What do Clients of Legal Services Value the Most?

In searching through the feedback we collected across dozens of practice areas, locations and markets, one thing is clear: even in an increasingly expensive legal sector, clients are certainly still prepared to pay for good advice. In most cases, our interviewees were quick to confirm that as long as a law firm or lawyer is providing top-quality advice, relatively high fees are justified, as you can see from the quotes listed here. 

Indeed, even when fees are seen as being on the rise or high for the area, provided the service remains top quality, clients generally aren’t going to quibble too much with rates if they feel they are getting their money’s worth, as these and many other comments we received demonstrate. 

So what contributes most to clients feeling they’ve received good value for money? The most common themes we have seen are still those you’d most expect, such as transparency over fees – a perennial concern among regular users of external counsel – commerciality and flexibility both in terms of how law firms charge and what they charge for. As you can see from the feedback displayed here, knowing what you’re going to pay but also knowing you might not always have to be charged for everything remains a cornerstone of what clients consider to be good service. 

Adding value through aspects such as in-house training, seminars and, particularly, improved efficiency through technology is also of high priority to many of the clients we spoke to. A surefire way to have clients bemoaning their fees more readily is if they feel they are being shortchanged in the “added value” department. 

We were also interested to see that many lawyers told us how much clients are now seeking more for their money, particularly when it comes to technological solutions and support. This was frequently cited by firms as a key expectation from clients with regard to their fees.

Firms should beware that clients believe that improved technology brings with it time savings for lawyers, meaning that their fees should be less – whether that expectation is realistic or not. This observation from one interviewee regarding the use of ChatGPT and what the rise of these AI models might mean for clients is not an isolated view. New tech means that clients are seeking greater efficiencies and more bang for their buck.