‘My expectation is that law firms understand my business, my needs, and my pain points.’ This statement from one GC sums up the working assumption for senior in-house counsel – that their external lawyers will be commercially savvy as well as legally proficient.
But, of course, business acumen is not always as black and white as knowledge of the law, so client endorsement of a firm’s commerciality can go a long way when it comes to building relationships.
But how to quantify that? Every year, Legal 500’s research team gathers hundreds of thousands of scores from clients on their satisfaction with the service law firms are giving them, providing a data-driven assessment of which firms are doing the best job on a variety of key metrics – including commercial knowledge.
Of the firms in the Global 100, WilmerHale, Milbank and Latham & Watkins score most highly for commercial knowledge, with the top five highest scorers in the LB100 including Freshfields, Kennedys and Leigh Day.
Breaking it down to just the 20 largest firms by revenue in the Global 100, Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden are second and third behind Latham, while for the LB100 top 20, Freshfields sits above Clifford Chance and Slaughter and May in second and third place respectively.
But what are firms doing well – and what not so well? And what do GCs mean when they say they want their advisers to be commercial?
Rightmove GC Emma Parr sums up her view on commerciality with four simple points: ‘Deliver on time, understand your clients’ businesses, anticipate their broader business issues and provide proactive insights.’
She elaborates: ‘I had a good example recently where one of our advisers alerted me to an emerging data protection development, which was helpful intelligence for me, but became doubly useful when I shared the insight with one of our product development teams, as it helped to unlock an issue we had been trying to solve.’
Former Deliveroo GC Chantelle Zemba (pictured) said that while value for money is one of her main considerations, commerciality is where that value really kicks in.
‘Legal analysis should form part of a broader opinion that takes into consideration the sector in which the company operates, the commercial backdrop, the political landscape, the individuals involved and the practical application of the law within that context. It also means facilitating fast decision making by cutting to the key points, helping to remove blockers and being a creative and clever sounding board.’
And the negatives? One deputy GC at a telecoms company criticised unfocused legal updates as ‘especially bad’.
‘Law firms often send out marketing that is not tailored at all to my business; the one-size-fits-all approach. When it is not marketing, but advice, this approach is especially bad.’
Not only does the advice need to be commercially focused, but the demands of a fast-paced business environment means that speed can sometimes trump absolute precision.
The telecoms GC continues: ‘There are circumstances in which the accuracy would require so much data-gathering it could take a couple of days – and sometimes I don’t have a couple of days. I accept unpolished advice off the hoof, because that’s what I need – speed can be more important.’
All of the scores in this article are compiled from referee responses collected during Legal 500 research. Benchmark scoring for our other criteria (lawyer/team quality, and sector and industry knowledge) and other sub-criteria is also available – we can provide data on a worldwide, jurisdictional, country-by-country, office or practice area perspective, with the option to select comparator firms. If you would like to know more, please contact [email protected] – we welcome all feedback on our data and what insights you would like to see.
