Managing Partners' Forum Roundtable - September 2025

Steve Rowan, Nicky Lloyd and I had a good discussion at last week's Managing Partners'​ Forum roundtable around how business services professionals can help protect and grow profit margins

My summary and reflections below:

- Steve kicked off with some stats from the latest MPF survey, painting a picture of a challenging trading environment. Despite this backdrop the stat that stood out to me was 89% of firms are expecting expand in the next 12 months

- Building on that, I drew the distinction between a need to expand high quality, high margin work vs expanding margin pressured work caused by 5 years of inflation (wrt lawyer salaries in particular) and mixed fortunes in raising prices over the same period

- Nicky then tied key teams into that expansion strategy to make sure it is indeed high quality. For example, M&BD teams targeting revenue growth in the right areas, finance teams managing the work to cash cycle to reduce profit leakage and more broadly identifying where each role in the firm has a touchpoint with the client experience

- Olivia Kelly gave a good overview of recruitment trends in the commercial finance space to help support pricing and FP&A activities. In particular, an emphasis on Finance Business Partners aligned to practice areas (rather than centralised) struck me as a positive, plus a recognition that smaller firms are creating more bespoke roles rather than just copying the homework of Big Law firms

- I broadly (but admittedly, not completely!) managed to stay off my soapbox about making sure everyone was on the same page with (a) what is profit and how do we increase it and (b) the strategic direction of the firm, but we had one of the attendees share how they put everyone through commercial skills training when they join the firm which was music to my ears!

- We touched briefly on the potential for AI to disrupt both the core legal delivery model, and more specifically the potential benefits of these tools across the work to cash cycle but I found it refreshing to have a discussion around the positive impact people can have on firm performance

Plenty of other observations and practical tips in the discussion, but the overall tone that emerged was positive, and that business services professionals have a key role to play in the financial success of their firms

MPF: Helping firms sustain their profit margins in challenging times