Coming of age

International firm Clifford Chance provides an insight into the evolution of the professional support lawyer's role, as knowledge management gains gravitas at law firms. By Kate Gibbons and Deborah Neale.

The legal profession has a reputation for being cautious and slow, but it is actually a clever and innovative world, which is shrugging off its Dickensian reputation. The evolution of the professional support lawyer’s (PSL’s) role in the world of the modern law firm is as sure a sign as any of this. Take the case of our firm, Clifford Chance. Fifteen years ago we had no PSLs and in evolutionary terms, their prototypes were only just crawling out of the legal swamp. Little by little fee earners had started to engage in one-off projects, which took away from fee earning for a time, to develop a particular template. Once on dry land, however, PSLs developed quickly and became an established feature of the law-firm landscape. Ten years ago, we started to employ a couple of full-time PSLs, engaged in the innovative practice of drafting not only templates, but also guidance notes to those templates. Today we have a dozen PSLs in our finance and capital markets practices alone. The services provided by them include: complete suites of templates and guidance notes; a client-briefing production line; online services (such as alerter and our cross-border-financing guide); a full-time enquiry line dedicated to our international network; and a client-education programme. We have come a long way from the primeval swamp in 15 short years.

The purpose of this article is to examine the driving forces that gave rise to this rapid evolution, the way in which the role of the PSL has adapted to delivering on those driving forces, and future trends and demands.

Driving forces
The main driving forces behind the PSL revolution are encompassed within the ‘CHESS’ mnemonic: commoditisation; happiness; efficiency and client expectation; standardisation; and socio/legal change.

Commoditisation
Once a product ceases to be novel it can be taken up by competitors, and the key driver for profitability ceases to be premium fees as a reward for an innovative solution, shifting to the firm that can transact more efficiently and cheaply. PSLs are an important part of achieving such economies by developing templates and transaction procedures.

Happiness
The war for talent among law firms is fierce. Persuading fee earners that everything possible is being done to reduce the time they spend on repetitious drafting and reinventing the wheel is part of the fight. The PSLs play a key part in freeing up fee earners’ time, thus relieving the time pressures on transactional lawyers.

Efficiency and client expectation
Many of our clients who are in-house lawyers once worked with us or our competitors. They are assiduous in exposing any inefficiency in order to secure value for money. The ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ will spot, for example, a fee earner who has spent too long drafting a loan agreement. PSLs are a necessary business investment in order to meet client-service expectations. A fee earner cannot necessarily be relied on to deliver on efficiency projects, as client work will always intervene and disrupt the process.

Standardisation
As law firms grow larger, both organically and through mergers, it becomes increasingly important to present a consistent firm image to clients and the business community as a whole. Consistency of style and approach in documents and procedures are an imperative for reasons of risk management, efficiency and image. It is the PSLs who have the time and resource to pursue this initiative.

Socio/legal change
A plethora of domestic and international legal initiatives means that keeping up with the law and, indeed, keeping our clients up to date with the law is very challenging. A UK government committed to social change by means of legislation and the EU desirous of integration and global initiatives, such as UNICTRAL (a model law on cross-border insolvency), all militate towards having full-time PSLs tracking, assimilating, explaining and applying these developments.

Today’s PSL roles
How are PSLs operating so as to deliver on the driving forces identified in the CHESS mnemonic? There is no ‘one size fits all’ job description. The ingredients of any particular PSL role will depend on a number of factors including the type of firm, the level of development of the knowledge-management (KM) and IT functions, the support systems in place, the business needs at any particular time and, to some extent, the particular interests and experience of the PSL. However, a Google search of PSL job opportunities, coupled with our own experience at Clifford Chance, demonstrates that there are certain key tasks and responsibilities that now fall within the remit of the PSL. We have identified the following as being typical PSL activities, although of course, it is not an exhaustive list.

Know-how
Developing and maintaining a KM system for the rationalisation and storage of know-how has become an important part of the role of PSL, particularly in firms that do not have an established team of KM professionals. Even with such a dedicated team,

PSLs can still be heavily involved in the setting up and maintenance of the know-how function as well as contributing to its content.

Precedents
Having been the original focus of the PSL role, the development and maintenance of standard-form documents and templates continues to be an important aspect of the role. Given that automated drafting products are increasingly being adopted by law firms, the ongoing maintenance of templates is gradually becoming much less time consuming and more emphasis is given to guidance notes and texts.

