Legal consultant Marcie Borgal Shunk became certified to use a proprietary tool to measure business culture a decade ago. But it wasn’t until last year that a law firm hired her to measure its culture using the Chicago-based cultural inventory tool developer Human Synergistics.

Cultural inventories have been more of a staple in Fortune 500 companies than the legal industry. In law firms, similar survey-based analyses had the limited purpose of assessing merger prospects or associate retention. But in 2022, Borgal Shunk had three clients—a global law firm, a midsize regional firm and a plaintiffs firm—ask her to assess what it was like for employees to work there.