Paul Hastings LLP
Paul Hastings, a global law firm, saw the growth in impact investment and social enterprises as an opportunity. BMI acted as an accelerator lab for the firm, using its co-creative methods to develop new products and services, resulting in three scalable business models to take Paul Hastings into the future.
The challenge
Social enterprises are growing in number, size, and importance, and impact investors are taking note. Paul Hastings wanted to develop value propositions unique to this emerging sector and become the go-to legal group for social enterprises and impact investors, but like many law firms had little free time to dive deep and explore new ideas.
Our approach
BMI conducted qualitative customer research with over 50 social enterprises to contextualize the market, then ran a two-day ideation workshop mixing social enterprise entrepreneurs with Paul Hastings lawyers. Solutions were validated in the market through prototypes, including custom-designed websites and events, and refined through another round of interviews before landing on three scalable business models within a four-phased strategy.
The results
- Three final business models built on a four-phased strategy, starting from Paul Hastings' core capabilities and moving into data gathering, partnerships, and new pricing and delivery models.
- Early prototyping reached 1,536 people, with 135 attending preliminary events.
- Project lead Meg Sullivan won the Financial Times' inaugural 'Legal Intrapreneur Award', recognized for turning sustainability and diversity into growth opportunities and developing the new Impact and Sustainability practice group.
The method stayed with the team. It always does.
Want resultslike these?
Explore the possibilities with Patrick van der Pijl and the BMI team. Every big shift starts with a conversation.