Legal Market Research That Starts in the Jury Box, Not the Library
Trial outcomes, client retention, and practice group expansion depend on intelligence from the people who make decisions: jurors, General Counsel, and managing partners. SIS International recruits demographically matched mock jury panels, interviews corporate legal buyers, and benchmarks Am Law firm operations across 135+ countries.
Six Research Lanes for Legal Decision-Makers
Mock Jury and Trial Consulting
SIS recruits venue-matched jury panels that mirror the demographic and attitudinal profile of the actual jury pool in your jurisdiction. We run full-day deliberation exercises where mock jurors evaluate case narratives, witness credibility, and damages arguments. Trial teams receive structured feedback on which arguments resonate, which witnesses lose credibility under cross-examination, and where the case theory breaks down before it reaches the courtroom.
Client Retention and Satisfaction Research
General Counsel at Fortune 500 companies evaluate outside counsel on responsiveness, matter staffing, fee predictability, and industry-specific knowledge. SIS conducts confidential structured interviews with corporate legal buyers to identify what drives retention versus what triggers an RFP. Baker McKenzie and Kirkland & Ellis both learned that lateral partner hires do not retain the client book unless the originating relationship transfers at the institutional level.
Legal Spend and Operations Auditing
Corporate legal departments spend heavily on outside counsel but lack granular visibility into where the money goes. SIS audits billing structures, vendor contracts, and internal workflow bottlenecks to identify where spend drifts: duplicative staffing on document review, inconsistent rate enforcement across offices, and manual processes that legal operations platforms like SimpleLegal or Brightflag could automate. The output is a cost-reduction roadmap with specific savings targets.
Competitive Benchmarking for Law Firms
Am Law 100 firms compete on practice area depth, lateral partner recruitment, and pricing structure. SIS interviews partners, associates, and in-house counsel to benchmark your firm against named competitors on specific dimensions: billing rate transparency, matter staffing ratios, cross-selling effectiveness, and client development ROI. We identify where competitors are winning work your firm should be originating.
Legal Technology Adoption Research
eDiscovery platforms like Relativity, contract lifecycle management tools like Ironclad and Icertis, and AI-assisted drafting tools like Harvey and CoCounsel are reshaping legal workflows. SIS interviews legal operations directors, IT leaders, and practicing attorneys to assess adoption barriers, integration friction with existing document management systems, and the gap between vendor claims and actual productivity impact after deployment.
Practice Group Expansion and Market Entry
Opening a new office or launching a practice group requires more than headcount projections. SIS conducts market sizing, demand analysis, and competitive landscape research for firms evaluating geographic expansion or new practice areas. We interview corporate counsel in the target market to quantify unmet demand, identify the incumbent firms holding the work, and assess whether lateral hires can realistically move client relationships.
What SIS Delivers to Law Firms and Legal Departments
We recruit 24-48 demographically matched jurors per study from your trial venue’s jury pool. Full-day deliberation exercises test case narratives, witness credibility, damages anchoring, and defense arguments. Trial counsel receives a structured debrief identifying which arguments moved jurors and where the case theory needs revision.
Confidential structured interviews with 15-20 General Counsel and deputy GCs at current and prospective client organizations. We map what drives counsel selection, retention, and switching: responsiveness benchmarks, fee structure expectations, staffing preferences, and the specific triggers that cause a client to issue an RFP for work your firm currently holds.
Line-item billing analysis across all outside counsel engagements to identify rate enforcement gaps, unapproved staffing, timekeeper misclassification, and process inefficiencies. The deliverable is a cost-reduction roadmap with quantified savings targets and specific recommendations for legal operations platform integration.
We interview legal operations directors and practicing attorneys at firms that have deployed eDiscovery, CLM, and AI-assisted drafting tools to document actual productivity impact versus vendor claims. The output is a technology investment prioritization based on demonstrated ROI from comparable deployments, not projected savings from sales presentations.
THE SIS DIFFERENCE
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