Everyone wants to be an industry expert these days rather than just a dreary old lawyer. Speak to any sizeable firm outside the magic circle and the odds are they will rave about how their new industry focus is helping them take on the big boys in their chosen areas. Whether it is Lovells trying to revive its corporate practice with industry groups or Eversheds revamping its leadership so that it is managed by practice and sector group rather than by office, everyone wants to prove they understand as much about their clients' industry as the clients themselves.

But while partners wax lyrical about how the exciting strategy 'aligns them with clients', often cruelly mangling a PowerPoint presentation that could have productively been used for sales figures, there is one tiny problem – this strategy for differentiation is just a little bit hampered by the fact that, er, everyone does it.

While Simmons & Simmons and CMS Cameron McKenna can argue they were the innovators in organising their business by industry sector as well as practice area, virtually everyone has since followed suit. And, frankly, sector teams have been common in the UK for more than five years.

The problem has only been exacerbated by the fact that the magic circle has taken exactly the same approach – making it harder still for smaller firms to argue that their sector specialism is giving them an edge. Linklaters and Clifford Chance, for example, both boast understanding of industries well into double-digits with Linklaters this year jumping on the bandwagon by renaming its European projects practice as energy and infrastructure to highlight its focus.

A similar rebranding of Freshfields' projects practice and a tightening-up of its industry sectors, which saw the number of industry groups covered reduced from 15 to 12, coincided neatly with the exodus of projects partners the firm has been enjoying ever since.

What don't you specialise in?

In fact the sheer volume of industries firms claim to 'specialise' in is a problem in itself. Lovells is far from the worst offender, but its recent shake-up saw it target industries including – but not limited to – financial institutions, energy, consumer, real estate and life sciences. This is entirely reasonable, but given that the sectors cover virtually the entire corporate spectrum, it is unlikely to differentiate it too much from its rivals – bad news for a firm which has made a point of saying it is staking its future on taking on the magic circle for particular aspects of work.

As soon as law firms start launching pornography and black-market industry sector groups (and arguably they already have a fair bit of that covered in leisure and gambling teams) they will surely have covered the lot.

Even those firms that have narrowed their focus have run into problems. Take Denton Wilde Sapte. It focuses on an entirely reasonable four industry sectors. Then again, one of the four is real estate and retail, which is clearly not to be confused with its real estate practice.

And Dentons is by no means the only firm classifying real estate as both a practice and an industry sector – although perhaps its clients understand the subtle difference between the two groupings…