Achieving value convergence in your law firm will greatly benefit your firm.


Increasing competition has caused more and more US law firms to focus on their desired strategic position. This effort requires a firm to think clearly about its current and desired value positions as a key element of its strategic positioning. Put simply, it is unlikely a firm will achieve a clear strategic position if it leaves the value positioning of its practice unattended.
 
The value position of the law firm (or any other business) is the position it occupies in the perception of the clients and would-be clients of the firm. Abstractly, law firm managers have long recognized that different legal services command different market values. At the extremes, for example, corporate M&A is worth more to the client (by a lot!) than collections of delinquent retail accounts, and almost everyone would recognize this distinction.

But, in between dwell a range of other types of work that are considered by clients to have different values. Further, within any generic type of work, such as "corporate" or "real estate," there is a wide variety of value positions. Unfortunately, most lawyers, including most of those managing law firms, are insufficiently attuned to the differences in value both among the practices in their own firm and between a practice in their firm and one with the same name in another law firm.
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