3 things every legal BD professional should consider
My key takeaways from the Centre for Legal Innovation and ALPMA: Australasian Legal Practice Management Association Innovation and Legal Tech week.
Thanks to Carl White, Mick Sheehy, Hilary Goodier, and Sarah El-Atm for your inspiration.
Legal BD professionals. How do innovation and legal tech affect you?
Last week I attended some fantastic sessions at CLI-ALPMA Innovation and Legal Tech Week and I identified three key themes that EVERY legal BD professional should be thinking about. I have asked some related questions below to help prompt your thinking.
1. ‘The sound of inconvenience’ is a regular sound amongst law firm clients. This was one of the many nuggets from Carl White, Chief Experience Officer at CXINLAW and reiterated by other speakers, especially in-house legal experts. Not making things convenient for clients can ultimately result in losing them.
Q1: How can you help make your firm’s service/product/experience convenient for clients? What steps can you take to identify issues and make the required changes?
2. Collaboration between firms will provide a competitive advantage. Mick Sheehy, Partner at PwC NewLaw pointed out this can be a tough one to get over the line internally when firms think they need to protect their IP. But if law firms don’t disrupt the market, others will. Hilary Goodier, COO at Ashurst Advance, cited their successful collaboration with CMS, DLA Piper, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells, and Latham & Watkins to develop an international arbitration protocol.
Q2: What opportunities do you have to collaborate with other firms to help drive change and achieve mutually beneficial results? Is there a particular client challenge that could benefit from a multi-firm collaboration?
3. Diverse teams perform better overall and a multidisciplinary approach to meeting client needs is critical. Sarah El-Atm, General Manager at August provided thought-provoking insights on the need for diverse thinking, curiosity, and adaptability. Teams comprising a mix of specialists will enable the firm to challenge convention and tackle client problems in different ways.
Q3: Is your firm using multidisciplinary teams to help deliver outstanding client service? If not, how can you better leverage the talent in your firm to meet client needs and expectations?
Any thoughts on these three key themes? Any examples of success? I’d love to hear from you.
Katherine Mountford is the Founder of KM Talent, a recruitment and career strategy business for Professional Services BD, Marketing, Comms and Innovation professionals. Katherine is an ex BD/Marketing professional who understands the benefits of finding, retaining, and developing great talent and enjoys providing a truly consultative, advisory service to firms across the globe.
Follow me on Twitter @kjmofo
Call: +61 (0)477 841640
Email: katherine@kmtalent.com.au