Walker Clark
Worldview Archives
Signs and Portents
We’re just lawyers, not fortune tellers.
Actually, there is a lot that even the smallest law firm can do to anticipate future trends and developments that will affect them and their clients.
Here are five simple but reliable macroeconomic indicators that any law firm an use to anticipate future trends more accurately and be better prepared for both the expected and the unexpected in 2026 and beyond.
What will be most important to your business in 2026?
What should drive your law firm’s business plan for 2026?
Too many firms try to do too many things at once—and accomplish far less than they could if they focused on just two or three high‑impact strategic priorities.
As 2026 approaches, small and midsize law firms face an environment that demands a sharper sense of direction than ever before. Markets are shifting. Client expectations are evolving. Technology, regulation, and competition have blurred traditional boundaries of size and geography. Amid all this, clarity of purpose—expressed through a few well‑chosen strategic priorities—is not simply good management practice; it is an essential survival strategy.
Avoiding Buyer’s Remorse: Ask the right questions.
As we approach the end of another calendar year, there is an upsurge almost everywhere in the world among small law firms looking for possible merger or acquisition opportunities.
The short-term motivations and long-term objectives of these explorations vary, but there are several questions that any law firm receiving an overture from another firm or prospective lateral partner should ask first, before entering into serious negotiations.
Having solid, fact-based answers to these questions will help you to avoid wasting time and management attention, as well as possible disappointment, on overtures that look promising on the surface but lack the underlying foundations needed for success.
Are you ready for unexpected opportunities?
Sometimes the greatest risk is the risk of unexpected success.
According to recent coverage, some of the largest U.S. law firms have become less likely to contest Trump administration actions in his second term, reportedly due to new executive pressures and retributive policies targeting law firms perceived as adversaries. As a result, cases that would traditionally be absorbed by these firms are cascading down to smaller practices—many of which face limits in staff, technology, and financial resources to handle this new caseload.
Taking on a sudden, unpredictable surge in caseload can jeopardize a small firm’s service quality, staffing capacity, and client relationships.
Assessing Risk: A Law Firm’s Best Strategy for Managing Regulatory Fluctuation
A centralized strategy for assessing your current practices, gathering information about the effectiveness of those processes, and integrating credible source information into your processes is the most reliable way to assure the most protection for your firm.
Regulatory Analysis for Law Firms
Regulatory analysis is a perfect example of how regular, intentional analysis can yield immediate, sustainable improvements to profitability through greater protection from risk.
“Trump-Proofing” Your Law Firm
As we at Walker Clark have been meeting since January 2025 with clients and professional friends worldwide to discuss their priorities and concerns for the next 12 to 24 months, many of them – across the world and the political spectrum – have used the same phrase to describe their anxiety about the uncertainties that lie ahead: “How can we Trump-proof our firm?”
Get Ready for an Expanded BABA
What is BABA, and why is it important to law firms everywhere?
What a Transatlantic Tariff War Means for Law Firms
The second Trump presidency has started with a flurry of activity characteristic of Donald Trump's management style. With the rapid movement over the last two weeks, it comes as no surprise that the EU is bracing for potential changes the US might try to force in the areas of economics, global security, and climate policy.
Is your law firm prepared for a Canada-US tariff war?
China is not the only country the Trump administration has in its tariff crosshairs. President Trump has already announced that we can expect to see a 25% tariff placed on all goods imported into the US from Canada, as early as February of this year. Why has Canada drawn this attention from the Trump administration? How can you support your clients that might be impacted by these new tariffs against Canada?
How could Trump Administration trade policy with China affect law firms and their clients?
Sarah Max continues her discussion of the financial implications of a second Trump administration. In this post, she unpacks some of Trump’s economic policies with respect to China and how those impacts are expected to affect the international financial industry.
What impacts should law firms expect from proposed Trump Administration tax policies?
This is the second of a series of articles about how the demand for legal services might change over the next two years under the Trump Administration. This article focuses on the effects of proposed changes to taxation.
What should law firms (and their clients) anticipate from the incoming Trump Administration?
With an impending administration change in the U.S. on January 20, 2025, many of our clients and professional friend have asked us the same question: What will the second Trump administration mean for my firm?
This is the first of a series of articles about how the demand for legal services might change over the next two years.
The Antidote to Fear
In recent confidential discussions with law firm leaders around the world, the author has noticed a very interesting apprehension that seems to be emerging as they consider the business prospects for their firm in for the next two to five years.
How then, can a law firm navigate through the strategic fears about the rest of the decade -- even the rest of 2025 -- with a reasonable degree of confidence?
Eight Things for Indian Law Firms to Think About
As part of our ongoing experiment to test the potential value of artificial planning in law firm management, we asked the newest version of our chatbot, openai GPT-4, what Indian law firms should be considering in their planning for the incursion of foreign law firms into the Indian legal market.
The response outlined eight good starting points.
What if our brilliant strategy fails?
Even the best business strategies can be knocked off-course, or sometimes even wrecked, by a crisis that the law firm only vaguely anticipated, if at all.
Some law firms not only survive crises, but actually emerge from them stronger than ever before. Our firm’s observations of the experiences law firms of all sizes, but especially small and midsize firms, worldwide between 2020 and 2022, suggest that you can make your law firm “crisis-resistant.”
You won’t be immunized from the effects of a crisis, but you will be able to resist its most serious effects and recover much more quickly.
“Imaginary Time Travel” — An Overlooked Strategic Problem-Solving Tool
A highly effective way to find breakthrough solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems today is to "travel" into the future and look back at them.
This is not "wave the magic wand” or other wishful-thinking parlor games that business consultants sometimes promote. Instead, it has a solid basis in research
Law Firms Without Borders: Challenging Trends in Cross-Border Legal Services
Although law firms today face a seemingly vast array of strategic, operational, and management challenges arising from the globalization of the legal services industry, there are at least five emerging trends that characterize law firms that are successfully building profitable cross-border and multinational practices, even when based in only one office or country.
This paper, presented at the 2022 Annual Conference of the American Bar Association International Law Section, on 29 April 2022, describes these five trends, based on observations and research by the author and other Walker Clark consultants in law firms over the past twenty years.
The Law Firm of the Future: A Culture of Resilience
This is the final installment of a series of posts that have described and explored characteristics that will determine which law firms remain successful in the legal services industry of the future, and what law firms can do now to build them into their operations and professional cultures.
The bottom line for all of this can be described in a single word: resilience.
The Law Firm of the Future: A Predisposition for Innovation
Successful law firms in the future will not only keep up with trends and developments; they will lead them.
Innovation is more than just doing things better. Rather, it is a fundamental change. It shifts the paradigms that control how we think and act today.
