Creativity, proactivity, practicality: What clients want from firms in 2026

RMIT University general counsel Alison Huitfeldt said that, while cost and predictability will always matter to law departments, what they most need from firms this year is “commerciality and practicality”.

That is, she said, “advice that understands context, strategy and risk appetite, not abstract black-letter analysis”.

“The most valuable support looks like: short, sharp dot point advice that frames the decision, sets out two to three realistic options with pros, cons, and risk levels, and is explicit about what ‘good enough’ looks like,” she said.

“Creativity and problem solving are at a premium; conservative, backside-covering advice that just says ‘no’ or ‘it depends’, will increasingly lose work to providers who help the business move.”

Firms, Huitfeldt advised, “can really differentiate themselves by being proactive and intentional in how they take instructions, prompting in-house teams to think about where AI, process and automation can reduce cost, speed up cycles and keep more judgment work in-house, while still managing risk”.

Enhanced service offering

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SBS Australia senior legal counsel Nicole Choolun said that her in-house team is “highly capable” and can cover a wide range of practice areas that impact a modern media business.

The team will seek external legal support, she said, “where it will enhance our offering to clients”, and as such, the broadcaster’s service providers “need to be absolute experts in their field and provide tailored, practical advice that reflects a comprehensive understanding of our industry and operating context”.

“As a hybrid funded public broadcaster, that includes a firm grasp of our content creation, acquisition, commercialisation and support activities. External legal support includes employment (including industrial agreements) and work health and safety for a complex 24/7 workforce, privacy, property, competition law, prepublication, and litigation, all of which help to achieve the SBS Strategic Goals,” she said.

Such an enhanced service offering will also factor in affordability: “We value realistic and competitive cost estimates, clear and timely communication, and willingness to collaborate with our in-house team and clients to deliver solutions,” Choolun said.

“For our part, we’ve had the best outcomes when we’ve been precise with our instructions and expectations.”

Proactivity

For Somerset Hoy, who is the general counsel – deputy secretary, strategic services and advice at the NSW Department of Planning, Housing, and Infrastructure, the “dream law firm” is one that thinks proactively about good solutions and outcomes.

Such a firm, she said, is one that “takes the time to get to know our department (including our risk profile!), which comes in on budget, and which proactively avoids duplicating work and charging through the nose for it”.

Such proactivity would also need to extend to understanding financial constraints placed upon legal teams.

Hoy said: “I don’t think what I want in 2026 is going to be wildly different from what I’ve wanted in recent years – everyone knows that we’re in an extremely tight fiscal environment in government, and that departments are expected to reduce their expenditure on external lawyers.”

“I would also be in favour of more fixed-fee cost agreements – given firms so rarely meet cost estimates, it’s becoming an increasingly appealing approach.”

New approaches to provision of services

Porscia Lam, a senior consultant lawyer, told Lawyers Weekly that she has observed a significant evolution in the ways that in-house teams engage external providers.

“In recent years, particularly for major projects and transactions, some teams have adopted innovative partnership models with external firms. Many in-house teams comprise predominantly senior lawyers, yet major projects often generate large volumes of repetitive, narrowly focused work, more suited to junior lawyers, such as contract novations, or uniform variations,” she said.

To this end, employing new ways of collaborating with clients could set external providers apart.

“Traditionally, secondees have provided a cost-effective solution when workflow is steady and predictable. However, longer-term projects often experience fluctuating workloads, leading to periods of underutilisation for secondees,” Lam said.

“Recently, I was part of a team that implemented a ‘virtual secondment’ arrangement, whereby designated junior lawyers remained at their firm but were briefed to undertake specific high-volume tasks on an as-needed basis.

“By employing a structured instruction process, project-specific precedents, and a limited scope of work, the lawyers were able to complete tasks efficiently without requiring partner oversight, much like a traditional secondment, resulting in significant cost savings.”

Awareness of spending limitations

Finally, a GC working in government – speaking on the condition of anonymity – said that they would like for law firms to realise that government clients “are not a cash cow”.

“Some of the larger firms take one look at government clients and just see dollar signs – they are slow, they stray from the brief, they never come in on budget, and they do the bare minimum,” they said.

“In 2026, I’d like them to have a better appreciation for the fact that we are spending public money, and that every dollar spent with them is money that is therefore not spent on something else that could benefit the public.”

In the anonymous GC’s department, they went on, “we tend to favour mid-size firms, as they always seem to work harder and be more focused on cost and delivering a product you’ve asked for”.

“That said, I still increasingly find that I want to go directly to barristers … we have such exceptional internal lawyers, and so many law firms are over-priced or equivocal in their advice, that often it’s better value and more compelling to seek discrete pieces of advice from counsel,” they said.