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When backed into a corner, businesses tend to go in either one of two directions. They back down, retreat, and rely on what they have always done to get through. Or they collaborate, problem-solve and create innovative new services and solutions. If the last 18 months has taught us anything, it’s that you want to be the latter group.

This sink or swim scenario also applies to law firms. Covid-19 has forced lawyers to start working outside of their comfort zones in order to help their clients get through one of the toughest periods of recent history. As well as being lawyers, they’ve also morphed into trusted advisors, consultants, project managers and tech experts.

As a result, large law firms have coped overwhelmingly well throughout the pandemic – in 2020, the value of the UK legal services market remains largely unchanged at £36.7 billion, according to .

However, the gloves are now off and the precedent has been set. Clients will now expect more from their law firms than ever before.

The legal sector is notoriously siloed – to the point where there are siloes within siloes, or practice area niches within practice area niches. But now is the time for law firms to take ownership of a specialism or niche by becoming an expert in everything and anything that falls under its umbrella.

Lessons learnt from the Big Four accounting firms

While they get lumped into the same sector, the type of legal services offered by the Big Four accountancy firms and other alternative providers are noticeably different from what you’d see at a Top 100 law firm.

The Big Four tend to go for lower-value, more automated work, which isn’t something that would appeal to a large law firm – but their approach is where traditional firms could learn a thing or two.

Back in the 1990s when the Big Four first entered the legal market, they were able to do so quite easily due to their close proximity to the finance directors and legal counsels at large businesses – they saw a need and offered an internal solution.

Now, a quarter of a century on, and the Big Four are using the same exact value-adding approach but with a tech spin, and they’ve won some impressive work.

Report: Are the Big Four reshaping the future of legal services?

According to Law 500, PwC Legal UK won international business reorganisation work with gas and oil company BP Plc and Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido. KPMG Law worked with Sainsbury’s on an international reorganisation project. Deloitte Legal is working with Fujitsu, BT, EE and Ikea, while EY Law has partnerships with Nokia, Tesco and pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme.

But instead of thinking like lawyers, these firms are applying their digital expertise and business acumen to the legal sector.

“Our strategy is very much rooted in the needs of the client to be offered solutions and not just advice,” says Emily Foges, Lead Partner for Legal Managed Services at Deloitte.

“The vision for Deloitte Legal has always been that you bring together high-quality legal advice with legal management consulting, legal managed services and legal technology. This way you can provide a complete end-to-end service to the client and achieve the outcomes they are looking for, not just give them advice on those outcomes.”

Law firms use the latest tech to diversify their legal services

To add more value to their clients, law firms are continuing to invest in technology. In the last 12 months, over half (55%) of SRA-regulated law firms improved or increased their use of existing technology while a third (35%) introduced entirely new technology, according to a July 2021 study titled by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the University of Oxford.

Interestingly, a third of law firms (37%) are applying advanced technology such as automated documents, interactive websites and artificial intelligence (AI) to the legal profession. The same study also revealed the most common new technology in the pipeline at law firms is online portals for matter status updates, interactive websites to generate legal documents and chatbots or virtual assistants.

And while technology adoption is rife amongst law firms, the report was quick to point out that technology and innovation don’t always go hand-in hand.

For instance, two-thirds (67%) of law firms introducing new services also introduced new technology, but the other one-third did not. In addition, 65% of those with marketing innovation and 45% with delivery innovation also introduced new technology while the remaining did not.

The point is that there are other ways to develop new services that do not necessarily require new technology, such as combining legal and non-legal services into one to create integrated solutions. This could be anything from legal project management services to risk advisory services.

To steal a chapter from the Big Four’s book, it’s about constantly considering your clients’ needs and catering your services towards them, rather than introducing new technology for the sake of it.

Becoming go-to knowledge experts for your clients

Modern organisations need more from their law firms than they have in the past. They need solutions to all sorts of problems. They need legal knowledge and expertise that spans across the board. They need a law firm that is willing to become an expert in anything and everything.

But law firms can’t do that on their own. Despite living in an era of unprecedented access to information and knowledge, lawyers are under extreme pressure to ensure the information they are providing clients with is accurate, up-to-date and relevant – and in a short time period.

Law firms need to provide their employees with access to the latest legal research and a legal database that helps them to work effectively and efficiently.

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