The “new normal” will not be good enough.
Banish the phrase “new normal” from your thinking about the future.
As law firms begin to think about operations after the pandemic subsides, many of their partners have been using the phrase new normal. This mindset — assuming that the future will be, more or less, just a continuation of the past — is as risky to the future of your law firm as ingesting bleach or taking ineffective, veterinary drugs to fight a coronavirus.
Law firms that continue to be mired in this “return to normalcy” type of thinking risk being swept aside by the competitive forces that began reshaping the legal services industry even before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Instead, our firm is urging our law firm clients to start thinking about the "new excellence." What will your law firm need to do? How will you need to change fundamentally some of the assumptions, practices, and even cultural values that have traditionally characterized your practice?
In other words, how are you going to stay on top of a fast-changing, increasingly competitive legal market to which clients — even some of your traditionally most loyal ones — will bring new needs and expectations for the nature and scope of the services that a law firm offers?
How will you establish and demonstrate your competitive advantages in the “new excellence” that will emerge — indeed, is already beginning to emerge — in the legal services industry?
Start asking questions like these today. You always get better results when you think and plan ahead.