Now, is this a question of communication? Of course not, or at least not only! Rather, this is about the question as to how a law firm is positioned in the market in relation to competitors. Michael E. Porter has developed a very simple model about this, which can also be applied to law firms. According to Porter, you are either a price leader, a differentiator or a niche provider.<\/p>\n
If you aim at price leadership<\/strong>, you say: \u201cI\u2019m less expensive than my competitors!\u201d This statement always applies with reference to the market that is relevant to you. This relevance can be established by determining the most important criterion that demarcates you from other market. Your relevant market may be the small rural town in which you practise, or it may be the jurisdiction in which you are in a nationwide competition with others. Choose that criterion which in potential clients\u2019 expectations is the essential one to describe your market!<\/p>\n With this competitive strategy, your clients\u2019 benefit is the price advantage. They are provided with a service that is comparable with that of other law firms, but at a lower price.<\/p>\n If you want to be a differentiator<\/strong>, it is precisely the other way round. Clients come to you because they want this additional quality and are prepared to pay a higher price for it.<\/p>\n Then there are the niche providers<\/strong>. Their services are so special that they elude categorisation as either price leaders or differentiators. At this juncture, however, I have to warn you: for most of us, the assumption that we are a niche provider who does not have to be either particularly favourably priced or outstanding, is an illusion. Unfortunately, 95% of law firms have to live with the fact that in the perception of the market, they fail to pass as niche providers. Be that as it may! So it\u2019s either price leader or differentiator.<\/p>\n Before I come to my conclusion, I would like to dispel a fallacy: \u201cIf I\u2019m a differentiator, I won\u2019t have to bother with cost management!\u201d Far from it! Completely irrespectively of whether I operate as a price leader or as a differentiator, I will keep to have my costs under control. It is only a question of the level at which this problem occurs, not a question of principle. It is conceivable that there may be more art on the walls of a differentiator\u2019s office, but efficiency in the service provision process is as important in a high-end law firm as it is in a small law firm with a modest clientele. After all, the high-end law firm has to compete with other differentiators, so costs and prices may well make a difference in the tussle for attractive mandates!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now, is this a question of communication? Of course not, or at least not only! Rather, this is about the question as to how a law firm is positioned in the market in relation to competitors. Michael E. Porter has developed a very simple model about this, which can also be applied to law firms. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[62,55,31],"tags":[],"acf":{"excerpt":" It is intriguing to see how lawyers answer the question: \u201cWhy should clients come to you instead of retaining one of your competitors?\u201d Something like 80% of them say nothing (for quite some time) at first and then start humming and hawing. Among the remaining 20%, there are a few who explain at great length where they see their law firm\u2019s advantages. As a listener, you know precisely as much as before. Only very few succeed in describing in two sentences how they stand out from the competition and why they are particularly attractive for their customers.<\/p>\n","school":{"ID":166,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2017-12-04 17:17:12","post_date_gmt":"2017-12-04 16:17:12","post_content":"The Law & Management department provides world-class executive education at the intersection of law and business management. The programmes are designed for legal professionals interested in acquiring management skills and executives keen to learn about commercial law.","post_title":"Law & Management","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"law-management","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2017-12-04 17:17:12","post_modified_gmt":"2017-12-04 16:17:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog?post_type=school&p=166","menu_order":3,"post_type":"school","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lam.unisg.ch\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}