According to a January 2016 Thomson Reuters research report, 52% of responding law firms have officially launched client teams with an additional 16% of firms planning to do so this year. Why are 2/3 of these law firm leader respondents, from firms of all sizes, so enthusiastically endorsing the client team concept, at this time? The answer is simple – Client teams might be the best tool available to law firms today to drive revenues and change the attitudes of attorneys regarding the entire concept of cross-selling.

Client Teams ≠ Traditional Law Firm Cross-Selling

The concept of client teams is interpreted within the legal industry in many different ways. Unfortunately, if firms just consider client teams to be nothing more than a better organized version of traditional law firm cross-selling efforts, they are likely to be very disappointed in the results they receive from their investment in a client team program.

Client team implementations have been a mainstay of “major account management” in the business world for decades. Dating back to the 1970s, when IBM and Xerox started to address their important accounts as “key accounts,” these sales models have continued to evolve into more complex concepts such as “solution selling” and still drive major corporate account sales efforts around the world today.

Despite the impact of technology and massive changes in the way clients buy in today’s business world, the drivers of major account management remain the same, including the need to:

• Build strategic and deep relationships with major clients;

• Drive alignment within the whole organization;

• Deliver a real and differentiated level of value to clients; and

• Have the team serve as the central, key point of contact for the client and have client team members communicate back to their organizations on how best to serve the unique needs of each individual client.

In professional services, the accounting/consulting industry deserves a lot of credit for leading the way in the adoption of client teams. Show me a successful law firm client team program and most of the program’s concepts can be tracked back to one of the large accounting firms.

Unfortunately, what works in the corporate and accounting world doesn’t always translate directly to the law firm world and must be adapted to match the cultural norms of each individual law firm. Just adopting what IBM, SAP, PWC or KPMG do often fails within most law firms.

For firms thinking of establishing client teams or ramping up their current client team efforts, the timing couldn’t be better. The dual impacts of evolving partner demographics and changes in the buying habits of clients (e.g., the need for diverse teams, stratification of the “value” clients place on different types of work and greater consolidation of law firm service providers, often driven by procurement and other decision makers outside the legal department) increases the need for effective client teams daily.

Successful Client Teams Require Performance Metrics From Day 1

What is an acceptable level of performance you should expect from your client team program?  I’d recommend you start with the following ROI measurement goals and build from there.

1. A cumulative revenue growth for your client team program of 20%+ over a 12-month period, which is sustainable on a year-to-year basis. Not every client team you launch will be an immediate success, but as a group, they should be contributing to your bottom line at this level or higher.

2. A more satisfied client which recognizes the importance your firm places on the overall client/firm relationship, leading to fewer questions regarding the value you provide to the client across multiple areas of service and levels of key client decision makers.

3. Deeper and more meaningful relations with a greater number of decision makers across the client’s legal and business teams.

4. An expansion in the number of areas of practice where your firm is considered a valued legal service provider by the client (if not the client’s number one, most “trusted advisor”). The annual research conducted by the BTI Group continually demonstrates that firms ranked in the top one to three in terms of client satisfaction by their clients, in multiple areas of practice, are the most content, secure and valuable clients any firm can hope to be able to serve.

5. Every attorney who serves as a formal member of the client team, or as a service provider to your designated client team, should develop a much deeper understanding of the company and its industry, thus enabling all of these attorneys to be more efficient and effective lawyers and business advisors to your client, as well as other current and potential clients in that industry space.

There are many hurdles to implementing a successful client team program.  I’d recommend you review my recent article titled “The Top 10 Reasons Why Client Teams Fail” as a good starting point for understanding the landmines you could face.