Page 50 - 2019 - Leaders in Legal Business (n)
P. 50
Law Firm Business Strategies
Timothy B. Corcoran1
Principal, Corcoran Consulting
Group
Every successful business must periodically review and adjust its service offerings in light
of changing market dynamics. New entrants pose threats to entrenched players; emerging
technology automates at a low cost what was once a lucrative manual undertaking; and leaders
must engage in continuous game theory, acting and reacting to changing circumstances and
competitors’ moves. In the global legal marketplace, rapid changes have increased the pressure on
law firms and law departments alike to examine what and how they deliver legal services to clients,
and leaders of these organizations must step up their game.
Redefining Strategy
In prior years, with near unlimited
demand for legal services, legal services
strategy required less rigor to identify new
markets and new offerings. For law firm
leaders, strategy was more closely aligned
with branding and positioning — what do
we want to look like in the future — with
the expectation that whatever we choose to
be, we will be. For law department leaders,
strategy often followed the cadence of
corporate strategy: decentralizing and
aligning in-house counsel with business
units one year; centralizing and consolidating legal services the next; but always with an eye on
slowing the growth of overall legal services spending. As a result, the strategic planning process
carried with it an unstated perspective: “We lawyers are here to stay, for what we offer will always
be necessary.” The growth plans that resulted were quite often tactical in nature.
For law firm leaders, there was little need to engage in an organized process of internal
advocacy, aligning the firm’s capital investments toward the practices, markets, and resources that
generated the best return, for all practices generated increasing revenue year after year. Indeed,
many firms have only recently begun to calculate profit margin at the practice or matter level, so
it was often impossible or highly impractical to measure performance in any way other than top
line revenue growth. Strategy plans, therefore, focused primarily on tactics to raise the firm’s
visibility in target markets, employing vague financial metrics to measure performance, with
1 Timothy B. Corcoran is the principal of Corcoran Consulting Group, LLC and served as the 2014 president of the international Legal Marketing
Association. A former CEO, he specializes in helping law firm and law department leaders adapt and profit during a time of great change. He
authors Corcoran’s Business of Law blog and can be reached at +1.609.557.7311 and tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.
35
Timothy B. Corcoran1
Principal, Corcoran Consulting
Group
Every successful business must periodically review and adjust its service offerings in light
of changing market dynamics. New entrants pose threats to entrenched players; emerging
technology automates at a low cost what was once a lucrative manual undertaking; and leaders
must engage in continuous game theory, acting and reacting to changing circumstances and
competitors’ moves. In the global legal marketplace, rapid changes have increased the pressure on
law firms and law departments alike to examine what and how they deliver legal services to clients,
and leaders of these organizations must step up their game.
Redefining Strategy
In prior years, with near unlimited
demand for legal services, legal services
strategy required less rigor to identify new
markets and new offerings. For law firm
leaders, strategy was more closely aligned
with branding and positioning — what do
we want to look like in the future — with
the expectation that whatever we choose to
be, we will be. For law department leaders,
strategy often followed the cadence of
corporate strategy: decentralizing and
aligning in-house counsel with business
units one year; centralizing and consolidating legal services the next; but always with an eye on
slowing the growth of overall legal services spending. As a result, the strategic planning process
carried with it an unstated perspective: “We lawyers are here to stay, for what we offer will always
be necessary.” The growth plans that resulted were quite often tactical in nature.
For law firm leaders, there was little need to engage in an organized process of internal
advocacy, aligning the firm’s capital investments toward the practices, markets, and resources that
generated the best return, for all practices generated increasing revenue year after year. Indeed,
many firms have only recently begun to calculate profit margin at the practice or matter level, so
it was often impossible or highly impractical to measure performance in any way other than top
line revenue growth. Strategy plans, therefore, focused primarily on tactics to raise the firm’s
visibility in target markets, employing vague financial metrics to measure performance, with
1 Timothy B. Corcoran is the principal of Corcoran Consulting Group, LLC and served as the 2014 president of the international Legal Marketing
Association. A former CEO, he specializes in helping law firm and law department leaders adapt and profit during a time of great change. He
authors Corcoran’s Business of Law blog and can be reached at +1.609.557.7311 and tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.
35
