News & insight on PSF

Six key insights on legal project management are offered by Dr Kishore Sengupta, Director of Executive Education and Reader in Operations Management at Cambridge Judge Business School. As law firm clients have raised their expectations of legal service consistency while demanding increased transparency and certainty over billing, there has been a growing demand for project management as an important component of legal service delivery. The law firm environment offers unique challenges for project managers, not least the high-profile and high-pressure nature of many projects. Whether it is a five-year fraud investigation or a multi-billion pound transaction spanning 45 countries, managing legal projects is not for the faint hearted. Drawing on his research on project management and the insight of some leading practitioners in this area, Dr Kishore Sengupta, Director of Executive Education that runs programmes including The Law Firm Partner as Leader and Leading Strategic Projects Successfully, offers six key insights relating to effective project management at law firms: Effective project management relies on a wealth of tools, but many law firms struggle to know where to start. It's essential to manage the unknown in complex legal matters, and that requires tools hard and soft – targeting both the analytical,…

Fear of the unknown is no excuse not to embrace change, says new research from Dr Kishore Sengupta. "People are paralysed by the unknown," says Kishore Sengupta, Reader in Operations Management at the Cambridge Judge Business School, "and lawyers especially live in a world of certitude and risk avoidance." But while embracing change does not come naturally to law firms, Sengupta's recent research into the future of the legal market reveals it is more important now than ever if the top 50 firms are to prosper. Over the past decade UK law firms have seen significant evolution. From the growing numbers of international mergers, to the impact of the Legal Services Act of 2007 and the pressures of the financial downturn, the top ranking firms have had change thrust upon them. This has largely been driven by ever-more cost conscious clients demanding extra value from their advisers. However, the prevalent view within companies and clients across the legal industry is that the pace of change within law firms is not in line with the rest of the market. Sengupta says that this is driven by a number of factors, such as unwillingness to consider alternative business models and an inability to…

Research from CJBS Lecturer Lionel Paolella suggests that law firm customers want a one-stop shop. "Jack of all trades, master of none" is an often-heard derogatory phrase, based on the perception that someone who is proficient at everything cannot also be a specialist. But it's not the perception of clients of the legal profession, according to new research. "Legal clients expect sophisticated services and are willing to pay higher prices for them," says Lionel Paolella, University Lecturer in Strategy & Organisation at Cambridge Judge Business School. "But when issues are more complex, we found clients assess a producer as a broader entity instead of looking at particular elements of expertise in isolation. Clients are actually looking for full-service legal providers and favour them more, based on their specific 'theory of value' – that is, identification of issues and solutions which correlates with their willingness to pay for them." Paolella's research, which examines 10 years of data in corporate law firms in New York, London and Paris, contradicts previous studies that suggest "category-spanners" are valued lower than organisations focused on a single aspect of law. "While it may be that a client is attracted to a firm offering a particular specialism,…

Author of Social Media & the Law, Laura Scaife explains why technology is not a law-free zone. From her CV, it's hard to believe that Laura Scaife, self-labelled "data privacy, cyber and social media specialist", is only 28. Author of the Handbook of Social Media & the Law, her LinkedIn profile is positively frightening, stuffed as it is with publications, TV appearances and media interviews on top of her day job as an associate at international law firm Addleshaw Goddard. How does she find the time to be so prolific? "I don't see it as work – I am fascinated by the interaction between the law and society. I studied Aristotle and was particularly struck by the phrase 'law is reason free from passion'. It seemed to me that as technology was developing, increasingly passionate views were forming part of the legal debate that could potentially inform the law." Laura regards her youth as a positive advantage, for she came of age alongside Facebook and then Twitter. While she was at Durham University, studying on an academic scholarship, she watched both gathering pace and realised that their increasingly widespread use among her peers was raising legal questions that – at…

For law firms, the focus has shifted to how, rather than where, the best work can be done. Law is undergoing the greatest geographic shift in perhaps the last 30 years. Business that used to be conducted in London or New York now takes place anywhere around the globe: across borders and across timezones. Anywhere, in fact, as long as clients feel they are getting a good service. It makes sense. Global firms want to cut costs, operate more efficiently across international time zones and provide tip-top client service. Consequently, the focus has shifted to how, rather than where, the best work is done. Elia Montorio, a corporate partner at DLA Piper, attributes that shift to the greater connectivity enabled by an increasingly online world. "While law firms have continued to grow both locally and globally, technology has made the business world a smaller place," she says. And that smaller world, she points out, provides greater opportunities for lawyers to work as part of international teams, and enables firms to offer more flexibility in terms of resourcing and pricing to their clients. According to Alexandrine Armstrong-Cerfontaine, head of the Luxembourg office at King & Wood Mallesons, working without borders and…

