We hear this all the time: Large global law firms are driving innovation through investments in technology and systems, however, oftentimes, their clients struggle to see the value in them. We are sure the value is somewhere there, it just hasn’t been clearly articulated in way that clients will experience their “aha” moment.

The problem is in how law firms talk about innovation.

The pattern: innovation as internal signal, not client communication

If we were to truly look at the history of law firm innovation content, it is generally written for an audience of other lawyers, legal directories, and award panels — not for the client paying the bill. It demonstrates sophistication, being ahead of the pack. We have a lab. We have AI. We are certified in legal project management. These are credentials aimed at peers and rankings editors, who reward the existence of the initiative. They are not, on their own, statements a general counsel can use to decide hire a law firm.

Firms can describe their innovation in exhaustive detail — the platform, the methodology, the headcount and investment behind it — and still be unable to answer a much simpler question: how does it help the clients. The capability is well documented. The benefit is assumed, not stated, and assumed benefits is not going to convince a skeptical client.

A test worth applying

Over the years we have come to rely on a simple discipline when reviewing any innovation claim a firm wants to put in front of a client, whether it is a directory submission, a pitch deck, or a LinkedIn post: can the claim complete this sentence — because of this, your matter will be cheaper, lower-risk, or precedent-setting?

If it can, you have a client benefit, and it is usually worth leading with rather than the underlying initiative. If it cannot, what you have is a capability statement, not a benefit statement — and it is worth being honest with yourself about which one you are writing, because they are not interchangeable and clients can tell the difference even when they cannot articulate why.

This test is deliberately unforgiving. Most innovation initiatives, at the point someone first wants to talk about them publicly, do not yet pass it. That is useful information, not a reason to abandon the initiative — it is a reason to either keep developing it until it does pass, or to be more modest about what is being claimed in the meantime.

Where the gaps need to be addressed 

A few recurring offenders, drawn from years of sitting on both sides of these conversations:

Innovation labs and innovation-officer titles. The existence of a dedicated function is treated as the achievement, and the function’s actual output — what it has changed for a client on a real matter — is rarely named with the same confidence as the title itself.

• Technology adoption announcements. “We use AI for contract review” describes a tool, not an outcome. The client does not experience the tool. They experience a faster turnaround time, a lower rate, or a level of consistency across a portfolio of agreements — and those are the things worth saying, if they are true and provable.
• Process certifications. Legal project management training, Lean Six Sigma badges, and similar credentials frequently exist to satisfy a tender requirement or a panel review, and then never get translated into a sentence a client would recognise as describing their own experience of working with the firm or benefitting from these certifications.
• Legal directory submissions themselves. There is a particular irony here, given how much of my own work runs through these documents. “Innovation” is routinely listed as a firm credential in submissions to Chambers, Legal 500, and similar directories, often as a single line among many — without ever showing the editor, and by extension the client reading the resulting profile, what that innovation actually bought anyone.

What closing the gap looks like

Firms that are able to convincingly articulate how their innovation projects can help their clients’ businesses are the ones that will standout. Never lead with the innovation, but lead with the benefits that address the client’s problems.

Many lawyers we speak to talk about solving their clients’ problems as the key value they bring to their clients. 

What matters to a client: what changes for me, stated in terms a client already cares about — access, cost, or trust — rather than in terms of what the firm built.

Why the gap persists

Innovation initiatives are usually conceived, funded, and measured by a different part of the firm than the one responsible for client communication. The team building the tool is measured on adoption rates and efficiency gains internally. The team talking to clients inherits the initiative only once it is already built, often without having been part of defining what it should mean for the people on the receiving end.

The billable hour adds its own awkwardness. “We made this more efficient” is a strange thing for a firm to volunteer when efficiency has historically meant fewer billable hours, not a deliberate business decision. Firms that have not also rethought how they price the work they have made more efficient have an obvious incentive to describe the innovation in terms that avoid raising the question.

And lawyers, by training and habit, describe capability rather than outcome. The professional instinct is to be precise about what was built and cautious about promising what it will do for any particular client’s circumstances — a sound instinct in the context of legal advice, and a genuinely unhelpful one in the context of marketing a service.

None of these are excuses. They are the actual reasons the gap exists, and any firm serious about closing it will need to address the structural issues.

Looking at it from the client’s perspective

Innovation communication is not a marketing polish problem. It is a translation discipline, and it belongs inside the work of building the innovation, not bolted on afterward when someone needs a line for the website or the next pitch.

The firms that do this well do not necessarily have better technology and workflows than everyone else. They simply never stopped asking, at every stage of building it, what does this mean for the person paying for it — and they kept asking until they had an answer worth saying out loud.

TLDR: Five questions to ask before you tell clients about the new thing your firm just built

1. Does the narrative about the new thing clearly articulate a specific outcome for the client rather than merely describing a tool or process? 
2. Can the claim realistically complete the sentence, “Because of this, the client’s matters will be cheaper, lower-risk, or precedent-setting?” 
3. Is the terminology focused on client-centric values like access, cost, or trust, rather than internal firm credentials? 
4. Does the narrative explain why the innovation matters to the client’s business, rather than simply highlighting what the firm has built? 
5. And finally, has the firm accounted for the commercial reality of the innovation—such as how it impacts pricing—to ensure the message is not only credible but also actionable for the client? 

By rigorously applying this discipline, firms can ensure they are speaking to the client’s interests rather than merely highlighting their own sophistication.