The Future of the Firm

In this episode of the Future of the Firm podcast, Emma Carroll, our Head of Content, speaks to Karen Morton, the Chief Marketing Officer of Cleary Gottlieb and President of LMA Europe. They discuss the newly launched report, produced in a collaboration between Source and the Legal Marketing Association Europe, that examines The Top Challenge for Legal CMOs: Building a Next Generation Growth Engine. Karen and Emma shared their insights on these matters and more: Revenue generation is a core part of the CMO's role, and 67% of those surveyed say it is set to become even more important. With growth a big goal for firms today, their marketing leaders need to free up time and resource to support them with this. 96% of marketing leaders say they'll be investing more in technology within their function over the next 18 months. Challenges they face include knowing the optimal timing for tech investment, guaranteeing seamless integration across disparate systems, and transforming raw data into meaningful insights. Over 50% of respondents from the survey say that using technology and analytics to better understand client behaviour and deliver an exceptional experience is crucial. This shift further towards data-driven insights is now central to the role of CMOs. Law firm marketing and business development leaders should prioritise using technology to increase efficiency and output by automating mundane tasks and reducing human error, thus creating a high-performing and sustainable team. Law firms need to move away from mass content distribution and instead focus on delivering personalised, targeted insights that really resonate with clients. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't miss our sister podcast, Business Leader's Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Aurelija Pletiene, Director of Product Management at Vinted, about how you can cut through the noise to align, focus, and deliver innovation around trust and safety.

On our latest episode of The Future of the Firm podcast, Sophie Gunn, Senior Consultant at Source, caught up with Emma Carroll, our Head of Content, to debate some of the most important findings from our Client Perceptions programme so far in 2025. They then discuss how firms can use this information to gain competitive advantage. Sophie shared her insights on the following matters and more: Based on surveys of nearly 4,000 senior buyers, sector expertise and subject matter experts have been the top differentiators for consulting services in recent years. Sophie also reveals other crucial attributes. Client perceptions show notable regional differences. Some examples include: In the US, there's a rising emphasis on a firm's global reach; a trend likely driven by recent shifts in supply chains and tariffs. In countries like China and Japan, clients are primarily focused on a firm's implementation ability. In the UK, GCC, and Australia, thought leadership is comparatively a more highly valued attribute. According to the survey, there is a gap between the perceptions of firms by existing clients and prospects, with current clients rating firms' quality of work higher than their prospects. Sophie shares what this means for marketing teams. There's a notable shift in how senior managers perceive consulting firms: those below the C-suite are becoming less positive. Sophie sets out how firms can respond. If you enjoyed this conversation, then head over to our Client Perceptions reports page, where you'll discover much more about how senior decision makers perceive leading firms. We share our independent analysis by geography, sector, and service lines, with recent reports including those on financial services, energy & resources, and the US market. Use these reports to gain insight into client priorities, competitor strengths, and market gaps to better position your brand. You can access the reports directly or contact us for more information.

On our latest episode of The Future of the Firm podcast, Ben Tye, CEO of Gate One Consulting, caught up with Emma Carroll, Head of Content at Source, to discuss what clients want from growth and CX work today. Ben shared his insights on the following matters and more: While clients rarely begin by stating "we need to grow our business", this desire for growth is behind many of the challenges they raise, such as CRM system issues or new product launch hurdles. It is therefore crucial for consultants to link these discrete problems back to the ultimate business outcome of driving growth in order to tailor the services firms offer. While traditional buyers like COOs, CTOs, CPOs, CFOs, chief digital & information officers, and chief transformation officers still buy services, consultants need to be careful not to assume these roles are buying the same services as they were historically. For instance, a chief people officer might now be more interested in technology and data insights. This leads to more cross-functional buying, plus two or three buyers may be involved, rather than a single sponsor, making the sales process more complex. Clients want support around the technological, operational, and data aspects of AI. The need for ethical and responsible AI use is increasingly important to clients and is also driving consulting demand. Where AI-driven decisions influence customer experience or service delivery getting those right is particularly critical. Clients are actively identifying and developing a backlog of AI use cases. Firms can help them manage these as a portfolio, using clear decision criteria to quickly determine if a proof of concept is viable. Interestingly, "edge cases" from this portfolio, rather than the immediately obvious ones, often prove to be the most impactful. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't miss our sister podcast, Business Leader's Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Andrew Brothers, former Chief Information Officer at Primark, about targeting tech investment as a CIO.

On our latest episode of The Future of the Firm podcast, Dr Jan van de Poll, MD and Founder of Praioritize, caught up with Emma Carroll, Head of Content at Source. Jan and Emma shared their insights on the following matters and more: According to Source's latest quarterly client survey, 98% of consulting buyers believe that generative AI will replace consultants to some extent, with 55% expecting it to do so to a significant degree Virtual consulting is challenging the established consulting model: Jan argues that while traditional consultants typically only serve 1% of the organisation, virtual consulting models offer the opportunity to extend insights and support to the remaining 99%. AI is streamlining consulting processes—turning time-consuming tasks like conducting and analysing hundreds of interviews into more efficient, dynamic workflows using smart, real-time questionnaires. Virtual consulting has implication for the governance processes within firms, and partners may find their role evolving. We can now combine the two, GenAI and human consultants, while AI can rapidly process and structure information, human expertise remains essential for tailoring insights and delivering client-ready solutions. [5:11] Despite current limitations, virtual consultants and human professionals are not mutually exclusive—but can, in fact, complement one another to create a more efficient, adaptive consulting model. The next steps for AI consulting will focus on objective quantification of soft aspects such as future readiness, leadership, innovation, and organisational dynamics. These can then be used to create KPIs to derive actionable insights. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't miss our sister podcast, Business Leader's Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Matthew Wilson, Chief Legal Office at Fremantle, about creating business resilience.

