Carlton Fields is committed to providing client-focusedstate-of-the-art, cost-effective legal services across all our engagements. Everything we do advances this commitment. It is evident in our lean business platform, client service standards, the premium we place on innovation, and our use of evolving technology and processes.

Client Advisory Board

We created a Client Advisory Board, comprising general counsel and CEOs of key clients across industries. The Board meets with firm management and client relationship partners to provide updates on its members’ industries, companies, concerns, and experiences with legal services. During these periodic meetings, we discuss client expectations, preferences, trends, developments, and issues on the horizon. Not surprisingly, our clients’ thoughts on “disrupters” and the impact of technology on all their industries loom large. These meetings help our firm anticipate, understand, and better serve our clients, giving us feedback on our innovations and service delivery.  

In-House Counsel Forums

Our firm regularly hosts various forums for general counsel across the country built around what they tell us they want to learn and discuss. We provide cutting-edge information on best practices, emerging legal issues, regulatory enforcement priorities, cyber risks and strategies, and practical insights on enterprise risk management, professional development in in-house legal departments, diversity and inclusion, outside counsel management, and other client-identified issues. We create safe zones where our clients’ general counsel can discuss with peers the most important and sensitive issues confronting their businesses, sharing and learning best practices. We engage leading experts to conduct ideation exercises and scenario planning. Our clients consistently rank our forums among the best they attend.

These forums provide as much value to our firm as to our clients by helping us stay abreast of our clients’ top-of-mind concerns. We learn where they are most eager for our help, and the steps they are taking to address the latest challenges. We apply this learning to adapt our client service to deliver not just what we have to sell, but what clients want to buy.  

Industry Focus

Our clients expect us to be experts on their industries and businesses so we can bring true value to the table from the very start in the most challenging engagements. We were an early-mover in creating industry groups and adopting an industry focus in key economic sectors we serve, requiring our professionals to learn deeply on their own time the contours, constituent elements, business drivers, legal framework, challenges, and opportunities of each of these industries. Our professionals regularly write, speak, and facilitate state-of-the-art programs in our targeted industries, providing thought leadership and guidance to industry stakeholders. This enables our firm to deliver extraordinary value and efficiencies to the clients we represent in these industry sectors.

Client Service Standards

Years ago, in our quest to determine what distinguishes best-in-class client service, we began studying hundreds of “best practices” widely discussed in the profession. We culled a list of five that our experience and discussions with clients have proven offer the greatest impact. We adopted these as our firm’s Client Service Standards to guide each of our engagements.

Through teams of tech experts, consultants, and attorneys, we create and deploy cutting-edge technology systematically and strategically to enhance the efficiency of our own operations, improve the delivery of client services, and provide the kinds of tech tools and solutions at superior value that many clients must outsource to tech firms to achieve.

We continually work to identify best practices and innovations to help us disaggregate the work we do for our clients to ensure that we can provide each component — either ourselves or through outsourcing — in the most cost-effective fashion. And we are working together year in and year out with some of the most respected tech firms in the country to explore and develop tech tools and innovations to serve our clients’ needs.