Building Commerciality Beyond Legal Practice

"Firms have the systems, the dashboards, the professional resources, and the reporting structures to understand profitability. Yet profitability continues to leak in everyday decisions made by partners, team leads, and matter owners" 

This, on page 18 of BigHand's 2026 Annual Law Firm Finance Report, is why I do what I do with The Legal MBA

Over the years, it has become increasingly clear to me that there is a fundamental disconnect between the tools, the policies and the specialists that are managed within business service teams - and where the impactful commercial decisions are made by the fee earners

To bring this to life - 99% of firms plan on raising billable hours targets, yet 64% report declining billable hours (p6)

That is self-evidently a deeply problematic approach to improving profitability, particularly when 29% of firms cite faster task completion with AI (p14)

Whilst it is stark, it is not the only gap I see, nor is it the only one highlighted in the report

There's a very clear articulation on p21 of the current capability gap between firm expectations around partners managing pricing, cross-selling and profitability on the one hand and the high write offs, lagging realisation and siloed relationships on the other

All of those gaps are addressed by upskilling partners' commercial acumen

This report stands as the latest in a long line highlighting the importance of fee earner commercial skills

I hope that, this time, the urgency now starts to come through

The report is available here and, if you want to tackle commercial skills training, please do get in touch with me

2026 will be a decisive year, indeed! (p30)