In today’s business climate, just about every Global 100 firm would identify building top-line growth as its paramount challenge. And that’s fine, as far is it goes: Strategically driven top-line growth will always be a sign of financial health. But market forces—most notably consolidation—demand that firm leaders address an even more pressing and vexing challenge: strengthening and expanding their firms’ bonds with talent and clients. I call it “stickiness,” in a nod to the nomenclature of Web-page design.
Increasing revenues by simplistically choosing partners based on their books of business and then rewarding them for expanding those portfolios won’t achieve stickiness alone. In fact, that strategy may lead to failure, because cost-sensitive clients who can easily avail themselves of cheap labor now drive much of the legal services industry.
