Validatum Pricing Espresso® has been in hibernation for a while but readers tell us they miss the insights, so we are back into writing original content and curating the best relevant material we can find from others. Thanks for the vote of confidence!

With the Validatum Pricing Espresso® we aim to bring you your pricing 'shot' - some of the most interesting, thought-provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your firms' pricing challenges.

These are the results of a recent global survey of Validatum’s law firm clients. They won’t surprise anyone. They were some of the concerns and solutions explored in a webinar we presented yesterday in collaboration with Kira (Chloe Doyle) and John Craske, CMS head of innovation and legal operations.

In part one of this three-part blog series, we suggested that one of the single greatest impediments to the evolution of law firm/client relationships, particularly when it comes to pricing, is the mutual lack of trust.

We concluded the first post with, “… law firms and clients need to do a stock take of what they are doing wrong. In the next two blogs we will share our observations on what firms and their clients are currently doing to damage the relationship and destroy trust. Neither will be spared. There is plenty of criticism to go around!”

In our second blog, we took law firms to task for their failings that result in degradation of trust. Time now to excoriate the clients.

LONDON (31st March 2021) – Virtual Pricing Director®, the legal pricing platform conceived and built over three years by leading international legal pricing experts Validatum and leading UK cost consultancy Burcher Jennings is being adopted by leading Peterborough law firm and LawNet member, Buckles.

In part one of this three-part blog series, we suggested that one of the single greatest impediments to the evolution of law firm/client relationships, particularly when it comes to pricing, is the mutual lack of trust.

I concluded the first post with, “… law firms and clients need to do a stock take of what they are doing wrong. In the next two blogs we will share our observations on what firms and their clients are currently doing to damage the relationship and destroy trust. Neither will be spared. There is plenty of criticism to go around!”

A major law firm recently contacted us for guidance on how to recalibrate the pricing aspect of their relationship with a major client – a relationship that has become demonstrably radioactive and is now on life support.

How did it all get to this point?

What follows will for many of you, be the tortured reality of day-to-day legal practice. In the course of strategising a solution to this real-world problem with a partner recently, it occurred to me that it might be a useful way to kick off our first thought piece of 2021. At issue was a carefully and thoughtfully scoped estimate of ~£75,000 but the final cost is likely to be ~£100,000 - possibly a little more.

Summarising, and appropriately redacted, it went something like this…

In her recent blog on Lawyer Marketing Skills, Sue Bramall a fellow member of the Law Consultancy Network, highlights the importance of financial literacy and pricing skills....

Unfortunately, we still see many firms approach to this limited to not much more than a standard letter that begins "Dear client, we hope you are well. As you know, inflation last year was 2.7%...”

It's not who you might think...?

Okay, perhaps that’s a little rough, suggesting that clients deliberately conceal their real wishes or are plain dishonest about them, but maybe a fairer description would be mercurial – ‘tending to change mood suddenly’ according to the Concise OED.

While many law firms have over the last few years begun pricing improvement initiatives, many have failed to realise their potential and in the most disappointing and frustrating examples, they have eventually reverted to type entirely, losing all of the gains originally achieved. There is good reason for that. It’s hard. The rewards are significant but if it was easy, everyone would have done it a long time ago. So, we have decided to provide firms with a roadmap which will greatly increase the prospect of durable and sustainable improvements.