Complements, complications and commitment in client services

The boundaries of law firms are not what they once were. At one time, all mid-sized commercial UK firms had pretty similar structures and scopes of activities. Now, such firms are tending towards taking a more definite and distinctive position within the wider market for legal services.

The heart of this approach is often the selection of a specific combination of legal services and client sector focus. Firms seek to build capabilities that will give them a strong competitive position in their chosen areas and a brand that draws the right types of clients and legal talent to them.

Looked at in this way, many firms are specialising to a much greater extent than previously. And, although this can be hard to accept as it is happening, they are as a consequence narrowing the overall range of legal work for which they might expect to be selected by the overall universe of commercial clients.

That narrowing can look and feel to some as a negative step. But, ironically, it can be not only a viable strategy for the organisation to take as a commercial law firm, but also the basis for the firm to offer an additional range of services that go beyond those for which clients might previously have turned to law firms.

The idea is that, if clients have come to see a firm for its particularly strong knowledge and understanding of their sector, they may be willing to allow that firm to begin to provide other, related services where that specialist knowledge may be of further value.

These other, related services (we call them complementary services) can come in many forms, but are often built around activities such as strategic consultancy, risk and compliance management, database and records management, and bespoke training.

Addressing challenges

Several challenges arise in such an approach to diversifying, though. First, the services must genuinely complement the main work of the firm and not detract from it, for example by tarnishing the firm's 'premium provider' status in the eyes of clients.

Second, extra care will be required in the compliance area, as there will likely be issues under the SRA Code of Conduct or of overall authorisation and business structure.

Third, the way in which firms can best capture 'value' for themselves in providing these services may be different from the mainstream models of charging for legal services. This can make it harder to discuss charging with clients, track the value of work being done and demonstrate the value of the activities within the firm.

Fourth, innovation of any kind can be challenging from within an established organisation which has a long-settled view of what it does and how it does it.

For every enthusiast and advocate of new service lines, there will often be one or more individuals sceptical of their value (and they won't always be wrong). Strong commitment is therefore required in the early phases of such development to ensure that they can generate the momentum needed to carry them through the various challenges.

Innovation potential

At our firm, we have established a number of complementary service lines and created an internal community to share best practice as we learn what works and what does not, particularly as regards the challenges identified above.

For the time being at least, this strand of activity is an interesting set of experiments running alongside our core business. But, in time, it may become an integrated element of a wider professional services offering which is broader in its scope of activities, while retaining a strong focus on the needs of certain key client groups and enhancing the specialist knowledge we have of the issues faced by those client groups.

That's the idea but, as with all innovation, only time will tell whether it's actually got the potential we think it has.

Ian Jeffery is managing partner at UK law firm Lewis Silkin (www.lewissilkin.com)