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Branches, Boutiques And Client Conflicts

By ALM Reporters and Joe Danowsky
June 28, 2006

As analyzed in several A&FP articles, a major strategic goal of many law firms is to attain and maintain dominance for specific practice areas in a legal market. One downside of dominance in a practice area, however, is that a firm may increasingly need to turn away work in other practice areas due to client conflicts.

Compared with the growth of a firm's client list, the growth potential for client conflicts is exponential. Published advice on conflict avoidance for solo practitioners and small firms amounts to making a list and checking it twice. By contrast, the conflict avoidance systems marketed to large firms seem to find it necessary to promise automated assistance for reviewing multiple digital and imaged data streams of engagement letters, waivers, billing records, etc.

While the problem of client conflicts does not seem to be limiting overall firm growth, it has motivated some firm-hopping by practice areas, and opened up ecological niches for boutique firms. In lieu of overall team depth, the latter provide highly specialized expertise at a reduced-cost.

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