In the second of a two part series, Mike Henley, outsourcing expert at PA Consulting Group, having discussed the large scale changes afoot in the legal industry, assesses how a firm should go about flexing with the industry.

These dynamics are driving market changes which are fundamental and are likely to be permanent. As a consequence, firms who do not emerge from the recession in the winner’s enclosure will find it very difficult to recover from that position. Therefore the decisions being taken now by law firm management and partners will determine the long term destiny of their firm.

If we are truly in a period where several dynamics are converging to force the fundamental and systemic re-shaping of the legal market and therefore the law firm model, the response must be revolution, not evolution, and all embracing, not marginal. Therefore the single most important issue [right here, right now] for a law firm is not only identifying the right strategy or solution; it is establishing whether the firm is capable of grasping and understanding the scale of the change required and, even if it is, that it has the skills, resources and collective will to manage and deliver change of that scope and complexity.

This is a difficult issue for many firms. The law firm model has been with us for a long time, largely unchanged. Most lawyers have been going about their business of helping and advising clients in much the same way for most if not all of their professional careers. What are contemplated here are changes at an organisational level which will depend for their success upon the willingness and ability of each individual within that organisation to embrace that change sincerely and with true commitment.

That means partners (every single one of them without exception) have to accept and lead fundamental change in the way they interact with clients, deliver services, manage their people and are remunerated. The key challenge for senior management is to mobilise and motivate able and opinionated partners and lawyers, when the consequences for those individuals are likely to involve turning their professional lives upside down.

Further the new landscape is unlikely to be a fixed, stable target; rather like most other market places it will be constantly evolving picture. The risk therefore is that in adopting specific solutions a firm will find that if and when it has delivered its plans, the market has moved on. Therefore the change dynamic within the business needs to be a constant, embedding agility and continual renewal to meet the evolving and changing features of the market, and it’s competitive dynamics.

What is required is nothing less than transformation, at an organisational and an individual level. It is only when a firm has got to grips with the ability of its people to change truly and wholeheartedly, and continue to accept change as part of business as usual, that it will have created an environment in which it can confidently predict that any solutions it decides upon will in fact be implemented and adopted on a sustained basis. Without that environment it will not matter how good any strategy or solution is; the chances are it will fail.