Delivering high quality legal services

In addition, a firm’s competitive advantage will depend on its ability to deliver legally correct, high-quality work, which – especially for large firms that focus on complex, multijurisdictional work – will depend on its ability to attract and retain the best legal minds. To achieve this, firms must have in place the right compensation structures (including salaries, bonuses and benefits), culture and working environment, and professional support (including training programmes, internal resources and business support functions). 

Note that different lawyers have different priorities, so firms must figure out what matters most to the types of lawyers they want to attract and retain. For example, some lawyers prioritise remuneration above all else (although arguably less so these days), whereas others might care more about the training, the culture, the nature of the work, flexibility (e.g. the ability to work from home or choose their working hours), or their work/life balance more generally. 

Ex-Freshfields partner Ben Staveley points out that a firm’s approach to remunerating its lawyers can also have an impact on its ability to offer clients a totally uniform and cohesive service. For example, if a firm rewards its partners based predominantly on the amount of work that each partner brings in, a partner may be less inclined to support other partners and teams across the firm on matters brought in by others. Similarly, if firms treat different offices or practice areas as separate “profit centres” and allocate remuneration (e.g. bonuses) to lawyers in those offices and teams accordingly, lawyers across the firm might be less inclined to collaborate on matters that won’t count towards their own office’s or team’s profit figures.

Legal technology can also help to improve the quality of legal services, for example by enabling firms to produce more consistent output, better capture and share internal knowledge and expertise, improve communication, cooperation and collaboration with clients (and colleagues), reduce the risk of human error, and more. For these reasons, there has been significant investment in developing and/or adopting technology. And some firms do this better than others.

Ability to respond effectively to trends and developments

Finally, a firm’s competitive advantage might depend on its ability to effectively adapt and respond to developments, threats and challenges. For example, firms that are able to effectively utilise artificial intelligence, harness data insights, implement robust protection against cyber security threats and so on will likely be better placed to compete as technology continues to evolve and play a greater role in how businesses operate.