Dear friends,

We wish to thank you again for reserving time in your busy calendars to meet with our team during the IBA. We highly appreciate these meetings and think that they are an important element in developing our relationships with leading firms in jurisdictions important to us.

Of course, it goes without saying that it is also a great pleasure on a personal level to meet old friends and enjoy the opportunity of new introductions.

As has become a tradition for us, we try to discuss a couple of standard topics with all teams that we meet, with the aim of sharing some of our observations with you. We also followed this tradition this year in Seoul, and the topics that we had chosen this time were the following:

What are the key growth or emphasis areas for your firm at the moment?
Do you see major disruption coming from alternative legal service providers, such as the Big Four (or other) accounting firms?
What has been the most positive or surprising employee initiative that you have received recently?

As always, we have used the most rigorous scientific methods in analysing the responses to this survey and we are proud to present to you the results below.

How have you addressed disruption / competition coming from alternative legal service providers in your market(s)?

Here we have grouped the various answers we received under the following categories:

Yes, we see the Big Four accounting firms being active in our market, but we don’t consider them to be competing with us
Yes, the Big Four are already competing with us, or we anticipate that they will do so in the near future
Yes, we see some disruption from lower margin legal service providers
We are trying to address such disruption by investing in own tech solutions and alternative ways of offering our services
We see increased competition from our clients’ own in-house teams
No, we don’t see such competition

What has been the most positive / surprising initiative by an employee during the past year and how do you encourage such initiatives?

On the topic of employee initiatives, we received a number of great ideas that had been suggested by lawyers and other staff. Here is a sample of what was mentioned.

“Early stop in summer, i.e. all employees may leave an hour earlier during the summer season. Has not affected productivity.”
“Innovation contest every second year. More for staff than for lawyers. Good for mixing up lawyers and staff.”
“Innovation team consisting of directors of IT, finance, etc., who meet two times per year to innovate the business and ways of working.”
“Prosecco machine” – Our comment: This must be the employee initiative of the year! We look especially much forward to visiting the firm who adopted this great initiative.
“Associate interest in Bitcoin and blockchain has resulted in different working groups. It is important to ensure that lawyers understand new technologies.”
“Two initiatives: ‘Fun Committee’ – get money and do what you want with it. Went for a ski trip to the Alps last year. Italy last year and Austria this year. Got rid of all land lines last year.”
“Fixed salary – two add-ons (one monthly and one annual bonus) – associates were engaged in the process to adopt this system.”
“Mentor program: a young lawyer with an older lawyer to coach the younger on a personal and professional level.”
“‘Inspired by babies’ external network between companies where employees on parental leave meet once a month at different companies to discuss a topic or learn something new. The purpose is to secure that the employees still have one foot in the business and come back after the leave.”

IBA 2019 – Observations from Seoul

What are the three key growth / emphasis areas for your firm?

How have you addressed disruption / competition coming from alternative legal service providers in your market(s)?

What has been the most positive / surprising initiative by an employee during the past year and how do you encourage such initiatives?