This is one of the conclusions of an analysis carried out, over a decade of records, on three global law firms and on other multinational professional firms by Heidi Gardner, a law lecturer at Harvard Law School. Ms Gardner says: ‘Moving beyond siloed services to complex, interdependent engagements allows a professional services firm to work for more senior executives in a client’s organization, who have a greater span of responsibility and greater authority and budget to hire external advisers.’

Institutionalised

This kind of arrangement helps sustain the stability of client relationships, rather than seeing relationships broken or disrupted if a senior legal adviser moves to another firm. Ms Gardner adds: ‘From an organizational perspective, the more partners who serve a given client, the more likely that client is to become “institutionalized”—owned, as it were, by the firm rather than controlled by one partner—reducing the risk that a departing professional will take that client with her.’ Source: Harvard Business Review