My 2025 Review is a collection of legal market strategy columns and commentaries, and interviews and speaking engagements as well as a Preview of 2026.
2025 was another go-go year for legal markets globally. My columns, commentaries, interviews, and speaking engagements reflect this, and also forecast the future of global legal markets. So, while this material is partly reflective, it is primarily forward-looking as am I.
Legal market expectations outlined in my 2024 Review — 2025 Preview, Inuksuit and Invention, where I forecasted “massive change across the global legal services market that, to date, has been somewhat incremental, but will increase in volume and velocity resulting in an extensive overhaul” came to fruition in light of overwhelming acceleration of artificial intelligence, pricing, talent transience, private equity presence, and the capitulation of numerous U.S. law firms to that county’s current administration that, unfortunately, is and will continue to have global impact on many areas of the legal services sector.
I am well-aware that my opinions and perspectives especially over the last few years and more so lately, are becoming more fearless, direct, and urgent. This is because factors impacting the global legal services sector are surging due to a magnitude of forces that demand response — not admiration, study, or words — in the form of decisive actions especially as the clock of change ticks ever more loudly.
At this point, the choice to act or not is yours. Choose wisely. Be fearless.
Borden Ladner Gervais Is Wearing ItsBranding on Its Sleeve— ALM
The firm is the first in Canada to have its name on the jersey of a professional sports team. The full story is here on Law.com. It includes my commentary on brand strategy that enables one of one positioning in markets in which a firm has chosen to play.
This is a turbulent time for the global legal services sector. Continuing aggressive advances pertaining to the dual juggernauts of artificial intelligence and pricing will not subside for a long time to come. Stabilization is also many years away with respect to private equity participation, transience of the legal service sector’s workforce, and structural alterations in how legal services enterprises organize and operate.
As a result, those individuals who eagerly anticipate, revel in, and embrace all-encompassing change within the legal services market are having the time of their lives — I certainly am. However, the sea change in the legal sector at large is and will continue to cause concern to and for those who hoped or thought that the legal services sector was the last bastion of predictability.
As I said in my 2023 Review — 2024 Preview, the good news is that there will continue to be a place for all players in the legal services ecosystem, and that even more beneficially, it’s becoming glaringly apparent that a law degree won’t be a requirement or essential for legal services business success.
Still, the global legal services sector will be much changed by 2030. Some, but certainly not all changes and their impacts can be controlled, however many can be influenced by decisive actions taken now.
My Professional and Personal Evolution
While I’m allied professionally with lawyers, personally I’m passionate about the welfare of polar bears. Lawyers and polar bears — yes, there’s probably a joke in there somewhere. Balancing both — sometimes equally, other times not — along with other interests is a hallmark of my evolving portfolio approach to living a more flexible and fabulous life.
After 11 months of closely observing the global legal services market, gauging its responses to opportunities and challenges, and listening to clients, colleagues, and my conscience, my practice and offerings were tightened in August 2023 and niched from narrow and deep to narrower and deeper to focus on four key pillars of strategy: Business, Market, Management, and Client.
In the early days of 2026, I will niche even tighter to legal market strategy and management at its most sophisticated, business-critical level.
This ultra-tight, high-level focus will enable my decades of legal market industry experience as well as restructuring and turnaround management expertise in both the public and private business sectors to be of service to maverick law firms and legal service companies determined to survive the onslaught of business challenges, such as AI, pricing, talent transience, private equity, and structural transformation in order to remain vital and solvent now and in years to come.
Because I am the only independent advisor in the global legal services sector with this unique combination of skills and experience, my distinctive “one of one” business strategy is an example of what I call Vertical Growth. I will be writing more about this and other legal market growth strategies in 2026, so watch this space.
During speaking engagements over the past couple of years, and because it seems more applicable than ever during this time of both global legal market evolution as well as my own, I’ve found myself echoing Ferris Bueller’s famous final quote from the 1986 film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
This has been my clarion call to those with vision and grit to meet the future more than halfway and who are determined to thrive proactively by being a student of the legal services sector.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that my advice for 2026 echoes what I’ve been saying forever:
Keep your head up, eyes and ears open, and stay out of the weeds.
On that optimistic yet fully realistic note, please accept my best wishes for a healthy, happy Holiday Season, and a fearless 2026.
This post appeared on Suttie., December 2025.
Heather Suttie is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on legal market strategy and management of legal services firms.
Since 1998, she has advised leaders of premier law firms and legal service providers — Global to Solo | BigLaw to NewLaw — on innovative growth strategies pertaining to business, markets, management, and clients. The result is creation of new value and accelerated performance achieved through a distinctive one of one legal market position and sustained competitive advantage leading to greater market share, revenue, and profits.