Briefing LITL 2021 partner comment: Investing for the future – Price rising as priority, by Intapp
It is interesting that some responses here have shown that pricing and profitability is considered a high priority for firms over the next 18–24 months. This tallies with our own experiences when talking to law firms: a focus on key client programmes and ensuring that the work they deliver is profitable.
Pricing matters accurately, based on meaningful data, such as insights from historic matters, is proving invaluable to this process. We see a huge requirement to identify areas that are more prone to scope-creep and for pre-warning on profit erosion. To this point, ‘staffing and the utilisation of lawyers’ is also highlighted as a key priority for firms, reaffirming that managing which resource delivers the work will have a significant impact on successful client outcomes and profitability of the matter.
It is interesting to note that another of the priorities is improving the pricing skills of lawyers. Lawyers are often conducting pricing conversations without the necessary information and background to ensure those conversations result in the desired outcome. However, this also highlights that firms aren’t investing enough in building their pricing functions to support lawyers (certainly not when compared to US firms), and where those functions are available there is limited capacity. In a recent conversation with one pricing director, we were told that where the pricing team is involved in the deal, not only are they more likely to succeed in winning the deal, it’s also more likely that it will be delivered profitably.
This sponsor comment was taken from Briefing Frontiers: Legal IT landscapes 2021. To read the full report, click here.
