The challenges besetting Big Law are of its own making. The industry overshot the needs of its clients and overlooked the effect of growth on the intensity of competition. The really frightening part? Recent surveys show Big Law is doing nothing to mitigate the threats to its prosperity and much to exacerbate them. A change of course is needed. It will require today’s leaders to bring more younger partners into leadership roles and to lead in a very different way.
Overshooting Clients’ Needs
Over the last two-plus decades, law firms developed and offered sophisticated bespoke services, at an ever-increasing price point, to a client set the bulk of which simply don’t need that sophisticated an offer and doesn’t get good value at the prevailing price point. As one eminent corporate practitioner told me “we’re not just protecting clients against a 100-year flood; we’re protecting them against a one in ten-thousand-year event.”
