When To Reinvent A Law Firm

A “corporate health test” devised by health insurer Aetna to address problems with its customer base and a rapidly changing regulatory environment can be an ideal tool for law firms that want to confront their own market issues, according to law firm consultant Aric Press. “Aetna found ‘fault lines’ in the marketplace and chose to act before the earth started moving beneath them,” he writes, and he suggests law firms should be doing the same. The Aetna analysis, which was the subject of a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, breaks the process down by identifying five specific areas of inquiry, beginning with “customer needs.” For a law firm, the process will be useful, according to Press, whether or it concludes that it needs a dramatic change, because it will at least clarify where the clients are headed and where the firm stands “in a confusing, demanding market.”