pressure?') rather than questioning the question itself.

Remarkably, law firm clients now say substantially the same things to me about legal services as they did when I started in the profession 20 years ago. They roll their eyes as often as not. They complain. They moan. They sigh. They become exasperated, if not to begin with, then at some point. How can this be so?

If taken at face value, it might seem that the legal profession/sector has not moved on in all that time, which is manifestly not the case. It might, however, suggest that there are some elemental verities in the delivery of legal services which are, simply, irreducible, and thus lawyers are destined to battle with the same old issues for eternity.

If you believe that there is truly nothing new under the sun, then the only thing you have to fall back on is process. And it works, partially. Push the product along Richard Susskind's process innovation pathway until you have pushed everything you can to the right (= bespoke), and the juiciest bits of the OldLaw carcass sustain your hourly rates via that old chestnut beloved of economists, scarcity power.

It may be I am completely wrong. It may be that all this surge of activity around process, the constant iterative striving towards efficiency, will deliver a community of shiny happy clients. I wonder though; some recent research seems to contradict that idea. So we are back to client exasperation: what lies at its heart?

Client exasperation point

I have tentatively identified the client exasperation point as that moment when, drilling beyond the crustal obvious (speedy response, nice people, clear language) through the molten layer of meaningless must-haves (quality, commerciality), we reach an iron-hard core, the nub of the real problem clients have with external lawyers.

That nub is about understanding how your clients get their year-end bonus. It is about helping them not to look like jerks in front of their boards. It is about enabling them to make a decision, rather than wading through a 20-page advice which concludes inconclusively. It is about grasping that your 'great case' is their 'complete nightmare'.

It is also about having the knowledge of how each client's company sits in its sector(s), who its competitors are, what it is afraid of and how to assuage those fears. It is about seeing risk not as a legal annoyance but a mechanism by which a company can generate profits. It is about seeing how irritated they get by having to take the report they just paid a law firm £200,000 to write to one of the Big Four accountants to have it 'translated' - at a fraction of the cost - into something they can give to their board. These are just a few examples.

Holistic approach

Better process will not get you to this nub. Outsourcing to India will not get you there, nor Belfast or Aberdeen. Technology will not get you there, nor will elegant and arcane cost-structures. But, talent pools… those could help.

What will certainly get you there is a culture of excellence. An excellent culture never ceases to spot an opportunity not just to satisfy, but to delight the client. It invests in its people and its alumni and is magnanimous, even generous, about leavers, not spiteful. It does not tolerate high billers if they are toxic to be around. It values thought, space and creativity. It thinks holistically. It thinks long-term. It never hires for the sake of it. It has a purpose, over and above filling in the right numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.

If you're going to pick anything from the carcass of OldLaw, it should be the cultural elements which made your firm great. Work out how to be excellent - truly excellent - in this turbulent modern world of ours and the rest, including process, will take care of itself.

Mark Brandon is the author of Lateral Partner Hiring for Law Firms: Hiring for Success (www.motivelegal.com)