Clients receive two broad types of service from law firms. They pay fees for legal services on specific matters and they expect to get the benefit of the firm's know-how – knowledge of legal developments and how other clients have dealt with similar problems – as part of the relationship. Many clients believe that while they pay handsomely for the former, they get distinctly patchy service on the latter.

More and more clients are demanding tailored, commercially-relevant updates from their law firms and they want more flexible know-how advice and support. There is widespread anecdotal evidence that firms that make an effort in this area generate new fees.

As client demand for improved knowhow services has grown, firms have looked to their professional support lawyers (PSLs) to step up to the plate. The PSL role has been around for about 15 years and developed in tandem with the growth of law firm knowledge management. At most larger – and some smaller – firms, PSLs are now a valuable resource for the practice groups and fee earners that they support. Practice groups typically have between one and three PSLs, at fairly substantial salaries.

The PSL role is rapidly moving from an internally-focused knowledge role to an at least partially client-focused one. PSLs who thought of the fee earners in their practice groups as their clients are now having to shift to the more challenging position of seeing the firm's clients as the beneficiaries of their labours.

This change is often a difficult one for PSLs, many of whom have a fee earning past but have moved to the PSL role precisely because they do not want to do client-facing work. One magic circle firm that tried to change the character of its know-how offering by putting PSLs on a course that teaches marketers how to write catchy press releases hit a bump when they found that sceptical PSLs renamed the course 'spin classes'.

This refocusing on the firm's clients as the audience for know-how updates has thrown a harsh light onto the output of many firms. Client updates and bulletins have tended to be either tidied up internal updates with a quick lick of page-layout paint or over-legalistic briefings intended for the firm's partners.

Neither of these approaches work well for clients – one general counsel at a FTSE 100 firm tells of receiving more than 30 updates on Three Rivers, but not a single one told him what the impacts might be for his company.

The Three Rivers anecdote illustrates another key factor – the sheer volume of legal updates that flow into client inboxes and postrooms. Law firms woke up to the idea of marketing at the same time that desktop publishing and email made it much easier to publish and deliver a steady stream of updates to clients.

As that stream has become a flood, legal publishers such as the Practical Law Company, LexisNexis Butterworth and Counsel have risen to the challenge and now provide legal know-how services to both clients and law firms, putting them in direct competition with law firms at the client's desktop.

Last year Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer took what may soon be seen as the logical step of outsourcing awareness updates to the Practical Law Company with the objective of giving their PSLs more time to concentrate on where they can add value.

While clients increasingly see law firms as providers of similar services and competitive pressures have increased correspondingly, knowhow services is an area in which firms can differentiate themselves without great cost.

There are a number of fairly straightforward initiatives that firms can and have put in place, provided that these changes take account of the impacts on the firm's PSLs, and the central role that PSLs will play in making any changes work.

Examples of initiatives that have borne fruit for others include encour-aging PSLs to prepare 'what it means for me' client briefings that partners can use as crib sheets, getting shorter updates out immediately rather than waiting for the monthly newsletter and seconding PSLs to key clients so that they can strengthen relationships and deepen their on-the-ground knowledge.

Any change to a firm's know-how will change what is required of PSLs. A client-focused approach, where it is more important to highlight business impacts than detail the relevant niceties of law, demands skills that are different to those of the traditional PSL.

PSLs will still need to be technically good lawyers, but they will also need to be business-savvy communicators with a real understanding of clients and their industry sectors. They will need to be much closer to what matters to their clients and be able to analyse new developments and see the implications from the client's point of view – and they will need to know what keeps their clients awake at night.

The role will require more client contact and PSLs will be a part of the client's legal team rather than a ghostly back-room presence. There will have to be closer working relationships with business development and client relationship people – many firms are already getting good results from developing client and sector-focused teams that include PSLs and business development members.

Finally, changing the PSL role offers added value for clients, stronger relationships and new fees for the firm, and another dimension to the PSL role that moves PSLs into the client relationship limelight that many fee earners find so uncomfortable.

Juliet Humphries is an independent consultant and former director of knowledge at Linklaters. Simon Carter is an independent consultant.