Do You Know How Your Clients Define "Value"?

Like every business, writes Bruce MacEwen in What's Value? Answer One Question, in law there is room for the "sell it for more" firms (the equivalent of Ritz-Carlton and BMW), just like there is room for the "make it for less" ones (think Ikea and Motel 6). But it only works if you're defining "value" in exactly the same terms as your clients, something very few firms are able to do successfully. And that means that everybody else is fighting for the same clients in the middle:

... the middle market is an extremely tough place to survive and thrive, precisely because it is so densely populated with law firms which, to many clients, are indistinguishable from yours.

For MacEwen, the key to success in this "awkward in-between space" is giving your client a different kind of value than "best" or "cheapest," precisely because that value is so hard to define. Read the post. Then call your clients.