The Future of Law – law firm strategy – dust off the crystal ball?

Scenario planning is a term often heard in corporate strategy departments, but rarely echoes around the boardrooms of UK law firms. It is, in essence, a strategic planning tool to help organisations manage uncertainty, and if there is one profession that is definitely facing uncertainty now, it’s the UK legal services market.

With the unprecedented harsh economic conditions showing no immediate signs of easing, law firms, rocked by the last five hard years with minimal or negative growth, are often shifting into survival mode. Having taken the short term actions to cut costs, management are often looking at the next six months and asking very tactical, pragmatic, short term questions about finance and cash flow, what are the merger possibilities, how can they retain their big billers and how do they manage partner expectations.

Against this backdrop, suggesting that lawyers look ahead to 2025, as the Law Society has done, may seem indulgent in the extreme. Yet if we take a step back, many of the challenges in the current environment have their roots outside the current fi