2025 Purpose Survey
– are we delivering?

Are we on Purpose?

In January we undertook a survey across our client base to find out if we’re delivering our Purpose.

We invited clients to tell us: (i) Whether they like the MIL way versus the old law firm way and (ii) whether we’re delivering our Purpose in practice.

The BLUF (Bottom Line upfront)

What’s the problem we’re solving?

When the business community is surveyed about their law firms, the results have been poor to damning. Common complaints are that lawyers are slow to respond, expensive, don’t understand the client’s business, give SMEs junior lawyers and don’t take a commercial risk based approach.

Getting official

In 2018, the Judge business school (the business school arm of Cambridge University) published a report called ‘Amplifying the voice of the client in law firms’ in partnership with Lexis Nexis.

The report showed that 100% of the businesses surveyed were dissatisfied with their law firm experience. Reasons shared by clients included typical frustrations around billing and slow response times but also revealed others about how law firms were ‘detached’, didn’t understand their clients businesses and didn’t implement solutions.

Are we alone?

In the past 20 years, we have seen some newer models of law firms attempting to innovate – but none go far enough. Virtual law firms are still law firms and haven’t been able to fully address the underlying client frustrations. Some law firms offer an ‘inhouse style’ approach but their lawyers haven’t ever worked inhouse so it’s the same service with different packaging. Other variations lean towards resourcing businesses or involve platforms which diminish the personal touch. All have innovated in some way but none have gone as far as My Inhouse Lawyer in facing client frustrations and changing the game

Being a challenger

It’s widely accepted that the traditional /old law firm model revolves mainly around lawyers and what works for them. As a result,  it can cause frustrations for SME leaders. Since the beginning, we adopted a truly challenger mindset to re-engineer the legal services model in a way that gives SMEs a much better experience. Lots of people hold themselves out as challengers and we wanted to find out from our clients, if we have really changed the game

The MIL Way

Because we’ve worked in business with other business people instead only in law firms with other lawyers, we bring a very different (inhouse) mindset. We think like people in business, and we think this quality is visible in everything we do. To put clients at the heart of our model, we changed the model to give them a more, commercial, business focused and tailored experience. One where we feel like part of the team and develop a good knowledge of the business. We are cost-effective, highly responsive and friendly.

These hallmarks are part of the MIL Way – and how we’ve been working with SMEs since 2017, changing their experience of our profession for the better.

In other words

See our video here

Checking-in with a Purpose survey

This year, we surveyed our client base. We wanted to ask them openly how we’re doing. Do they prefer our new way over over the old law firm way? And how, in practice, are we delivering against our Purpose? Have we change they’re experience of our profession for the better? Are we more responsive? More cost-effective? More commercial? Here are the results

The Big 3

We asked our clients 3 key questions:

In each case, clients said they prefer the MIL Way, that we have improved their experience for the better and they would recommend us

Into some detail

We also asked whether clients thought we:

On Purpose

This report confirms our hopes and what everyone at My Inhouse Lawyer is working towards. It confirms that 100% of clients prefer the MIL Way over the old/traditional law firm way. It shows that we are living and breathing our Purpose and it’s made a difference to SMEs.

We have a growth mindset, and are always improving and refining, so we’ll be working hard to stay On Purpose and improve where we didn’t achieve full marks.

Last words go to clients & partners

Statistics and surveys have a place and are an excellent accountability tool.  But there’s nothing like hearing directly from clients and partners in their own words. Click here to read some testimonials.