We see a trend in law firm business analysis toward incorporating more client-centric metrics into performance evaluation. Rather than an exclusive focus on traditional profit drivers like rate, utilization, and leverage, some firms are beginning to look at client outcomes and client perception of the value they receive from the law firm as an essential measure of performance. For firms that are interested in evolving to value-focused performance evaluation, there are three important initiatives to consider as part of the journey:
- Firms need to select and implement tools to understand and measure client outcomes.
- It’s now possible to use technology to capture and document a firm’s collective experience and make it easy to organize and communicate that experience as credentials. This technology, Experience Management, is becoming an increasingly common component of the MarTech stack.
- Perhaps most important is the ability to surface information from formerly isolated data stores and use that data to inform everything from business development to engagement strategy.
Many of our clients increasingly emphasize measuring client outcomes to understand satisfaction and loyalty drivers, leading to long relationships and steady work. We know that clients want more transparency and efficiency from law firms while expecting expert practice and positive business outcomes. Demonstrating an understanding of these expectations by implementing feedback mechanisms that explicitly measure the firm’s delivery on key service aspects reflects a commitment to a healthy relationship. Incorporating the results of post-engagement surveys into a performance evaluation can begin to turn the firm’s focus away from purely internal metrics.
Perhaps the most critical factor in delivering value for clients is seeking and winning the right business from the right clients in the first place. Understanding where and how the firm has been successful in the past and how its collective experience matches the requirements for future work is essential to laying the groundwork for successful service delivery and the level of client satisfaction that yields ongoing work in the future.
For this reason, firms are adopting Experience Management solutions that draw upon data from multiple sources to supercharge the pursuit of new business. It isn’t uncommon for an Experience Management solution to join up data from CRM, Intake and Conflicts, Financial Management, client satisfaction assessment tools, and third-party sources to provide a multi-dimensional picture of the firm’s ideal client and the nature and quality of services offered.
A key challenge to introducing value-focused metrics and powering Experience Management is the siloed nature of business development and new business intake processes across most law firms. These two functional areas are entirely different and typically rely on unique technology solutions to enable them. The reality, however, is that marketing and business development, intake and risk management, and feedback about client outcomes each touch on similar or related data over time. Both functions could serve the law firm better if they shared a common dataset. New business opportunities turn into matters, and matters eventually become pieces of experience that firms need to capture and document as credentials. Moreover, the risk database often contains abundant third-party data that could inform business development.
To support the law firm’s journey toward joining up formerly disparate datasets, Wilson Allen created the Client Development and Intake practice in October of 2020, wherein two previously separate teams now have shared leadership and a facility for knowledge transfer: one group is expert in the design, implementation, and support of Intake and Conflicts management technology solutions, and another is expert in the design, implementation, and support of MarTech solutions. The practice exists to support firms through the entire engagement lifecycle, including pursuing new business, onboarding it, evaluating outcomes, and documenting the firm’s experience. Meanwhile, we are working on exciting new analytics models and platforms, like data lakes and data estates, that will make it easier for firms to take maximum advantage of their information while managing access and usage with secure information governance.
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