What makes a law firm a deal maker?

Clients these days look for law firms that can guide them in making business decisions from a holistic perspective. The expectations of clients from their lawyers to operate like business advisers has grown tremendously. The observed trend is that law firms are increasingly expected to work closely with clients and be more involved in their business. This is in contrast with the practice followed about two decades ago where lawyers only highlighted issues for clients to work upon, rather than delivering solutions packed with business acumen and industry knowledge.

To live up to the changing expectations of clients, law firms need to deep dive and understand the client’s ecosystem and business environment before advising them on complex legal and business issues. Instead of limiting their role to provide purely legal solutions, deal maker law firms are adopting an approach of offering commercial-legal solutions. Law firms are now kept at the forefront unlike the past where they were considered as back-end support and called for support when vulnerable situations arose. Their upfront involvement on deals and commercial transactions is sought with an aim to mitigate risk and increase the scope of a favourable outcome. Involving lawyers from the initial stages enables them to deliver excellent quality output due to their holistic involvement in the realm of the client’s businesses.

Bithika Anand is founder and CEO and Jogesh Sharma is associate vice president for strategic management and process redesigning at Legal League Consulting.