Four success components that mid-size law firms should consider
Mid-size law firms should consider culture, structure, compliance and tech in their 2024 strategy, according to Actionstep
During Actionstep’s “The Future of Mid-Market Law” event, hosted in London, law firm professionals and experts gathered to explore areas where midsize firms can adapt and find new ways to thrive despite (and even fuelled by) the challenges of scaling your firm. Four key opportunities for midsize law firms that surfaced at the event include: culture, structure, compliance, and technology. Here’s a recap of each theme:
1. Culture
There is a strong connection between culture and profitability within mid-size law firms. This stresses the importance of clear communication, effective delegation, and accountability within the firm. Clarity is vital — clear requests can help save time and, in turn, efficiency with tasks. Acknowledgement creates loyalty and accountability and ensures responsibility for tasks being completed. Delegation helps build a great firm culture when responsibility is transferred. The key is to follow through with transferring the responsibility.
2. Structure
Key steps to achieving a successful law firm journey include formalising business structures, leveraging marketing and business development, and prioritising people and culture. It’s no secret midsize law firms need to do more with less when competing with bigger law firms.
An important step in this process is formalising a business structure that will be followed and improved as your firm scales. These processes need to involve the right people at the right time and be paired with prioritising people and culture so that community comes naturally. When people are valued, clients are taken care of, and processes are followed, success will follow.
3. Compliance
Compliance challenges are no stranger to any business, but there are steps midsize law firms can take to implement an effective compliance strategy, which include setting clear expectations and providing quality training.
Fostering a culture of compliance might be the most important part of this strategy because without it, all your hard work doesn’t get followed. Excuses like “You can’t tackle that partner, they’re the biggest biller” or “They’re just old fashioned” can lead to big fines because your law firm wasn’t being consistently compliant.
Ways to create a culture that respects and follows compliance procedures include looking at leadership and management, being clear on risk appetite, holding people accountable, dealing with difficult conversations, incentivising compliance, having consequences for non-compliance, being transparent, encouraging staff to call out non-compliance and think carefully about the impact before you do something.
4. Technology
The role of modern technology in transforming law firms was also discussed, emphasising the need for integration and automation to optimise efficiency and productivity. Your law firm’s tech stack can easily be turned into a modern, flexible, scalable, connected, and robust technology ecosystem.
Without a tech ecosystem, your firm can experience rising costs, inefficiency due to duplicate efforts, mistakes or data cracks, lack of visibility, and complexity due to managing so many tools. To set up your firm’s ideal tech ecosystem, you need to create a tech inventory of all the tools your firm uses and categorise the purpose of your tech stack and ecosystem, which should support growth management, work management, and business management.
From there, identify pain points, gaps, and bottlenecks with your current tech stack, then must-haves, nice-to-haves, and opportunities for your new tech ecosystem. The final step is to envision your high-functioning tech ecosystem and ensure adoption within your firm.
Overall, the event provided valuable insights for midsize law firms seeking to adapt and thrive in a competitive landscape, encouraging attendees to explore these opportunities further. To read the complete recap of this event’s findings, go here.
