Ready for growth? The questions every law firm should be asking
Chelsea Goldsby, operations director at Osprey Approach, highlights top takeaways from the vendor’s new research into the Welsh legal landscape
New research from Osprey Approach and Legal News Wales reveals an ambitious legal sector facing some familiar — and some less expected — challenges. But what can SME law firms learn from the findings?
The Welsh Legal Sector Transformation Report 2026 draws on the views of more than 50 law firms and in-house legal teams across Wales. Almost half of the firms surveyed expect their organisation to grow over the next 12 months, yet two thirds of those anticipating growth are currently flat or have declined slightly. In other words, much of that optimism is based not on momentum, but on the belief that something is about to change.
For SME firms everywhere, the more important question is what the findings reveal about the challenge of turning ambition into sustainable growth.
The answer may have less to do with simply winning more work and more to do with how effectively firms use what they already have: their people, clients, pricing models, technology and data.
Do you have the people to support your ambitions?
Growth requires capacity, yet recruitment and retention remain among the biggest challenges facing law firms.
The research found that every law firm leader surveyed rated recruiting qualified solicitors at least moderately difficult. At the same time, 42% of firms have no succession plan in place, while a third identify a lack of suitable internal candidates as a barrier to succession planning.
For a firm with growth ambitions, that makes talent planning a strategic issue rather than simply an HR concern. Growth that depends entirely on recruiting more qualified lawyers may simply not be scalable if the people aren’t available.
Are you making enough of the business you already have?
The most obvious route to growth is to win more clients. But the research suggests there may be opportunities much closer to home.
Across the firms surveyed, the average proportion of billing written off was just under 14%. If a firm were writing off 14% of £1m in potential billings, that would equate to around £140,000 of work not being recovered
Write-offs are not necessarily a reflection of poor service or unwillingness to pay. They can result from time not being captured, scope creep being absorbed or processes making it easier to write work off than recover it.
The same principle applies to existing clients. A quarter of respondents did not know what proportion of their client base uses more than one service.
That is more than a missed cross-selling opportunity. It is a visibility problem. If firms don’t know which clients use multiple services — or which clients might benefit from them — it becomes difficult to build a deliberate strategy for increasing client value.
Before looking outside the business for growth, it is worth asking a simpler question: how much potential is already sitting inside it?
Is your technology helping you grow — or simply helping you operate?
Technology is often positioned as the answer to efficiency and growth, but the research suggests the more critical issue may be how firms use the technology they already have.
More than 94% of respondents have a practice or case management system, document management system, and e-signatures in place. Yet billing was identified as the most inefficient process by 54% of firms, and 59% of those firms already had dedicated billing software.
The lesson is not necessarily that firms need another system. It is that owning a tool and getting value from it are two different things.
The same applies to AI. Firms are interested in its potential, but accuracy and reliability remain the biggest concerns, suggesting that responsible adoption will depend on understanding both what the technology can do and where its limitations lie.
For law firms considering further investment, the better question may therefore be less “what should we buy?” and more “are we getting everything we can from what we already have?”
Is the business itself ready for the future?
The biggest question raised by the research is whether firms are confident that the model they operate today will still work tomorrow.
Almost half of respondents either do not believe, or are unsure, that their current business model is sustainable over the next ten years.
That uncertainty sits alongside changing approaches to pricing, technology, and service delivery. Fixed fees remain the dominant model, but firms using hybrid pricing reported stronger recent performance, while those relying on the billable hour reported the least positive results.
None of this suggests that the traditional law firm model is about to disappear. Rather, it points to the need for firms to treat the way they package, price, and deliver legal services as strategic decisions — not simply practices inherited from the past.
The firms best placed to grow may be those prepared to question the assumptions underpinning their business before circumstances force them to.
The research highlighted a gap not necessarily in capability, but in clarity.
That may be the most useful takeaway for any SME law firm considering its next stage of growth. Ambition matters, but sustainable growth requires a clear understanding of where the business is today, where its opportunities lie and what could prevent it from getting where it wants to go.
The Welsh Legal Sector Transformation Report 2026 may focus on firms in Wales, but the questions it raises are much broader: Do you have the people to grow? Are you making the most of your existing clients and revenue? Is your technology genuinely supporting the business? And is the model you have today fit for the firm you want to become?
For law firm leaders, being ready for growth starts with being prepared to ask those questions.
