Trevor Faure has looked at law firm business development from both sides. As European general counsel at Tyco and then Ernst & Young’s global general counsel, he received countless undifferentiated white papers, an abundance of after-the-fact notices that he’d just been sued, and too many invitations to sup from bottomless law-firm sponsored canapé trays. Not a churlish sort, he appreciated the gestureswho, if they had the time, wouldn’t like a day inside the Royal Enclosure at Ascot or on the back nine at Pine Valley?
But he didn’t have the time. What he had was a job, and what he needed was help getting it done, rather than more invitations to parties that taxed his wardrobe. All of which led him, a few years back, to walk away from what he saw as the zero-sum law firmclient relationship and turn instead to, excuse the cliché, a "win-win" formulation. This became what he called the Smarter Legal Model (see here and here), an approach that emphasizes mutually beneficial behavior by clients and firms aimed at solving pressing problems. A Smarter Model example: A company asks its litigation firm to examine patterns of claims, and then rewards it for helping cure the underlying problems and avoid further suits.
