Multi-disciplinary skills needed to better serve international clients – Lener

Lawyers must expand their knowledge of risk and finance as well as developing client management, account management, and project management skills

Lawyers must adopt a more multi-disciplinary outlook to legal practice in order to ensure they better serve their increasingly international client base, says Lener partner Santiago Torent.
“Lawyers need to look at a more global picture and be flexible and faster because time is of the essence to clients,” he says. “We have to adapt to that.”
Consequently, Torent says that lawyers must expand their knowledge of risk and finance as well as different areas of law, and this requirement applies to not only those at partner level, but also to junior lawyers too. “Now, all lawyers have to be more complete and more balanced with client management, account management and project management,” he adds.
Torent suggests that one of the challenges for medium-sized law firms is that some smaller companies are only comfortable using either small local law firms or large national firms that they use for day-to-day matters. “Companies do not need to only go to the small firm around the corner or the huge firms,” he states. “There are lots of medium-sized firms with highly-skilled people and focused multi-disciplinary teams that can move very swiftly and render the best services to them.”