The Law Firm COO & CFO Forum is a premier event for law firm officers and their peers. Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute has always put on an exciting and educational forum and BigSquare is happy to travel back to NYC for our third time as silver level sponsors. Our team enjoys the professional atmosphere that allows for education and networking opportunities with so many great legal professionals throughout the AmLaw 200.

This year’s forum had a great theme, a 10 year retrospective on legal services since the depression. While those years have passed, the legal services market has faced not only remarkable transformations, but also stress. It provided a reality check that even in industries that are very resistant to change, sometimes the only solution to survive is to adapt. These events give great awareness about what is going on in the legal market and we couldn’t help but share some of our takeaways.

The evolving law firm business model is something that we hear more and more about. But what exactly does that mean? A lot has happened over the past ten years, some major trends that we noticed are pricing, profitability, transparency, diversity, and efficiency.

Pricing and profitability are two key factors that we hear our clients asking more and more about, so this topic was of key interest to us. Over the past decade, law firms have invested heavily in developing various pricing strategies to meet clients demands while maintaining a balance in profitability and value.

Innovation is something we hear about all the time, in any industry. What exactly is it? A new method, idea, product. It brings change, transformations, and breakthroughs. This is vital for growth and something that law firms are finally starting to get a good grip on. It’s important to adapt and change with the market and technologies available. With the increased complexity of new products and services what this really means is that firms must bring together expertise from both inside and outside the firm to work more effectively and efficiently than ever before.

The forum’s keynote speaker, Dr. Rob Cross, wrapped up the first day with a presentation touching on innovation and collaborative practices of a successful organization. Not only is it important to keep up with new technologies and practices, it is vital to a firm to understand that collaborations that generate better innovations increase the chance of an effective implementation. Starting from within the firm makes it much simpler to adapt to changing markets and technologies.

We are happy to be a part of the legal services market so that we can help law firms work towards those common goals of being more efficient. All-in-all, this industry event was fantastic. The BigSquare team loved getting the chance to connect with old friends, clients, and meet some new faces. A thank you is necessary to all the people at Thomson Reuters that planned and put in all the hard work for another successful CEO & COO Forum. We look forward to sponsoring and attending more events like this.

BigSquare is the leading provider of Business Intelligence for law firms and professional service organizations.  We focus exclusively on law firm reporting, law firm BI, law firm profitability and law firm analytics.