What’s the point of us?
This sounds like an existential question familiar to many lawyers. For law firms, it’s a strategic one.
That question sits behind everything: how you train juniors, what work you chase and how you respond to AI. There’s no single right answer. But the answer needs to be honest.
A firm that knows what it stands for can attract the right talent and clients. A firm that tells a compelling story disconnected from reality might attract people initially but eventually they'll leave for somewhere that suits them better.
Law firms have become obsessed with short-term metrics. If you’re focused on beating last year’s numbers it’s difficult to plan for the next 10 or 20 years.
Answering that question may determine who’s left standing.
There isn't one right answer to what a law firm should be.
Will’s sceptical of the idea that legal services have to be delivered according to one model. The market has become very good at building large, highly profitable practices around scale, volume and repeatable work.
That model works.
His argument isn't that it shouldn't exist. It's that it isn't the only option.
When he took over the team, he looked at the market and saw competitors largely chasing the same clients and the same work. His response wasn't to try to offer everything to everyone. It was to ask himself where his team could offer something genuinely different and valuable.
That means understanding what a particular client needs rather than simply offering to do everything for everyone.
The same thinking applies to the lawyers doing the work.
The point isn't simply to produce lawyers that can churn out repeated work as efficiently as possible. It's to develop lawyers who can instruct the technology and act as trusted advisers.
There are plenty of good lawyers.
There are fewer great communicators.
There are fewer still who combine technical ability, communication and judgement.
That distinction is increasingly important as AI becomes embedded in everyday legal work. Technical competence is becoming easier to augment. Knowing what to do with the answer remains considerably harder.
Trust is built around that difference.
Clients don't need someone who can locate clause 7.3 in the fastest time. They need someone who can tell them whether that clause matters, what the commercial consequences are and what they should do next.
The question is how you develop that ability if the machine removes much of the process that used to teach it.
A junior lawyer who spends their early career using AI to jump directly to the answer may become extremely efficient. They may also develop less of the accumulated knowledge that comes from seeing how the pieces fit together.
The profession is going to change. It always has. When Will tells today's trainees that he didn't have a work mobile until qualification, they look at him as though he's describing a childhood spent communicating by carrier pigeon.
The answer isn't to resist that change. It's to make sure juniors still get enough exposure to different problems, clients and ways of thinking to develop the judgement that technology can't replace.
Another issue plagues the legal industry: short-termism.
Law firms have become increasingly focused only on the next year. Profitability, growth and lateral moves are all measured against increasingly immediate benchmarks.
The danger is obvious for someone at the beginning of their career.
Optimise for immediate reward today and accidentally make yourself less useful tomorrow. Will has a simple test for this:
Are the choices you're making opening doors or closing them?
His own approach to developing lawyers is deliberate. His team works across a wide range of asset management problems and he wants juniors exposed to new structures and unfamiliar issues rather than becoming trapped doing the same repeated work.
Not everyone in his team will become a partner. He knows that.
Some will move to another firm. Some will go in-house. Some will move into product, business or data roles within the asset management industry.
He sees part of his responsibility as keeping those doors open.
That feels increasingly relevant in an industry where the boundaries around legal work are becoming less fixed.
AI may remove some of the work junior lawyers traditionally did. It may also make the work that remains more interesting. You'd be hard pressed to find a lawyer who reminisces about spending hours bundling into the night.
But efficiency isn't the same as development. If you want to build lawyers for the future who can operate above the technology, they still need the experience that teaches them how to exercise judgement.
That's ultimately what Will’s trying to build: a profitable practice that develops people, builds long-term relationships and creates something that lasts.
There’s something to be said for building a practice around the quality of the lawyers it produces.
A place where juniors aren't simply trained to produce more work but to become better lawyers.
Where technology takes away the drudgery.
And where, five or ten years in, you've become the person clients trust when the technology gives you an answer but can't tell you what to do with it.