Are they being served?

You are a leader in your firm. You've survived the car crash, but it's been bloody. Good people have gone. Overheads have been slashed, including many things you used to consider necessities. So have the perks that were your just reward for all the stress. Your income may not be what it was, but you and the business are still here, the bank is onside, and you are looking forward. "No complacency", you declare, but you are feeling more optimistic and tell yourself, modestly, that all things considered you have made a good fist of a horrible situation. You allow yourself a flicker of satisfaction with a job well done.

Then, if you are unlucky, you pick up the same newspaper I did today and your eyes alight upon this baleful assertion: "It's not about the way you led your business through the downturn, but the way you lead out that will truly define you as a leader."

This impersonation of insight appeared in an advertisement for HR services and was headed: the 10 burning questions that keep you awake at night - to which I'd like to add another two:

• Why can't you punctuate?
• Why stop at 10?

Building competitive advantage

It's probably been drawn to your attention that we are confronted by a unique combination of economic strain, constant demands to give more for less, and pressure for change in the way we serve our clients. To define a strategy for the next three to five years in a miasma of what Donald Rumsfeld called "known unknowns and unknown unknowns" is a tough job.

Where to start - and what do we mean when we talk about strategy, a concept that has its Greek origins in warfare? Bruce Henderson, the founder of Boston Consulting Group, defined it well: "Strategy", he said, "is a deliberate search for a plan of action that will develop a business's competitive advantage and compound it."

Competitive differences take many forms, but if one looks at Scotland's most successful firms, an unexpected fact emerges: though one would expect legal skill to be the defining competitive difference in a firm's success, invariably it isn't. Service is more important.

Competence matters greatly, but beyond the minimum threshold for the matter in hand, it is largely taken for granted. Recently, I heard the comedian Michael McIntyre talk of browsing in a bookshop, and coming across a paperback described on the front cover as "A real page-turner!" "This", he remarked, "is the very least I would expect from a book." Similarly, knowing the law is the very least clients expect from their lawyers. The factors that drive clients to choose one firm over another and then stay loyal are overwhelmingly service related, which is why modern service level agreements hardly ever refer to the need for legal knowledge. It is a given.

The lift test

Thirty years' experience of creating and running relationships, and now helping other firms to do the same, convinces me this is so. However technically brilliant they may be, lawyers rarely hear clients emoting, "Tristan, the timeless elegance of your collateral warranties in Schedule 17 will live with me forever. I salute you!" On the other hand, clients really notice and value that their lawyers work as long as it takes when the pressure is on, meet deadlines, have market knowledge and connections, communicate in plain English, and are unafraid to give advice, not just take instructions.

They are more appreciative still when their lawyers are personally empathetic, good to talk to and able to put themselves in their clients' shoes.

A general counsel once told me that, when choosing his panel, in the final cut he applied "the lift test". "Could I", he asked himself, "bear to be stuck in a lift for an hour with these people?" Many of undoubted skill never got off the ground floor.

Creating and executing successful law firm strategy is a multi-faceted, long-term task. My colleague Paul Gilbert and I plan to cover many of the issues in future articles. But recognising the primacy of service is the first step to creating competitive advantage and articulating your firm's value in the clearest possible way. It goes to the core of how we should be training, guiding and rewarding our key people. To paraphrase Bill Clinton's first campaign for President, "It's the service, stupid!" and those who embrace it will, like him, be winners.

LBC Wise Counsel is the partner provider of the Law Society of Scotland's new programme of consultancy support for the profession, Towards The New Normal. See: www.lawscot.org.uk/update/ towardsthenewnormal . For more information or to discuss the programme, email: update@law scot.org.uk . Stephen Gold can be contacted on 07968 484 232 and by email: shg@lbcwise counsel.com.