Antonia Croke, senior associate at Ashurst LLP, argues that culture change is possible. I wholeheartedly believe in diversity. I had a mother who worked and a grandmother who firmly believed in educating women, and I believe that if you give women the opportunity, they will demonstrate how valuable they are. Firms combat diversity challenges in different ways – some with quotas or targets, others with mentoring or sponsorship to give women the tools they need. I think you have to manufacture change from the top down so it can slowly reach a critical mass. When you start getting a more equal split of men and women in meetings and in boardrooms, then all of a sudden you have a different dynamic. At Ashurst, I've helped set up mentoring schemes for women, mixing junior and senior associates from different departments – all of whom have chosen to be there. You need to engage with mentoring to reap the benefits, but those benefits are real: confidence, and a support network within the firm. It's really hard to get it right and we need to review and revamp regularly. Working women need to share more knowledge, ideas and our networks with each other…

Some new firms are finding ways to ensure that a lawyer's professional life leaves room for their personal life. Flux finds out how lawyers, and their clients, have to adapt to flexible working. A few years back, Washington-based lawyer Maria Simon was watching her two-year old son playing. "Jack was in the corner just fooling around by himself. I asked him why he wasn't playing with his friends and he said: 'Mom, I have to finish these emails'. I realised he was mimicking my behaviour – which just wasn't what I wanted." Simon is a partner at the six-woman-strong Geller Law Group which is built upon "a near-evangelical determination", as she puts it, to show that parents can "nurture their professional ambitions while being fully present in their children's lives". Flexibility is key to the approach of a legal practice that was set up by co-partner Rebecca Geller. The firm does not have a physical office and so, if their lawyers need space, then a room is hired by the hour. "We want to be able to do interesting legal work but we want to do that on our own terms," says Simon. Simon and Geller describe themselves as "militantly…

Claire Clarke is managing partner of Mills & Reeve. Her vision for 2016 is to "take things up a gear". The legal sector is facing distinct challenges – not least, changing technology, increasing commoditisation and new entrants to the market. And as managing partner, I have been looking at what that means for my firm and for the marketplace. I think a lot of people can draft a legal agreement. Where a firm differentiates itself is the commercial and solution-focused advice it can give. You need to have a real understanding of your client's business and sector and where it's going – know what the up and coming issues are and how the client should be adapting or organising themselves to address them. And we need people who can listen and empathise with clients to understand what they need and develop relationships. One good example is the education sector: it's a constantly changing landscape and the law is adapting – there are pressures, for instance, in terms of the effects of immigration legislation, or the increasing consumerism of students. Increasingly education clients are operating in a more commercial space and not only need specialist legal advice but also many of…

The business case for diversity is unassailable, but now is the time for actions to speak louder than words. Why are there so few women at the top of the legal profession? Just one in five partners in top-20 firms is a woman, and just eight hold senior management roles in the top 50 firms, despite the fact that more women enter the profession than men. FLUX asked four senior lawyers for their take on the challenges and solutions. Janet Legrand, Partner at DLA Piper Janet Legrand was the first woman to be elected to the DLA Piper board, as well as the first woman in any leadership position in the global firm. She was senior partner and chairman of the firm’s board from 2009-2012. Firms need to be aware of being more representative of society, not just promoting in their own image. A richer range of perspectives makes for better decision-making. The lightbulb moment for me was, as a senior partner at the firm, reading the McKinsey Women Matter research in 2007. The basic thesis was that companies that have two or more women on their board or at senior executive level were empirically more successful. It also observed…

Dame Sandra Dawson, Professor Emeritus of Management Studies at the University of Cambridge Law and lawyers are on the move. From nomadic lawyering to outsourcing, and from northshoring to the much anticipated demise of billable hours, the next ten years will see huge change – and opportunity – for firms and practitioners. This is a sector in flux, and out of flux can come interesting, innovative thinking. What does this mean for lawyers at the cutting edge? Uncertainty, maybe. Disruption – of business models, and accepted norms – certainly. But we also have within our grasp a unique opportunity to interrogate every aspect of how law is practised. Is London the only place to be a legal superstar? What is the right balance between working face-to-face and working virtually? How do we give clients value? And how do we ensure they feel that they have got value? How do we compete with the accountants? Or in other jurisdictions? Those who find the most innovative, effective solutions will secure the future success of their firms. And in an environment that can only get more competitive, those who don't embrace change must fall away. We live in exciting times. Meanwhile, the Law…

Legal clients value law firms that straddle different areas of the law, finds study co-authored by Dr Lionel Paolella of Cambridge Judge Business School. Organisational experts have traditionally frowned upon "category spanning" – the provision of a broad range of distinct services – because it’s commonly seen as draining a producer firm's core appeal to audiences. Compared to "purer" competitors, category spanners have traditionally been more poorly rewarded and less feted, and conventional wisdom dictates that clients prefer more focused producers. Yet when it comes to corporate legal services, a study of hundreds of law firms in New York, London and Paris over a decade finds that this generalised theory just doesn’t hold up. The study – entitled "Category spanning, evaluation, and performance: revised theory and test on the corporate law market" – was recently published by the Academy of Management Journal. The co-authors are Dr Lionel Paolella of Cambridge Judge Business School and Rodolphe Durand of HEC Paris. "Particularly related to acquisitions, legal clients expect sophisticated services and are willing to pay higher prices for them," says Dr Lionel Paolella, University Lecturer in Strategy & Organisation at Cambridge Judge, whose research is utilised in the School’s Executive Education programmes…