We talk a lot in Lean Adviser about how it’s not enough to specialize in an area of law, or even in an industry sector. Law firms need to go further and specialize in their clients and their businesses. But it’s easy to misunderstand what this means. Specializing in the client doesn’t mean just knowing its history or today’s share price. What’s valuable to clients is that you know their structures, processes, business strategies and where they’re going. From that knowledge base, you can then do horizon scanning, in the sense that clients understand and appreciate it.

Horizon scanning can be defined as:  the identification of emerging risks and threats. This includes spotting trends, anticipating developments and seeing around corners.

Recent surveys show that clients are not happy with the ability of their outside firms to conduct horizon scanning and provide proactive solutions to address the uncovered trends. GCs say that sending general memos to clients is not enough, it’s not really horizon scanning, and indicates that those firms don’t understand what horizon scanning is and how it can help their business.

Law firms have tools at the ready that can be used to truly identify what’s on the horizon; they just have to understand what clients are looking for. As we’ve mentioned before in Lean Adviser, clients want business advice that is tailored to their business and industry. So use the tools at your disposal to provide:

  • Trend Spotting: Use recent cases, research, and knowledge of the industry to come up with trends, potential opportunities and potential risks that lay ahead for your clients. 
  •  Industry Activity: What are your client’s competitors up to? What emerging technologies or innovations are happening? What potential risks do these emerging trends bring — both to the client and the industry at large? Keeping clients abreast of these can lead to strategy discussions about how the client wants to deal with them. 
  • Laws and regulations: Use recent decisions on key industry issues, and, maybe more importantly, unique issues within that industry. Is a ruling a “one-off” or have there been other similar rulings? If there are more than two rulings that go the same way, keep tracking to see if it develops into a trend. Keep up with legal articles to help identify trends.

Law firms have a big opportunity to focus on making horizon scanning a component of their service offering. This means making it a part of each client relationship, not an ad hoc add-on for a few. Horizon scanning is one of the major disconnects from what GCs want and what their outside law firms are providing. Closing that gap can earn trust and help solidify the firm’s relationship with its clients.