With Validatum Pricing Espresso® we aim to bring you your regular pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your legal services pricing challenges. [Note: we don't always agree with the content of others that we post but the philosophy of Validatum Pricing Espresso® is shared perspectives, not a personal 'soap-box']

Law firms contemplating or in the throes of a merger, ignore or pay scant attention to harmonising the merging firms pricing cultures, governance, analytics and execution at their peril.

I must be one of the very few people that loves this time of year at work, hugely looking forwards to the excitement and uncertainty of the challenges that the year will bring. Planning my work for Q1 this year with Richard, we were reflecting on how we could help law firms better anticipate their clients' procurement strategy in 2017:

This is not the first time that we have written on this topic but two items that crossed our desk in the last week have galvanised us into raising the topic again. The first was an article appearing in The American Lawyer’s Am Law Daily that looked at some of the reasons contributing to the demise of King & Wood Mallesons.

With Validatum Pricing Espresso® we aim to bring you your regular pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your legal services pricing challenges. [Note: we don't always agree with the content of others that we post but the philosophy of Validatum Pricing Espresso® is shared perspectives, not a personal 'soap-box']

As PwC’s comprehensive 2013 study tells us……"Pricing matters".

Where else in the provision of goods and services could such small improvements have such a profound effect on the bottom line?

I was on the train from York to London last Wednesday morning, sitting next to a lady who was diligently scribbling notes onto an RFP document, and I couldn’t help but smile to myself as her colleague proceeded to vilify all procurement professionals the world over as unpredictable, unfathomable, picky and impossible to please. Apparently deep into a tender response that was due on Friday, they went on to discuss how they’d better not give the client any opportunity to disqualify them and someone had better spell-check it properly this time. (Should just say at this point that they were discrete enough not to mention who they worked for or were tendering to…)

With Validatum Pricing Espresso® we aim to bring you your regular pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your legal services pricing challenges. [Note: we don't always agree with the content of others that we post but the philosophy of Validatum Pricing Espresso® is shared perspectives, not a personal 'soap-box']

Legal disclaimer: Having captured your attention with a mildly provocative title to this blog, we better do the whole legal disclaimer thing. This is an opinion piece designed to stimulate discussion within law firms about what we see as an extremely dubious trend. It is not a legal opinion or legal advice and you rely on it as such at your peril.

Last week a pricing specialist called me.

He wanted a chat about his career options. He was working in a strategic pricing role in the manufacturing sector. He ‘d been promoted internally to the position from a role in sales (a not uncommon story), so he’d never actually sought out a strategic pricing role before.

I was talking to a partner audience about client management last week, and the conversation came around to procurement’s involvement in relationship management and review meetings.

With Validatum Pricing Espresso® we aim to bring you your regular pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your legal services pricing challenges. [Note: we don't always agree with the content of others that we post but the philosophy of Validatum Pricing Espresso® is shared perspectives, not a personal 'soap-box']