Virtual Roundtable: Setting your strategy and widening your business scope

How are firms responding to the increasingly competitive landscape and ensuring they stay relevant?

Until recently, law firms haven’t had a necessity to adapt. Whereas now, clients just want legal services and are less likely to remain committed on a long-term basis. Doing what you have always done will not get you to where you need to be, thus law firms are increasingly looking for alternative and sustainable revenue generators to drive growth in the new decade.

• The law firm of the future isn’t going to be just a law firm, so where do you find yourself in this mix and how do you identify the right strategy for you?
• Reinventing your business model: is the corporatization of law firms on the horizon?
• Should you be funding and managing certain ideas and products separately from the LLP structure?  Where does ABS fit in?
• If as a firm you could cannibalise one area of your business to make room for a new revenue stream, what would it be?
• Law firms are no longer just about law: they do training, coaching, developing IT tools, consultancies; what do clients think about this, do they prefer the traditional firm or is this what they will be expecting from now on?
• To run a top-quality technical consultancy, it’s not enough to ask a lawyer to reskill or to train people. What type of experts do you need to create a consultancy arm of the business? Must it be a separate “arm” or can it be integrated?
• How are firms going to deal culturally and economically with attracting and bringing in people with different skill sets?

Facilitators:

Shane Gleghorn, Managing Partner, Taylor Wessing

Shane is the UK Managing Partner and Global Co-Chair of the board at Taylor Wessing. In the last 18 months of leadership, Shane has successfully delivered a new firmwide strategy, new business opportunities and an alternative route to market in the US through the firm’s relationship with Wilson Sonsini and opened a new UK office in Liverpool. He left Australia in 2001 to join Baker McKenzie in London and, soon after, was asked to join Taylor Wessing in 2006 to expand and lead its litigation practice. Before becoming UK Managing Partner in 2018, Shane co-led the firm’s international Disputes & Investigations group.  More recently, Shane has enhanced the leadership in the firm with the appointment of new board members to focus more on key areas of growth, including innovation.  He is focused on the sector strategy at the firm which mirrors its impressive client base in technology, life sciences and private wealth.

Catrin Griffiths, Editor, The Lawyer

Catrin Griffiths has been editor of The Lawyer, the award-winning title for the legal profession, since 2000. In that time she has widened The Lawyer’s coverage to include the global legal industry and led the magazine’s transformation into a major online brand. She won Editor of the Year at the PPA Awards in 2018. A Welsh speaker, Catrin studied French at university and recently completed a PhD in English Civil War literature. Outside her day job, she runs a choir and is a trustee of two charities, Orchestras Live and Jerwood Arts.