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PM Forum - London
Putting clients at the heart of your firm
"It's like driving to Gatwick to find your plane is taking off from Heathrow."
This was MPFs Richard Chaplin's reaction to the startling statistic that 75% of CEOs in firms with annual sales over US$500m are the ultimate decision maker in the hiring of outside counsel. With General Counsel registering 11%, this raised the serious question of whether law firms are focusing their client relationship efforts too heavily on the General Counsel and legal department when the CEO has such influence.
This was just one of the key "disconnects" between the client and law firm identified in the survey carried out in March/April by the Financial Times (FT) and the Managing Partners Forum (MPF).
The 433 survey response dataset from the FT readership and MPF membership was:
- 75% client and 25% law firm
- 60% Western Europe, 30% USA, 10% Rest of World
- 73 CEO and 45 Managing Partner responses
This provided the opportunity to assess differences in perceived importance between the client and the law firm across a series of indicators including law firm selection, relationships, know-how and performance monitoring.
Richard provided an analysis of the results and their implications. Some of the key findings were:
- Invest time in the CEO relationship - they have significant decision making power
- Clients want quick solutions - their No1 attribute for a healthy relationship
- Understand the clients industry - their No1 criterion for complex work
- Pricing - is important to clients but not critical as law firms appear to think
- Develop C-Suite links between the organizations - clients are asking for this with communications, finance and technology primary
- Better performance monitoring - clients want to see structured performance monitoring of your fee earners and linkage to compensation
- Know-How - getting your delivery channels correct is critical
Mark Landon, Managing Partner of the London office of Weightmans LLP, provided perspective on the results from "both-sides of the table", having also worked in-house at the Royal Mail. Mark expressed shock at the 75% CEO figure, especially in an environment where increasing professional procurement should reduce the CEO's personal view in the final decision to appoint.
It was recognised by the panel and audience that General Counsel are still important and often very senior within the organization but that firms should spend more time "out of the office" with CEOs and other senior members of the management team.
Whilst the results made for sobering reading, it wasn't doom and gloom and within the findings were some key opportunities to build relationships and capture market share, if law firms invest time and resources on the key areas of importance to the client.
And finally - don't forget about those CEOs ...
Rob Holmes
Squire Sanders Hammonds
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