Kapish Vanvaria, EY Global and Americas Risk Consulting Leader, caught up with Emma Carroll, Head of Content at Source, on the latest episode of our The Future of the Firm podcast. Kapish shared his insights on the following matters and more: There have been some big changes in risk services in recent years, including technology innovation, the impact of regulatory changes, and an evolution of client expectations—in particular, clients wanting more sector-specific and personalised solutions. The sweet spot for risk experts lies in offering strong domain expertise—for instance, top tier talent in regulatory compliance—and marrying that up with deep sector knowledge, while supporting this with insights from other industries as well. To really solve business problems for clients, it often involves more than just consulting. Audit, legal, industry experts, and technology experts all need to have a seat at the table, and firms should look at creating shared KPIs to encourage this collaboration. When bringing solutions to clients, firms should be using themselves as client zero, and working on the concept of 'proof, not promises'. Testing solutions within the firm itself and showing its successes brings credibility to the offering. When choosing which firms to shortlist, clients are most concerned about expertise, but an ability to implement is close behind. Firms can translate their expertise into implementation by never being afraid to fail and by going through the iterative process of finding what doesn't work to lead you to what does. Firms are starting to supplement their workforce with digital FTEs. Beyond improving quality and reducing costs, this also allows work for be carried out more quickly. People become reviewers rather than doers and have more time to thrive as individuals. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't miss our sister podcast, Business Leader's Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Francine Bennett, Board Member at the Ada Lovelace Institute, about solving business problems with AI.

Lesley Uren, Global CEO of Consulting for Korn Ferry, caught up with Emma Carroll, Source's Head of Content, on the latest episode of The Future of the Firm podcast to discuss where the hot spots and challenges in human capital consulting are today, and where clients' needs are set to shift in this space. Lesley shares her insight on the following matters and more: Volatility in the market for human capital consulting is being driven by large macro factors that are impacting clients' appetite to invest. This uncertainty is likely to persist, and consulting firms need to be able to pivot quickly to respond to clients' changing business issues. CEOs are facing a big challenge around maintaining business performance as they transform their organisations. AI is one of the big triggers here, as leaders start to rethink their business models, but there are other drivers too, including cost pressures. Data, including the use of data to create insights, is set to be the biggest change in human capital consulting. We discuss the power of unlocking client data and combining that with a firm's data to reveal hidden information about talent and drive better business performance. The big questions from clients around AI include: How can we redesign our organisation? How will work be different? What kind of skills will we need? Where will we find those skills at scale? How can we galvanise our people behind this change? How will softer skills ensure this transition is successful? The political temperature around DEI is impacting the type of support clients need in this area. We discuss what is changing and what is staying the same. Firms will need to think differently about demonstrating value to clients. It's about more than processing and sythesising data now: It's about proving impact. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't miss our sister podcast, Business Leader's Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Sarah Ricketts, SVP for Procurement at Rolls-Royce, about transforming procurement with data, culture, and tech.

Source's CEO, Fiona Czerniawska, and Director of Market Trends, Catherine Anderson, caught up with Emma Carroll, Head of Content, on the latest episode of The Future of the Firm to discuss trends and opportunities for consulting firms in 2025. Fiona and Catherine share their insights on the following matters and more: They predict increased demand for technology, risk, and HR & change work—although this may come from different areas of the business to where you might expect. Clients may initially be interested in AI for specific point solutions, but these will open their eyes to the wider possibilities of the technology. Firms should therefore be quick to jump on these early windows of opportunity. The end of last year saw client sentiment shift towards growth after a long period of caution and cost cutting. We discuss why this is the case and how firms can best support clients with their ambitions. Clients are looking for firms that understand them and their industry but can also bring consulting expertise that offers them a new perspective. They don't want to be given teams they have to train themselves or firms that offer a cookie-cutter approach. Fifty-eight percent of clients expect fee rates to decline, but this could be a case of wishful thinking. We also discuss how clients are responding to the idea of outcomes-based pricing. Fiona and Catherine discuss their predictions for consulting in ten years' time, including a shift from pure advisory to more delivery-focused work and an evolution of traditional consulting firms into technology firms. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't miss our sister podcast, Business Leader's Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Benjamin Samuels, Former Chief Revenue Officer at WeWork, about navigating growth and change.

Ryan Piper, Global CEO at Morison Global, and Fiona Czerniawska, CEO of Source, caught up with Emma Carroll, Head of Content at Source, on the latest episode of our The Future of the Firm podcast. Ryan and Fiona shared their insights on the following matters and more: The impact of PE funding on the use of technology in audit firms, in particular looking at how AI can make an impact. How the time horizons of PE deals have shifted to become more long term as a consequence of market volatility, and whether this shows any signs of changing. The commoditisation of audit services, and how this leads to a greater emphasis on customer experience to differentiate firms. Consolidation in the audit industry, and how firms globally are achieving growth and scale through mergers & acquisitions. Practical advice for audit firms, including exploring funding options and understanding market positioning. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't miss our sister podcast, Business Leader's Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Benjamin Samuels, Former Chief Revenue Officer at WeWork, about navigating growth and change.