Commercial clients see most legal work as commoditised and have realised massive savings on their external legal spend, yet many lawyers consider most of their work bespoke and do not realise there is a problem.
Research by TGO Consulting revealed a clear trend of rapid commoditisation of legal services but found that law firms are not yet feeling the pain. Clients are saving money by handing more work to law firms outside the mainstream instead of telling their usual lawyers that they are too expensive. Consequently, law firms that fail to adapt their business models to the advance of commoditisation may lose out in the long run.
TGO Consulting conducted interviews with 15 general counsel at large buyers of legal services across several jurisdictions in December 2015 to February 2016. It carried out an online survey in March among senior lawyers at more than 100 business law firms across Europe.
