Legal
Strengthening leadership across the legal sector
Law firms operate in an increasingly complex environment. Partnership models are evolving, competition for top talent is intense, and profitability pressures sit alongside rising client expectations for value and commercial rigour. In this context, the quality of leadership, at board level, partner level and across the wider business, has never mattered more.
PSFI works exclusively with leaders in the legal sector to strengthen leadership, develop talent, build stronger client relationships and improve commercial performance. More than 75% of the UK’s top 50 law firms by revenue look to us for advice, and more than 150 global law firms trust our support on their most complex issues.
How we help firm and partnership leadership
Firms continue to grow significantly in scale and complexity, placing greater demands on leadership structures and those holding leadership positions.
We support leaders on their most complex challenges: helping the board and exec function at their best, advising on governance reviews, shaping leadership elections, building leadership bench strength, and navigating complicated transitions
We work with law firms to:
- Strengthen board and exec leadership – Helping boards and executive teams function at their best, including governance reviews and support for effective decision-making.
- Build leadership bench strength – Supporting the development of future leaders and helping shape leadership and partner elections.
- Accelerate new partners – Supporting high-potential talent on the partner track and helping newly elected partners establish themselves faster.
- Reinvigorate senior business services leaders – Helping experienced leaders make their maximum strategic contribution to the firm.
"PSFI are our go-to organisation for the things that we don't quite know how to deal with ourselves."
Managing Partner, International Law Firm
How we help winning and delivering client work
Commercial performance and strong client relationships sit at the heart of a firm’s growth. PSFI works with partners, client teams and firms as a whole to sharpen how they win, deliver and profit from client work.
We help law firms to:
- Build stronger client relationships – Supporting client selection, building effective client teams and helping partners become genuine trusted advisors.
- Improve profitability – Working across the full matter lifecycle, from pitching and pricing to fee negotiation and commercial matter management.
- Develop coaching capability – Individual and team coaching, delivered as part of a programme or as a standalone service, plus support to build the firm’s own internal coaching capability.
Why PSFI
We take an expertly nuanced view, underpinned by decades of experience working alongside leaders of leading law firms to bring transformational change. Our clients, many of whom have been with us for more than 20 years, trust us to support them on their most complex issues around business and leadership strategies, senior people capabilities and strategic decision-making.
We are building an independent, international and diverse leadership consultancy to help you access, navigate, understand and apply the most relevant leading edge thinking and research to help your business grow. We offer evidence-based thinking combined with years of hands-on experience, and tailor our work and advice to suit each client’s needs.
Above all, we care deeply about our clients, placing the highest possible value on our relationships with you. We balance warmth and support with curiosity, insight and challenge to get to the heart of the issue, so we can help you make a real and lasting improvement to your business.
We’ve operated at this level ourselves
Our people combine deep expertise in leadership and organisational performance with first-hand experience at some of the world’s leading professional and financial services firms, including Freshfields, White & Case, A&O Shearman and Linklaters as well as McKinsey, KPMG, EY and Goldman Sachs. They understand partnership dynamics and the pressures of legal sector leadership because they’ve operated inside them, not studied them from outside.
You get that experience without the scale of a big-firm engagement team
We’re not a 40-person account structure. You work directly with senior faculty who’ve operated at this level: the depth of a top-tier firm, the attention and pace of a boutique. That combination is deliberate.
- We bring the real issues into the room – No generic frameworks or off-the-shelf programmes. We start by understanding the firm, its partnership, its people and what it’s actually trying to achieve, then build the work around the live issues leaders are facing right now.
- We focus on change that lasts – Insight alone doesn’t move performance. Our work is designed to shift behaviour: stronger relationships, better decisions, and leadership teams that operate differently long after the engagement ends.
- Legal Expert Spotlight – Whether you’re strengthening board or partner leadership, developing your next generation of partners, or improving client relationships and commercial performance, we’d be delighted to talk.
Our work
Raising ambition across client relationships
A global law firm had an excellent client base, but only 20% of clients worked with more than one office or practice group. The firm set a strategy to have 20 clients delivering fees of over $20m by 2020, alongside all partners raising their ambition for client relationships.
PSFI developed a programme of support with the Client Relationship Partners, industry group leaders and Executive Committee, blending internal inputs, external thinking, rehearsals with client executives, success stories and coaching.
The programme delivered shifts in mindset, ambition, confidence and fees, and was subsequently adapted and rolled out more broadly to raise the sights of partners developing high-growth clients.
Raising sustained profitability at a domestic law firm
A leading domestic law firm was struggling to raise profitability, with a culture of high partner autonomy resulting in hourly rates not increasing.
Working with the executive leadership team, PSFI designed and delivered a programme to raise awareness of the major levers of law firm profitability, introduced a common language around profitability and pricing, and increased collaboration across offices and practice areas.
Partners set profitability improvement objectives, and the firm laid the foundations for a more managed, coordinated approach to pricing and commercial matter management, work that continues today through a dedicated profitability and pricing governance framework.
Developing the board
The Chair of a partnership board was concerned that the board could be doing much better to meet its brief. Members were often drawn into the operational weeds of the firm, representing their part of the business politically, and felt like they were rubber-stamping decisions made by the Managing Partner rather than providing real support and challenge.
PSFI was engaged to advise on best practice for partnership boards relative to corporate best-practice standards, and consulted individually with board members to understand what was working well and where improvements were needed. We co-created a board development agenda that ran alongside the board’s regular meetings, bringing in sessions, diagnostics, practitioners from other sectors and leading academics based on the board’s needs and best practice.
We continue to support the board as team coaches. The work has significantly improved the relationship between the Board and the Executive, clarified the role of partners as non-executives, strengthened relationships around the board table, and created a source of thought leadership for the firm.
Contact the team
Whether you’re developing the next generation of leaders within your firm, strengthening a senior team, or supporting leadership within a portfolio company through investment, growth or integration, we’d be delighted to talk.