What is the Future of Mid-Market Law?

The future for mid-market law looks bright – we see law firms, their leaders and their teams being able to evolve and thrive in their chosen markets, consistently create exceptional client experiences, and routinely leverage technology and tools that work for their businesses now and tomorrow.

In August 2022, Actionstep hosted The Future of Mid-Market Law – an exclusive winter lunch event at 6HEAD overlooking the Sydney Harbor and Opera House. The event brought together over 60 mid-market law firm leaders and legal industry experts to connect and consider some pithy topics relevant to shaping the future of mid-sized law firms.

Four thought-provoking speakers shared their insights on how to tackle the challenges mid-market law firms face today, including the pressure to: adopt to new ways of working; exceed client expectations; and create exceptional workplaces for their employees. It was clear this community of leaders were excited to connect with their peers and bring thoughtful ideas back to their firms.

Here are our top takeaways from the event and our expert speakers.

The Topics

Law Firm Transformation Checklist

Peter Dombkins – Director, PwC NewLaw

Peter Dombkins explored key areas law firms need to plan for to modernize and allow evolution to be the norm.

The environment for mid-market law firms is changing at an accelerating rate. Leaders need to evolve and adapt.

However, there are many challenges that can slow down evolution and adaptability in law firms. This can include downward revenue pressures, upward cost pressures, and the impact of new ways of working and technology. What can law firms do to counter these increasing challenges?

Evolving your law firm to mitigate challenges is all about your employees.

• The importance of personal relationships: you can’t broadcast strategy in your law firm and expect it will be adopted if you don’t have input and buy-in from employees.
• Personalize what leading change and evolution means to target decision makers at different levels: put capital on the line by ensuring leaders across the firm at different levels are motivated to lead transformation and evolution as part of their own success
• Communicate processes and start small: Ensure everyone is on the same page and have a clear foundation for success. You must walk before you run.

How Leaders Lead

Andrea Foot, Non-Executive Director, Coleman Greig Lawyers

Andrea discussed how to create space for true leadership at Mid-Market law firms and the importance of alleviating the burden of administrivia for leaders.

One of the biggest barriers to successful change or transformation in businesses is fear. Fear of speaking up or sharing a contradictory point of view, fear of admitting a mistake or identifying a need for a course correction. The reasons for these fears are often down to two things – an individual leader’s lack of confidence in their own knowledge versus their peers or a cultural tendency to blame others or see innovation as a failure if not executed perfectly first time.

How to remove these barriers is rooted in trust and psychological safety in teams and in leadership.

There are five key ways to create psychological safety and an environment of trust:

• Show vulnerability as a leader
• Boost your listening and observing skills
• Be curious and not judgmental
• Destigmatize “failure”
• Create change through leadership - people watch their leaders very closely and use this as a template for what is acceptable behavior

Andrea asked, “As a leader, what are you doing that might be adding to your teams sense of psychological safety and what could you to support an improvement across your law firm?”

Point Solutions vs. Ecosystems and Why Mid-Market Law Needs the Latter

Lisa Dowie – Chief Customer Office, PEXA

What is the right ecosystem of tools to support your firms' ambition? Focus on what you want to be, not what you want to do.

Lisa differentiated between point solutions and ecosystems: Point solution tools solve one problem at one time for your law firm. They require double entry, don’t connect teams, and silo off important information. Because they only solve problems for your business at one given point in time, they don’t evolve with your business and often come with costly customizations.

An ecosystem is a tool that anticipates many problems and solves them with you as your business grows and transforms.

Point solutions can often be disguised as ecosystems, so law firms should be aware of the differences.

What outcomes should you look for when evaluating an ecosystem?

• Adaptability: An ecosystem solution should adapt and evolve with you to support your law firm’s needs.
• Integration: Ensure that all tools can seamlessly talk to one another.
• Flexibility: The solution should allow other tech partners to connect with the platform.
• Accessibility: You should have access to your data when you enter it into any solution.

With that in mind, what should ecosystems practically do for your law firm?

• Enable collaboration and accessibility to information across your team.
• Enhance client experience and provide an end-to-end view of client interactions.
• Bring employees and happy customers together in one ecosystem.

The right ecosystem should solve problems for your law firm today and evolve with you to solve them tomorrow.

Client Experience in Mid-Market Law

Carl White – Director, PwC NewLaw

What does good client experience feels like. How do you know if good is good enough?

As you know, there is no shortage of lawyers, so how do you stand out and differentiate yourself amongst your mid-market competitors? The answer is client experience.

Every touchpoint you have with a client on their journey with you is an opportunity to make or break their client experience. You could do well in the pillars of efficiency, expertise, and economy, but evoking positive emotion and bringing a smile to the face of the customer is essential and will bring them back time and time again.

Key Elements of Client Experience:

• Understand your clients and their expectations of service. In today’s consumer centric world, people can track everything about their client journey, and it doesn’t matter what the service is – they will compare it.
• Define your service promise. In order to fulfil your promise, it must be clear and executed by your team consistently across every step of the way.
• Ensure employee experience is positive as well. You can’t have a great client experience without a great employee experience – these are the people who really bring service to life.
• Evaluate where you are with your client experience and employee experience now. Surveys, interviews – just asking! - will help you to plan for the future and build up a consistently positive experience.

Ready to Move Your Firm into the Future?

The Future of Mid-Market Law event may be over, but you can still learn about modernizing your firm and how to help your firm evolve and adapt to any market challenge and opportunity.

Find out how Actionstep can help by getting in touch with our team.

Schedule a demo today.