Law Firm of the Future: case study

Beachcroft LLP is a national commercial law firm, with over 1,400 staff throughout the UK, including 145 partners. The firm has a broad range of clients, delivering integrated legal services in six main groups: health and public sector, real estate and building, financial institutions, consumer goods and services, industrial goods and services, and technology and telecommunications.

The firm’s strong reputation for client focus (undertaking ‘trusted adviser’ work for major national and international organisations) and its broad client base, requires the practice to attract and retain a wide mix of talent and skills. This requires a dedicated strategy of attraction and retention; not only of the brightest legal minds, but also of those with an acute eye for business. The company’s talent strategy reflects its business needs: ‘to attract people who always exceed our clients expectations’.

Jeffery Ng (JN), information director, and Phil Cousins (PC), HR director, talk to Managing Partner about Beachcroft’s drive for client focus, fight for talent, and future vision of where legal firms needs to pay attention to the technology that drives the industry.

As firms compete to win and retain business what do you think makes successful firms stand out from the crowd?

JN: A successful firm will need to have a strong reputation and brand. They will need to be seen as a leading firm in the sector. They will have a strong focus on client-led service delivery rather than product. They will also require a talent strategy which concentrates on developing committed and creative lawyers.

PC: It is becoming increasingly important for firms to ensure that the skills of their people match the requirements to achieve their business objectives. Also, the top talent will need more than just the core skills required to do their job. Lawyers who have a broader business understanding are going to be crucial in helping to deliver the future plans of many law firms. It is likely that the future leaders will come from this group of people. However, it is also important to look beyond the simplistic assumption that everyone within your organisation requires career progression – in many cases, people are looking for interesting work or seeking a better work/life balance.

JN: Successful firms are also firms that are very client-focused. You need to provide more than just a product to your client; you must demonstrate that you understand their business and the market in which they operate. Frequently, firms assume that understanding the law is all that is required.

With these differentiators in mind, how are you looking to develop in these areas to move you further towards this ‘firm of the future’ vision?

PC: The requirement for client focus demands that partners in the practice fully understand client relationship management, and they have to develop a robust understanding of what makes marketing and sales work. We need to equip them with broader business skills, thus making sure they understand the practice through the sector they work in so that they are able to demonstrate to our clients they understand the issues that affect them. This means that they can begin to anticipate issues and suggest preventative interventions rather than reactive solutions. This is increasingly important in a business environment where regulation is so pervasive. Helping clients avoid becoming a casualty of these sorts of minefields will be invaluable to them – and will help to secure fantastically strong relationships based on trust. We have a robust business-training programme to ensure our partners understand the wider business and sector issues.

JN: We strongly believe in diversity, flexibility and corporate social responsibility and we believe that these factors matter to talented lawyers. We are also one of the few practices that have a flexible-working policy. We have recruited BT WorkStyle, which is seen as a leader in flexible working, to help with our flexible-working programme. Flexible working is not only about part-time working or home working. It is about the ability to work flexibly from various locations and breaking away from the mould that the only place you can work is in the office. Flexible working is also about creative use of office space, which is designed to encourage greater fluidity and dynamism. Technology provides us with the infrastructure for flexible working, but this is more about a cultural change than purely IT.

Where do you think technology fits within this vision of a firm of the future?

PC: It is crucial. It is of course self evident that it is now implausible for any serious enterprise to operate without a substantial IT infrastructure.

JN: Technology will be pivotal as the new generation have grown up with computerisation. It will be less about how to use a computer, and more about how we exploit IT to gain competitive advantage. The use of technology will become a key differentiator among legal firms. External capital is likely to enter into the legal market, and this will lead to an expectation of higher return from investments. This will mean that successful firms will be the ones that work smarter in order to increase productivity from the workforce. We expect to see shorter lead times, greater commoditisation, reduced costs, as well as larger rewards for major transactional work. The cost of compliance, and doing business will increase as a result of legislation. In all these areas, technology has a key role to play to differentiate the leading firms from the rest of the market.

Clients will demand greater access to their cases, and this form of technology is key to providing added value to clients.

PC: However, the ability for instantaneous broadcasting of information highlights a massive security issue. This is also combined with a threat to business continuity. If your network fails or your PCs crash then, simply put, your business can’t function. Firms that are not able to convince their clients they have robust security and risk-management regimes (in place and enforced) will suffer. Unsurprisingly the push has already come from public-sector clients and inevitably the private sector will follow.

Who within the firm is pivotal to meeting this vision? How do you think the role of IT within a progressive law firm has changed in the past 10 years?

JN: The vision and strategy should be set and driven by the managing partner and members of the board, but it requires key stakeholders, such as partners and managers, to be aligned to these same objectives.

IT has changed from a necessary evil into a strategic element of the business. IT can no longer be optional, and the ability to use technology will become a key factor in the recruitment and retention of people. Ten years ago a senior secretary could be running an IT department, but in the future the IT director will need to posses wider business skills in addition to technical skills.

Outsourcing is also likely to increase in future. With external capital injections, we expect to see firms focusing a lot more on the bottom line. The bigger a firm gets, the more it will need to consider outsourcing as a means of controlling costs, as well as the need to be more scalable. Also, external investors, key stakeholders and non-executives will expect enhanced returns and there will be a greater drive for efficiency and corporate transparency.

PC: I agree entirely with Jeffery – the lead must come from the top.

Where will your firm be in 10 years?

JN: I expect Beachcroft will be significantly larger in ten years’ time. It will be a far more substantial entity. It will have adopted a corporate structure, similar to that of city banks or financial institutions, rather than a legal practice.

PC: While we do intend to be larger, we also intend to remain a great place to work. In any changes in business you must look to retain, as far as possible, elements that work well. As Jeffery said at the start, what makes a firm stand out is a strong reputation and brand. These aspects apply to the way that the people who work within the practice see us as well as our clients. In other words, it just as much about being a strong employer brand as it is a supplier brand.

JN: The next 10 years will see greater changes in the professional-services world than we have seen in the past 300 years, and it will be full of surprises too.

Both: And of course, we will both be happily retired by then!

Jeffery Ng is a member of the core management team at Beachcroft. He is responsible for the business-support services units encompassing information resources, technology, IT, property management and facilities.

Phil Cousins joined the firm in 2000 as HR manager. Previously he worked in the financial services sector in NatWest, where part of his role saw him provide HR support to the finance director up until the merger with the Royal Bank of Scotland.