Legal Spending: The Desire for Predictability
Clients are looking for better, faster and cheaper services, but what they expect first and foremost is better predictability in their legal expenditure. The shifting realities of the corporate environment are forcing law firms to revise their internal operations in much the same way as their clients have to.
Over time, lawyers have had to develop their business acumen and provide legal advice aligned with their clients' strategic goals. At the same time, clients have been consistently demanding greater efficiency, consistency and predictability.Predictability obviously implies that lawyers can no longer just give clients various options; external counsel needs to look ahead to the outcome of implementing a strategy and go for it. So far business people have been left alone with the execution, but today we talk about risk-sharing. In our clients' eyes, this goes hand in hand with predictability. When these two ingredients—risk-sharing and predictability—are part of the agreement between legal advisors and their executive counterparts, then—and only then—can their relationships be built on trust.
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