As a matter of practice, client relationships and knowledge of client pain points have often become sources of firm expansion. Relationship partners, innovative associates and regulatory or judicial change create countless opportunities to readjust legal advice. With each opportunity, client interaction becomes a juncture to grow client trust and build a sustainable relationship extending into the team, department and firm brand.
Converting periodic opportunities and technology innovation into sustained business model change can be delicate. Industry leaders look to firm culture for business evolution but find difficult trade-offs. Missteps, whether perceived or actual, can be costly, rapidly deteriorating progress and relationships. I also frequently hear from outside counsel and within the in-house counsel community that many clients have substantive and administrative requirements that require bespoke dedication in approach. It comes as no surprise, then, why legal leaders may be reticent to make adjustments—however minor—to the delivery of legal services.
Despite these headwinds, leaders nonetheless seek to differentiate their services and create expansion opportunities. With an ever-changing industry, where technological changes continue to create further opportunities to evolve, innovative leaders actively explore law firm delivery changes, evaluate commensurate risks and tradeoffs and seek areas where investments can permanently accelerate revenue.
Over the course of my growth company experiences as general counsel and as a legal leader in company transformations, I’ve observed common patterns of effective leadership strategy that seek to protect evolutionary opportunities while mitigating increased risk.
Identifying first principles or North Star goals for firm growth is crucial for innovative leadership. The goal may evolve, but a clear vision of key factors is essential for future change. Discussing and developing buy-in groundwork for the key firm traits and priorities that underscore all client interactions is akin to a branding exercise: eliciting the core, undeniable and essential features of work delivered by the organization.
Practice leaders can then distill and benchmark key client characteristics against these first principles. With deliberate spaces to encourage dialogue, leaders will build insights into the relationship between the first principles and perceived organizational hallmarks, encouraging dialogue and validating the direction. Leaders can also gauge the value orientation of these principles: which resonate, which rise to the top and which are distinctive when compared to their peer group.
Innovative leaders spend significant time here honing clarity. For example, resting on delivering excellent work product is, presumably, a necessary precondition for all successful companies. Therefore, while it may be a characteristic identified as a necessary precondition, leaders who are able to extend discussion into further clarifying the how or the why can then incorporate the client and attorney service intangibles. For example, a firm may receive reputational feedback that reflects practice groups’ efforts to deliver results-driven and globally impactful outcomes. Or, an organization may culturally emphasize providing easy or efficient administrative support, to support a full value chain proposition of client service.
In another example, in one significant technology transformation, two key first principles were identified by leadership. The first was creating a great client experience. The second was to ingest only the minimum client data required to achieve the goals of the project. Because these first principles––only two––were identified at the start, each group leader could determine how these would apply to their respective deliverables and goals.
Admittedly, leaders ran up against the how––as in, how to interpret the application of the two North Stars. This created opportunities across departments to understand in what way a great client experience was being defined. It also created opportunities for specific departments to reflect and define what they believed a great client experience meant. For the legal department, this translated into crisp, user-friendly disclosure documents. The technology department defined this to include immediately accessible customer service and fewer self-help pages. The product team viewed this as delivering a superior consumer experience when using the product.
As years passed, some departments developed sub-principles, clarity derived from complex experiences that required the groups to parse through the intentionality behind these principles. As the project continued, significant attention focused on clarification of the goals of the project, whether for a specific department, or as part of the broader vision. We had a lot of continuous dialogue that resulted in greater appreciation of the clarity of vision and outcome.
Leaders, who can capture hallmarks that resonate, create the vision for each practice group leader to effectively apply the principles by analogy. These processes better position the organization to design the operational outcomes of any change.
Frequently, quick wins are described as momentum-building opportunities in change management. Undoubtedly, this is a key component in successful transformations. But in the context of consultative business models, particularly ones where a prevailing conservative approach prevails, special care must be taken to align a firm’s brand with delivery adjustments.
For these quick wins, innovative leadership relies on quantitative and qualitative data gathering. Internally, leaders solicit and select quick win opportunities as exploratory cross-sections of the firm’s work. These opportunities can be used to benchmark internal alignment, including how first principles were applied, the perceived efficacy of the application, and how, and in what ways, leaders believe the modal shift might be successful. Leaders can also benchmark external expectations––determine whether the adjusted approaches align with stated first principles, and if and how the new services delivery model builds on past experiences.
In one technology implementation—software that accelerated the ability to bill customers—the initial feedback for why the implementation should occur was significantly diverse. Groups had varying goals for what they hoped to achieve and how they wanted to use the technology. Their goals included simplifying internal processes, minimizing the number of software programs needed to execute objectives, uncovering different kinds of insights, obtaining greater granularity in some of the client work, and avoiding adding another questionnaire as part of the ongoing client process.
From several proposed pilot programs, we initially implemented the software with a revenue team with close ties to their clients and had identified several key clients they believed would benefit. The internal team also tested an internally developed interface. This tested the feasibility, priority and estimated development hours needed to achieve a simpler internal process. Later iterations of the software were deployed to all groups, which accelerated momentum for the technology implementation.
From these initial pilot programs, we learned that when collecting feedback, certain company-wide core experiences emerged. Leaders quickly realized that one of the bespoke revenue scenarios was quite central across the company. When sharing this observation with other managers and employees, the example resonated across the board. This was quickly adopted as one of the first use cases of the technology.
Using multiple quick wins validates innovation goals as a stated commitment, provides transparency and builds anticipated momentum. This iterative approach to testing the application of the core principles identifies additional characteristics and offers examples to leaders across the organization and builds momentum. This can also provide deliberate opportunities for dialogue, particularly around the nuances of client management, operational impact and bespoke considerations. The iteration also reduces risk by ensuring relevant feedback is incorporated in a go-forward plan. It facilitates identification of groups that are best positioned to generate greater profits or utilize a technology implementation the most and builds a unifying approach.
Identifying shorter-term projects, tests proposed changes. From this, another strategy emerges. If space is deliberately created to allow for these process opportunities, the experiences that result almost certainly change initial assumptions, adjust first principles and incorporate the new data resulting from the piloted opportunities. Innovative leaders incorporate this new information and view adaptations as successes, not failures.
Whether your goal is to successfully integrate enterprise technology or to explore new methods of client service delivery, investing in these strategies can foster a culture of growth and innovation within your organization. This proactive approach not only enhances operational efficiency but also positions your firm as a leader adapting to the dynamic legal landscape.
