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Value for money

Clients are ultimately paying for legal services, so will also care about fees, at least to some extent. Clients won’t necessarily seek out the cheapest firm, as cheaper firms might lack the requisite capabilities and experience. However, clients will want to receive value for money, which can mean different things to different businesses.

Unique expertise

For large clients navigating complex legal problems, value for money might be derived from the fact that a law firm is able to offer some of the world’s best lawyers to help solve particularly complex or novel legal problems (i.e. the types of problems that cheaper firms would struggle to solve). 

Low rates and fixed fees

Clients with simpler legal needs may instead perceive “value for money” as meaning lower fees or more cost certainty, so might prioritise law firms that charge cheaper hourly rates, offer discounts (e.g. in return for those clients regularly allocating decent volumes of work), or are willing to work on a fixed fee basis (note however that fixed fee quotes are often subject to various caveats to protect law firms in the event that projects escalate beyond what was initially anticipated).

Adoption of legal technology

Clients might also assess the extent to which firms have adopted legal technology, for example to automate certain workstreams and simplify project management processes. Implementing technology in this way can reduce the number of human hours needed to complete legal matters, which can help to keep fees down (given that fees are usually based on the number of hours worked by lawyers). Although clients may appreciate the value in paying high hourly rates for expert human input, they may feel differently when it comes to more administrative, labour-intensive work.

Value-added services

In addition, clients might consider the value-added services that law firms are willing to provide (i.e. additional services and benefits that clients won’t necessarily have to pay for). For example, some law firms deliver free training sessions for their clients’ in-house legal teams, publish regular industry or legal updates (this might be via email newsletters, podcast episodes, YouTube videos etc.), invite clients to round table discussions focused on issues and developments relevant to their businesses, or provide secondees to help clients with their day-to-day legal needs. 

Note that “secondee” in this context means one of the law firm’s lawyers who is temporarily “lent out” to a client – usually free of charge – and tasked with working exclusively on that client’s own legal matters (often in that client’s offices, as if they were one of that client’s employees).

As a more general point, Laura Brunnen adds that there has been much talk across the legal industry over the past few years about focusing pricing models more on output and value, rather than billable hours. It will be interesting to see whether this proposition gains more traction in the future.

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