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A firm’s capabilities

Firstly, a client will want to know that a firm actually has the ability to meet its legal needs. 

Expertise

To that end, a client may prioritise firms that have legal expertise in all the areas relevant to its business. For example, a shipping company would be more inclined to work with a firm that has a dedicated shipping practice, a bank might be more concerned about a firm’s debt finance and capital markets teams, a property developer might care more about a firm’s real estate, planning and construction capabilities, and a large multinational with legal problems spanning the full spectrum of specialisms may prefer a firm that is truly “full service” (i.e. a firm that has practice areas covering all the key areas of commercial law).

International reach

Moreover, a global client likely won’t want to coordinate dozens of different law firms when working on cross-border projects, so would want to know that the firm can carry out and effectively project manage work across all the jurisdictions in which the client operates. A client might therefore see a firm with offices in its key regions as a better fit, or a firm with ample prior experience working on multijurisdictional matters involving those regions, perhaps alongside a network of “best friend” firms.

Size

In addition, larger clients might pick a firm (in part) based on its size and – linked to this – its ability to flexibly resource large legal matters that might escalate on little notice. This might be especially important if the client often needs legal support in connection with large and complex disputes, investigations or due diligence exercises. A small law firm would probably struggle to complete an urgent legal matter that involves reviewing tens of thousands of documents within a tight timeframe, whereas a large firm with hundreds (or thousands) of lawyers may be better placed to pull it off. 

Ignition Law founder Alex McPherson points out however that an increasing number of law firms now outsource additional, flexible support when needed, enabling firms with traditionally limited capacity to take on larger matters (for example, some firms hire temporary freelance lawyers through agencies to work on projects such as large scale document review or due diligence exercises when the workload escalates).

On that note, ex-Fried Frank partner Laura Brunnen reiterates that it’s often not just about the “complexity”; it’s the size of the matter too. Buying a global corporate may not be overly complex in itself, but if the target company has many corporate entities and assets scattered across the world, it becomes a huge undertaking from a project management perspective – one that perhaps only a small selection of law firms are able to handle.

As a general caveat, ex-Freshfields partner Ben Staveley points out that prospective clients – especially in the case of large corporations with extensive experience of collaborating with external lawyers – will often choose different law firms for specific projects or transactions. To that end, larger clients tend to appoint a “panel” of law firms to work with in tandem (rather than a single law firm), with each firm on the panel focusing on different types of legal matters. This all means that prospective clients might not be interested in a law firm’s potential ability to cover their full range of present and potential future legal needs. 

Laura Brunnen adds that a firm’s capabilities are often seen as a given (for larger firms at least). Clients are usually more interested in how the firm works, and who specifically will be carrying out the work. 

In addition, Alex McPherson points out that some clients are happy to work with firms that have a narrower range of practice areas, provided that they have strong networks of trusted third parties to which they can refer clients who are seeking services that those firms can’t provide.

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