Reflections following my participation in Harvard Law School’s Leadership in Law Firms programme

Several days immersed in Harvard Law School’s Leadership in Law Firms programme, reflecting internally on the future of law firms. These are the tensions that have resonated with me most strongly, and which I encounter every week while working with firms across Spain and Latin America.

1. AI is accelerating the redefinition of the partnership model

Technology is compressing timelines. What previously took a decade to become urgent now takes two or three years.

The traditional partnership model was designed for a stable environment, with long business cycles and clients who primarily valued individual technical excellence. That environment has already changed. Today, the market rewards behaviours that the traditional partnership structure tends to discourage: cross-practice integration, speed of response, and genuine collaboration among partners.

Firms that have yet to resolve how to coordinate internally, make decisions swiftly, or align collective incentives will feel that pressure sooner than they expect.

2. There are business models that work, but they still need reinvention

This week we analysed in depth seven real-life case studies involving law firms and legal organisations: from newly established firms that reinvented the partnership model, to the legal departments of the world’s largest technology companies, as well as employment law firms that completely transformed the way they deliver legal services.

Two of those cases strike me as particularly illustrative of the tension currently affecting the sector.

The first concerns a firm that, decades ago, chose to specialise exclusively in the most complex matters, reduce the volume of clients, and price its services accordingly. Today, it is the most profitable firm in its market.

The second concerns a firm that recognised an entire practice area was becoming commoditised and, rather than reducing fees, completely redesigned the way that work was delivered, relying on technology, new professional profiles, and highly precise processes. The result was a simultaneous reduction in costs for the client and an increase in the firm’s profit margins.

Two opposing paths. What they share is that both firms made a clear strategic decision and executed it decisively. Without waiting for the market to force change upon them.

Across Iberian and Latin American firms, I frequently observe the opposite: business models that still function, but with increasing friction that no one openly addresses. Firms attempt to become more efficient without altering the incentives that generate precisely the behaviours they are trying to change.

3. The real constraint is not technological

Implementing technology is the easy part. The real difficulty emerges when change requires revisiting incentive structures or altering power dynamics that have been built over decades.

In Iberian and Latin American firms, those dynamics are sustained by deeply entrenched personal relationships. No one wants to bear the cost of challenging them. The result is organisations that speak about transformation while continuing to make decisions exactly as they did ten years ago.

Clients notice this before the firms themselves do.

4. The next competitive advantage will be organisational 

The firms that enter the next decade from a position of strength will be those that addressed difficult conversations early: how decisions are made, who genuinely holds authority, and which behaviours are truly rewarded.

Those conversations do not disappear as firms grow. They become more expensive.

Are you currently addressing any of these tensions within your firm?

Marc Gericó
Global Managing Partner of Gericó Associates