Press Release: The Matu­ri­ty Insti­tute and Lex Solu­tions release inau­gur­al Law Firm Matu­ri­ty Index rat­ings and report on major UK law firms

Lon­don, 30 Octo­ber 2024: ​‘A new mea­sure of suc­cess that analy­ses human val­ue and risk, and high­lights com­par­a­tive Total Stake­hold­er Value.’

Key find­ings include:

Law Firm Matu­ri­ty Index (LFMI) data shows that firms have a sig­nif­i­cant val­ue oppor­tu­ni­ty from more mature man­age­ment of their whole, human sys­tems. Even the most mature law firms can yield almost 40% more val­ue for stakeholders.

The aver­age LFMI rat­ing for the largest UK firms is BBB. Mature exem­plars rate at A+ and above. The three firms with the high­est LFMI rat­ings are Lin­klaters, Her­bert Smith Free­hills, and Clif­ford Chance (BBB+).

Many firms car­ry mate­r­i­al human risk. Capa­bil­i­ties to assess, man­age, and mit­i­gate peo­ple and cul­ture risk are rudi­men­ta­ry. The fun­da­men­tals of whole sys­tem, human gov­er­nance remain missing.

The absence of coher­ent human gov­er­nance means solv­ing com­plex chal­lenges, such as inte­grat­ing ESG, embed­ding inclu­sion, and man­ag­ing work­force well-being, will con­tin­ue to be chal­leng­ing, and often elusive.

Stu­art Wool­lard, co-founder of the Matu­ri­ty Insti­tute said: ​“It is very excit­ing to see the launch of our Law Firm Matu­ri­ty Index. There is a grow­ing demand by many in legal to re-define suc­cess. We also need bet­ter ways to under­stand the health of firms through a human, rather than just a finan­cial lens. Organ­i­sa­tion­al Matu­ri­ty analy­sis was designed near­ly a decade ago to mir­ror finan­cial rat­ings and show how much peo­ple mat­ter to the val­ue of a firm. We hope that the launch of a matu­ri­ty index for the legal sec­tor will help law firms and their stake­hold­ers address some of the real­ly impor­tant chal­lenges that are cur­rent­ly being faced.”

Manu Kan­war, founder at Lex Solu­tions said: ​“The announce­ment of the LFMI marks a turn­ing point for law firm bench­mark­ing. For the first time, we are able to assess and com­pare law firms by their pur­pose, cul­ture and authen­tic­i­ty. To dri­ve mean­ing­ful change in our sec­tor, we have need­ed an inde­pen­dent, robust and sys­temic mea­sure­ment. And now that we have it, we can move way beyond tick box­ing to deliv­er mean­ing­ful val­ue for firms, their peo­ple and wider society.”

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact stuart.​woollard@​omservices.​org or manu@​lexsolutions.​com

About the Matu­ri­ty Insti­tute (MI)

MI pro­vides a unique, evi­dence based approach to orga­ni­za­tion­al health and the cre­ation of Total Stake­hold­er Val­ue. MI has cre­at­ed a new, rev­o­lu­tion­ary approach to orga­ni­za­tion­al health by rais­ing glob­al stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship and man­age­ment prac­tice. Our OMIN­DEX diag­nos­tic instru­ment enables mea­sure­ment and improve­ment of Total Stake­hold­er Val­ue (TSV) cre­at­ed by orga­ni­za­tions and pro­vides rat­ings on OMIN­DEX: a com­par­a­tive scale from D to AAA. Our work is mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary and uses a whole sys­tem per­spec­tive, aim­ing to adopt the same lev­el of evi­dence-based deci­sion mak­ing to be found with­in the med­ical pro­fes­sion for human health. www​.matu​ri​tyin​sti​tute​.com

About Lex Solutions

From law firms to alter­na­tive legal ser­vices providers to legal man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cies, we part­ner with lead­ing busi­ness­es across the mar­ket­place on busi­ness, inno­va­tion and cul­ture. We deliv­er pow­er­ful coach­ing pro­grammes for law firm lead­ers, their man­age­ment and oth­er teams across the busi­ness to help devel­op a pos­i­tive and inten­tion­al cul­ture. We’re pas­sion­ate about change and progress in the legal ser­vices indus­try and part­ner with clients to ensure they are ahead of the curve when it comes to their legal resources, their strat­e­gy, oper­a­tions, inno­va­tion and their cul­ture. https://​lex​so​lu​tions​.com/

31 Oct