Benchmarking the Elite
The leading Latin American firms, as it stands today, can now be compared with elite firms anywhere in the world. One reason is that they have learnt to measure and manage capabilities they once took for granted.
By Mari Cruz Taboada
Law firms pay close attention to their competitors but are often reluctant to benchmark themselves properly. Partners compare performance with last year’s figures, a rival’s headline transaction or impressions gathered in the latest country report. Far fewer use a consistent set of indicators to establish where the firm stands and whether it is genuinely progressing.
That is the real value of benchmarking.
It is not principally about status or ranking in itself. Used well, it reveals the capabilities a firm has built, the weaknesses it has failed to address and the strategic choices its leaders have postponed. In the latest Lexington podcast, recorded in London,I discussed the 12 criteria behind the Latin Lawyer 250 Elite classification with Ignacio Abella, who has spent much of his career researching the legal market in Latin America.
The most interesting question was not which firms qualified. It was what the indicators tell us about how elite firms are built and what other firms can learn from them.
