Persistent pressure on clients to keep a lid on costs means obtaining value for money from external advisers is more important than ever – so which firms are doing the best job delivering on value?

Data collected by the Legal 500 has found that just one in three clients believe their external counsel provided better value for money over the past 12 months.

The data, compiled from responses from hundreds of thousands of clients during the annual Legal 500 research, also reveals the individual firms that are most highly rated across a host of client service metrics, including value, billing and efficiency, amongst many others.

Looking at client scores across value, billing and efficiency as a whole, the top-scoring firms in the top half of the Global 100 by revenue are Davis Polk, Wilson Sonsini, Paul Weiss, Goodwin and Paul Hastings.

Breaking down the data into sub-categories highlights other firms that are highly rated for more specific metrics such as resourcing, communication and billing transparency.

For this article, LB spoke to some of the top-rated UK-heritage firms in the Global 100 to find out the factors behind their high scores.

Bang for your buck

Under the value, billing and efficiency umbrella, the five metrics that Legal 500 referees are asked to score their law firms on are: billing transparency; value for work done; communication & case/matter management; appropriate resourcing; and efficiency in delivering the legal product.

Of those five metrics, Herbert Smith Freehills ranks top among UK-heritage firms (of which there are 18 in the Global 100) for both appropriate resourcing and communication & case/matter management.

HSF director of global workforce planning strategy and implementation Helen Hopkin attributes this in part to the firm’s commitment to building a dedicated team to handle delivery.

‘The original business case was to build out a team of 20 over three years’, she says. ‘We’re two years into that three-year plan now. We have resource managers in all our bigger practice groups now, and we’re still on a journey of rolling out resourcing across all practice groups.’

Hopkin’s team has access to a wealth of information on clients, finances, and staff, and they use that data to identify opportunities to streamline resourcing.

She explains: ‘We look for people who are highly utilised or underutilised, and make sure we’re actively supporting them to ensure they can be deployed onto matters when they have capacity, and conversely provide them with support if their workload is unsustainable’.

As well as ensuring continuity of service to clients, this data also enables the team to keep tabs on staff wellbeing. ‘Resource managers monitor the utilization of staff throughout a client matter – if they can see a lawyer is highly utilized week after week, they’ll arrange a check-in meeting with them,’ Hopkin explains.

As with other firms, HSF also has a global alumni network which enables it to draw on former employees on an ad hoc basis to meet client demand, with the firm also outsourcing some work to preferred suppliers through contracts with two prominent alternative legal service providers.

Since opening a support base in Northern Ireland in 2011, the firm has also built up a global network of alternative legal services centres providing round-the-clock support on large-scale work. That network now spans 10 locations across Beijing, Belfast Brisbane, Johannesburg, London, Melbourne, New York, Perth, Shanghai and Sydney, which between them house more than 350 lawyers, technologists and legal analysts.

As Hopkin explains: ‘We use external support on the really big matters, where we’ve got ten, twenty, or thirty people working, as well as to help manage ebbs and flows in the intensity of work.’

Resource managers sit in on practice group resourcing meetings, usually held weekly, working alongside practice managers, legal project managers and partners. ‘We’re trying to remove some of the work allocation burden from our partners’, says Hopkin. ‘Client partners understandably don’t always have transparency of talent available outside their team, so providing that information is very helpful.’

In addition, the firm has a strong focus on client feedback. UK and EMEA client director Chris Edwards comments: ‘We place great importance on understanding how our clients interpret every aspect of our performance, as it directly informs our strategy’.

Value-added service

Ashurst, meanwhile, has the highest score for value for work done among the UK heritage firms in the Global 100.

As with HSF, the firm has been building out a resourcing team, on the back of the arrival of practice resource manager Russ Martin from PwC in 2016.

Internal communication is key, says Martin. ‘The first thing we do is sit down with every partner and associate in the practice group and say, “How are things working?”‘, he explains. ‘Feedback from this consultation phase is anonymised, and it helps us get an honest feel for how things work in the group. We then feed back to the divisional head and work from there.’

Martin, a mental health first aid instructor, agrees that wellbeing is a core element of resourcing: ‘As far as I’m concerned, the two roles go hand in hand – the idea is that everybody is treated the same. We don’t want any preferential treatment,’ he says. ‘For example, from a wellbeing perspective, it’s about ensuring everyone gets a balance in terms of workload. What the resource manager can do is step in and make sure that’s followed as much as possible.’

‘We need to try to get as many fungible people in the team as possible’, Martin adds. ‘You might have someone who has spent their entire career in one subgroup. The ideal is, yes we have people who specialise in a subgroup, but if that subgroup goes quiet, we know they can turn their hands to one of the other subgroups. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and don’t fish from a shallow pool.’

He also emphasises that building strong working relationships with partners is crucial: ‘Partner X, who always works with one particular associate, will walk out of their office and choose that associate whenever a new piece of work comes in – that’s one of the biggest challenges. We’re not there to say no to that, but to challenge that. It’s about planting the seed, too. The partner might not go with our alternative suggestion this time, but they’ll think about that person next time around.’

Ashurst also makes use of its Ashurst Advance legal service delivery offering, which operates via three global delivery centres in Glasgow, Krakow and Brisbane. This allows the firm to provide what Ashurst Advance partner and advanced solutions head Nathan Bellgrove calls a ‘follow-the-sun delivery model’, and ensure consistent service around the clock.

Resource of inspiration

At CMS, which scores highly for appropriate resourcing among its UK heritage peers in the Global 100, the firm has clearly defined strategies for resourcing and billing, devised via what chief finance officer Andrew Richards calls a ‘consultative approach’, engaging with clients as well as commercial financial, legal operations, and project management business partners aligned to practice groups.

‘We have adopted a principle of ‘Control, Clarity and Certainty’ to ensure that throughout the matter process we provide our clients with control over their matter, clarity around delivery and certainty around billing’, says Richards. ‘Open communication about deliverables and billing transparency is key.’

While the billable hour remains ‘a key measure of productivity’, says Richards, the firm uses alternative fee arrangements on a ‘substantial’ number of matters.

‘Matters are projects’, he explains. ‘They are live and evolve. Billing discussions need to be an open and collaborative process. If clients understand the value of the work, we aim to have conversations that are focused on expectations, value and deliverables rather than purely around price-cutting.’

While Ashurst’s Martin acknowledges that practice and resource management is still relatively underdeveloped within law firms, the adoption of more sophisticated techniques is on the increase as more firms ramp up their use of both technology and data in relation to client service.

‘The Big Four and the major consultancy houses have all had resource management for decades,’ he explains. ‘It is still quite juvenile in the legal industry, but more and more firms realise they need to have it.’

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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.