A survey of more than 200 in-house lawyers conducted by Thomson Reuters reveals that the most important factor when deciding on an external law firm is the responsiveness.

The results for responsiveness was 8.8 out of 10 in terms of importance.

Responsiveness ranked higher than price (7.5), deep specialist expertise (7.6) and understanding of the business and its industry (8.6).

According to Thomson Reuters, the results demonstrate the growing pressure on law firms from clients, to be responsive to needs related to matters. It also suggests that firms need to have deep legal knowledge and commercial awareness.

So what does this mean for lawyers at law firms?

It simply means that law firms need to prioritise client responsiveness, and adopt tools and systems that allow them to easily do so.

The need to ensure firms’ responses “reflect the commercial and wider-industry in which the client operates”, according to Samantha Steer from Thomson Reuters.

How can law firms improve responsiveness?

By developing and implementing procedures that ensure consistent and strong responsiveness rate. And, allow firms to build and maintain relationships with clients.

A tool that is useful for this is a legal contact relationship management system (CRM).

A legal CRM will allow lawyers, on both individual and firm-wide level, to systematically, automatically and accurately, track and manage client interactions, matters and relationships.

A CRM allows lawyers specifically, to serve their clients’ changing needs, keep top of mind, and stay up to date with the personal details and matter information.

Come and take NEXL’s law firm CRM for a spin in your free personal demo with CEO, Phil Thurner, and see how you can easily improve your responsiveness to client needs, and your relationship management.

Book your time slot for January 2020 here

Read more about the Thomson Reuters survey here.