Legal Strategy

Most businesses consume legal services in an event-driven way: they wait for the fire to break out, and then they call in a lawyer to put it out.

Smarter businesses get lawyers that spend time on fire prevention. It’s not as exciting as putting out a fire (you don’t get any of that “phew…you really saved my bacon that time”… “Aw shucks it was nothing. Here’s my large invoice”), but it’s a lot cheaper and more manageable.

But fire prevention is essentially a defensive posture. To maximise the way a business consumes legal services, it needs a legal strategy that combines the defensive posture with an offensive posture (no, not that kind of offensive). Think maximising upside, as well as minimising downside.

Because so few businesses have a legal strategy, it’s a great way to get a competitive advantage. It’s also particularly important to have a good legal strategy in businesses that a) have high amounts of IP and legal-related issues – eg. tech, fintech, biotech, data and b) operate in markets which are changing rapidly.

What’s distinctive about legal strategy is that you not only need to have a view on how the market and technology will involve, but also how laws and legal concepts are going to evolve and - and this is where it gets tricky - how the two will interact. 

16th September 2025