Rethinking legal

This issue marks Briefing’s fourth birthday, and over the last four years we’ve covered the changes in the legal market driven by the low-growth, consolidating environment firms find themselves in after the recession. It has become, I think, a world that is, by legal business standards, competitive beyond all previous norms.

In this issue we analyse and discuss the pressures and the opportunities that legal businesses now face as they struggle to take market share from each other, and seek out growth and opportunity in existing and new markets. To that end we’ve asked general counsel as well as law firm management leaders for their views – a taste of the broadening of Briefing’s reach to come, and one I hope you like.

WHAT GCs REALLY WANT

BT’s legal leader talks to Briefing about what makes law firms attractive, what they should change to win more business, and why they are now competing with LPOs and in-house units. It’s a new game – and you play, or you go home

FIGHTING IT OUT

Declan Tan talks to operations leaders in law firms and general counsel in some of the world’s biggest businesses to find out how a fragmenting legal market is changing to meet shifting client needs, and how the competition in the legal market is tougher than ever

TOWARDS TOMORROW’S FIRMS

Deciding what your firm is – and, crucially, what it isn’t – will bring firms toward a more commercial and sustainable future, says Chris Labrey, UK country manager at Econocom