Intapp recently had the honor of partnering with Chris Fritsch of CLIENTSFirst Consulting, and David Freeman of the David freeman Consulting Group, in a webinar about business development techniques for the current times and how to practice empathy while selling. Intapp’s Darryl Cross, Head of Global Sales Enablement, introduced the concept of “protecting your core” during this presentation. Watch the short video above for a deeper dive on this concept and learn the essential skill that could make or break your fiscal year. 3 Key Steps to “Protecting Your Core” Stick to what you know Identify:…

Shrewd law firms leverage client satisfaction surveys both to create a conduit for new business and establish a backstop to prevent churn. Although many firms view the value that these surveys deliver with a healthy dose of skepticism, access to timely feedback from clients — while the window of opportunity to take action is still open — can be invaluable. When firms clear the resistance hurdle and decide to take advantage of client satisfaction surveys, they unlock not only the opportunity to evolve their services to align more tightly with client needs, but also the ability to seize opportunities to…

Although the pre-pandemic strength of private capital markets put private equity firms in a strong position to weather the current cycle of economic upheaval, these same firms are now witnessing deflated valuation, longer dealmaking cycles, and limited access to capital and financing. Despite these challenges, investors expect the market to stabilize soon, and private equity firms are shifting focus and fine-tuning strategy both to prevail and prepare for the flood of business when the market rebounds. For other professional services providers — including law, accounting, and management consulting firms — the current shifts within the private equity firm sector present incremental…

This spring has been filled with a myriad of virtual conferences. From home, we’ve been given the opportunity to attend more webinars and roundtables than we could physically muster if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic. Most recently, I attended the Artificial Lawyers’ Legal Innovators Online Conference, CLOC’s Legal Ops 2020: Building the Future of the Legal Function event, and the Legal Value Network’s State of Play of Legal Innovation and Client Value event. There was great content all around, brought by subject matter experts from firms, incubators within firms, in-house counsel, and alternative legal services providers. Throughout…

Talent Development In part 5 of this series, I illustrated some of the levers that leadership teams can pull to increase profit as they tackle the ‘wicked problem’ of continued success. This instalment explores how firms can more holistically develop talent as part of that same approach, highlighting some key areas for consideration. Establish a clear roadmap for continuously developing talent Until recently, talent development at professional service firms was rather ad hoc. The majority of firms, as Des Woods notes in his article ‘Identifying talent in professional services firms’, have relied upon the ‘up or out’…

In recent years, law firms have seen a proliferation of complex outside counsel guidelines (OCGs) governing the relationship between the firm and the client. OCGs can be a nightmare for a variety of reasons: Every client has its own self-interested contract terms that are often lengthy and impose non-standard, onerous obligations on the law firm. OCGs embody diverse obligations impacting the law firm in multiple areas — billing, expenses, staffing, reporting, information security, warranties, conflicts, confidentiality, and much more. Contracts run from tens to hundreds of pages. We hear stories of OCGs ending up in some random drawer where alarm-raising…

During this period of remote working, distance learning, and video conferencing, we’ve all been relying more heavily on technology than ever before. Whereas a video meeting with the colleagues you typically see every day would have seemed like an anomaly just months ago, online meetings and even virtual happy hours have become part of our daily schedules. With this increased reliance on technology to aid our day-to-day work and communications, we are also realizing greater opportunities to leverage the tools at our disposal, enabling us to work smarter and more efficiently. With technology, we can now achieve even more than…

As a firm expands into new markets, complexities created by geography-specific business requirements mandate an integrated global approach to conflicts assessment and clearance for both new and expanded matters. To seize opportunities and keep up with the accelerated pace of business, savvy firms are quickly moving to professionalize the conflicts-clearance role to support business agility. Creating a global footprint to assess and clear conflicts Historically, firms hired clerical teams to perform rote tasks related to conflicts searching and data management, working within close physical proximity and under direct supervision by leadership. Comprised of entry-level employees, these staff members typically did…

Savvy law firms are using gamification — adding game-like elements to tasks to encourage participation — as a key strategy for spurring engagement and tightening alignment for their marketing and business development teams. This is a step away from the traditional carrot-and-stick approach. Friendly competition, incentives, and awards are all great ways to motivate employees to get behind important initiatives and focus on key tasks that meaningfully move the needle. Successful implementation of gamification relies on a balance of creativity, clarity, and connection to the objectives at hand. Match the program to firm culture Every firm has a unique culture,…