Education and training
The level of PSL involvement in the education and training of lawyers and, indeed, their firm’s clients is largely dependent on whether the particular firm has a dedicated in-house lawyer and client-education team. Where there is such a dedicated team, the role of the PSL is likely to be focused on the delivery of training rather than the development and administration of training programmes.

Business development
This would include activities such as producing pitch and tender documents, attending beauty parades, producing capability statements and writing client briefings. Many firms have specialist business-development teams, so it remains to be seen whether this continues to be a significant feature of the PSL role.

Mentoring and deal assistance
This includes responding to questions from fee earners, both on law and practice, and providing expert assistance on transactions – for example, sitting in on conference calls or checking advice to be given. This aspect of the role provides an opportunity for PSLs to act as facilitators and mentors.

Legal/regulatory impact
Analysing the effect of national and international legislation and regulation, ensuring standard-form documents are up to date with those changes, and ensuring that fee earners are fully briefed on all relevant legal and regulatory developments has the potential to take up a significant amount of PSL time.

Information technology
Many law firms are investing heavily in IT-based initiatives for the management of their knowledge and to assist with document production. PSLs are working alongside the IT function to combine know-how and technology in a drive for efficiency, consistency, quality control and risk management.

Thought leadership
The involvement of PSLs as members of various legal bodies and in writing articles for legal publications, have become additional features of the PSL role in recent years. They are also becoming increasingly involved in preparing responses to white papers produced by the Law Commission and it is not uncommon for PSLs to be instrumental in setting legal policy for their own firms.

Core skills
As the role of the PSL has evolved so too have the core skills necessary to fulfil that function effectively. Although there will always be deviation from the generic, we would suggest that the following are core to the PSL role:

Experience – certainly at Clifford Chance, the majority of PSLs in the London office are seven-years qualified and many are even more qualified, so experience is a key facet. Many of the job specifications we searched required, on average, a minimum of five-years post-qualified experience;
Technical excellence – sound legal knowledge, the ability to read legislation and case law, and understand and interpret its implications for the practice are crucial if the responsibilities and tasks outlined above are to be carried out with excellence. High-quality drafting skills are also vital;
Communication – the role of the PSL is to communicate through a variety of mediums with fee-earning lawyers of all levels, as well as the firm’s clients and in some cases with members of industry bodies and government departments. Therefore, PSLs must possess the full range of communication skills;
IT skills – as with their fee-earning colleagues, PSLs are increasingly required to be IT literate;
Self-motivation – many PSLs work on their own and much of their work is not subject to transactional deadlines. PSLs need to be highly self-motivated and disciplined.

Future trends and demands
What does the future hold for the development of the PSL function? To answer this question we should first go back to the driving forces listed earlier and ask whether they continue to offer a dynamic for future development of the PSL function.

The answer is clearly, yes.

Commoditisation continues. Today’s cutting edge is destined to become old hat: it remains true that it will be PSLs, not fee earners, who translate that old hat into money.

The war for talent is intensifying and the innate conflict between the work/life balance and chargeable hour remains challenging. If PSLs can reduce repetition, instil confidence, provide a listening ear and take the weight off beleaguered fee earners, they are worth their weight in gold.

Client expectations are also increasing. Indeed, our clients are increasingly matching our PSL function with their own. This is because our client institutions demand economies and efficiencies not only from their lawyers but from themselves, so need a dedicated legal-infrastructure resource. Additionally, our clients are alsorequired (particularly post-Enron), to demonstrate effective risk management. Again, it is the PSL resource that can deliver the consistencies, standards and certainties necessary to underpin effective risk-management strategies.

Standardisation remains a Sisyphean pursuit and socio/legal change is unlikely to diminish. So, not only do the drivers clearly remain, they are continuously gaining momentum.

One last point to note. The rapid evolution of the PSL role comes with its own challenges. Particularly thorny are the issues concerning PSL job satisfaction and career progression, and the means whereby PSLs can feel appreciated and recognised. The imperative for law firms to keep the workforce happy applies as much to PSLs as fee earners. Competition from other law firms and, indeed, clients for the PSL resource, means that law firms must be creative and insightful to find ways to motivate and retain their PSLs. How this challenge is met will be watched with interest.

Kate Gibbons is a partner at international firm Clifford Chance and can be contacted at kate.gibbons@cliffordchance.com. Deborah Neale is a professional support lawyer at Clifford Chance and can be contacted at deborah.neale@cliffordchance.com