Many law firms seem to have identified Brexit as a great opportunity to deliver novel high value services. How to stand out? 

Google search on key-words provides some interesting results:

• Law firm: About 131,000,000 results (0.84 seconds)
• Brexit: About 179,000,000 results (0.70 seconds)
• Law firm & Brexit: About 1,120,000 results (0.65 seconds)

So it is probably save to say that there are hundreds of law firms trying to deliver valuable Brexit services to their clients. The minimum these firms probably have done is a blog about Brexit. The more advanced firms will have done more to display their expertise on the matter. We will leave it to your marketing department to make sure that clients will find you first when Googling Brexit, as that is beyond the scope of this blog.

How to stand out?

How will you stand out and be the firm of choice when a client looks for legal Brexit advice? To answer this question, you will have to know what your clients are looking for.

Have you taken the time to explore what your clients are actually looking for? Have you asked: “What are you looking for? What are your immediate needs?”?

Why is that important?

Because by asking, and then carefully creating a new service that delivers on these demands, you ensure to deliver the high value services your clients are looking for.

Why ask?

You may wonder, why ask. Aren’t we supposed to be the experts?

Yes and no. Yes, you are supposed to be the expert when it comes to the answer to the question. I doubt your clients will also hold you accountable for knowing their priorities and concerns.

Will asking your clients about their needs and concerns makes you look weak? Unlikely. Instead, your clients are probably relieved when you ask them about their priorities or most pressing concerns. While making sure to address the client’s concerns, you can in addition raise the issues you think are actually most pressing. Perhaps those are already covered, or weren’t thought of yet. Again, only by asking you will find out.

Time consuming…

A sometime raised concern, asking first takes too much time. Really?

With our training program it takes 6-8 weeks to explore your clients needs and define an optimal solution. Perhaps most important, that time frame is also used to develop the team who thereafter is ready to start going after clients and address their concerns.

Where to start?

Where to start? Not with the client you know best. Instead, try to define a (new) group of clients for whom the pressure to act is most immediate. These target clients will potentially give you the head start that you will need to build up your experience quicker than any other law firm. Once you have gained this experience, your expertise will make you stand out and you have become an attractive partner for all other firms to follow.

It pays to think first and then act

Hence, it pays to think first and then act. However, such a process does require a structured approach.  A structured process will help you to act swiftly, even when opportunities pop-up unexpectedly. While without a process, you likely will waste valuable time discussing how to go about tackling the opportunity.

Manufacturing firms have known this for a long time. Their new product development processes are well structured. However, that is an unfair comparison.  What makes law firms different, is that for any new service, you are dependent on available talent to make anything happen. In addition, the scale at which you operate is of an entirely different magnitude. Together, making it even more important to have a structured approached and an organized new service development process.

Organizing4Innovation is proud to be the first to offer new service development education and support dedicated exclusively to the professional services. For more information see www.organizing4innovation.com