However, as the legal market grew more competitive, things began to change. ![]() Wilkins notes that this notion-that the only “strategy” a law firm needed was doing good work-persisted well into the 1980s and even the early 1990s. By implication, things such as marketing, business development, communications, professional development, and other operational departments now common at most modern law firms either were not relevant or, in many cases, didn’t exist. He continues, “The thinking was that if you do excellent work for your existing clients, not only will those clients continue to come to you, but you’ll get new clients, and if you have enough clients, good lawyers will want to come and join you.” This implicit strategy of doing good work was considered more or less enough to ensure overall firm health, prestige, and profitability. Wilkins, a professor of law at Harvard Law School and the faculty director of the school’s Center on the Legal Profession. Or to be very fair, the implicit strategy was: do excellent work,” says David B. “For a long time, law firms didn’t need to have a strategy. ![]() Strategy as an explicit concept and worthwhile consideration is rather new to law firms. In this article, however, we look less at the substance-or even the merits-of any particular strategy and instead examine the history of how strategy as a concept developed within law firms and therein the major players driving its development and implementation. But, as the article “ What Else Should We Do?” explored, there are other ways to define strategy within the legal services market. ![]() The lead article in this issue of The Practice offers one approach by segmenting Am Law 100 law firms based on revenue per lawyer and lawyer head count. There are countless ways to understand law firm strategy. Goals are often easy enough to identify-maybe you want to maximize your firm’s revenue or be in as many cities as possible or attract the top talent-but the strategy (or strateg ies) needed to get there is the million-dollar question. Strategy can seem like an amorphous concept.
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