But midsized law firms have since flipped the script. In the latter half of 2025, they experienced nearly 5% demand growth, significantly outperforming the Am Law 100.
Whether that trajectory will continue is another question. The outlook for demand is cloudy for all firms. If demand falters — as it did after the 2008 financial crisis — midsized firms will not be immune. To continue growing and attracting talent, they must continually find ways to maintain profitability.
The good news is that, compared to many large firms, midsized firms are more agile. They can quickly make changes to their operations and business development processes, which can have a major impact.
Targeting the Back Office for Growth
St. Louis-based Sandberg Phoenix is illustrative of how operational investment can unlock scale. Founded in 1979 with nine lawyers, today it has grown to eight offices in Missouri, Kansas, and Southern Illinois. Over the last few years, it has doubled its revenue and grown to nearly 200 lawyers and 350 employees, ranking it among the country’s 250 largest law firms.
A critical enabler of that growth has been the firm’s decision to modernize its intake and conflicts process — an area rarely associated with competitive advantage, but central to profitability, client service and ethical compliance.
Firms must treat operational technology as a strategic asset that enables high-volume work and growth. It’s not simply an administrative tool.
Before 2019, Sandberg Phoenix’s intake and conflicts workflow reflected the reality of many midsized firms. Legal assistants initiated requests using Word documents, which members of accounting then manually re-entered into the firm’s system. Opening a matter required navigating roughly 10 screens of data entry, introducing friction and increasing the likelihood of errors such as misspelled names, incorrect billing rates or missing claim numbers.
Conflict checks were equally cumbersome. When a potential issue arose, the system flagged names in red but offered no context. Reporting staff could not determine whether a party was a current client, a former client or an adverse party, nor could they easily identify the matters involved. Reports often ran hundreds of pages, forcing attorneys to sift through irrelevant information — including their own clients’ existing matters — without confidence in the accuracy or usefulness of the results.
Responsibility for the process was fragmented across roughly 60 legal assistants and two members of accounting, leaving no dedicated ownership, consistent standards or specialized expertise. Opening 15 matters in a single day was considered a heavy workload. As the firm prepared to absorb an intellectual property boutique and an asbestos firm through a merger in early 2019 — and anticipated further consolidation — management recognized that the existing model would not scale.
Efficiencies Gained and Insights Revealed
The firm’s first move was organizational, not technological. Instead of continuing with a dispersed model, Sandberg Phoenix centralized intake and conflicts into a dedicated department of two specialists (now grown to six). This shift alone reduced error rates by concentrating expertise and enabling consistent application of best practices.
Technology changes followed. Attorneys now submit matter-opening requests directly to the intake team, typically via email, often attaching source documents such as complaints or leases, which is then entered into the Intapp software. For standard conflict checks involving five to 10 parties, submitting a request takes less than a minute.
The intake team handles data entry into the software and produces concise conflict reports that provide meaningful context. Attorneys can immediately see which matters are associated with a party and whether the relationship is adverse, aligned or historical. The department’s standard is to complete and return conflict checks within 24 hours, even as the firm now opens approximately 1,200 matters per month.
Just as important, the new process surfaced financial and operational data that had previously been invisible during intake. Practice group leaders can now see whether prospective clients have outstanding balances before approving new matters. Firm leadership can track clients and matters by practice group, monitor growth trends and compare performance year over year.
This visibility supports more disciplined decision-making. Leadership can decline new work for chronically delinquent clients or flag problematic relationships using newly created reporting categories, such as “black books,” that identify high-risk clients or affiliations. Intake has evolved from a reactive administrative function into a strategic checkpoint that protects profitability while enabling growth.
Escaping the Midsized Demand Trap
To escape the midsize demand trap of rising costs and constrained pricing, firms must treat operational technology as a strategic asset that enables high-volume work and growth. It’s not simply an administrative tool.
A firm cannot aggressively pitch for new business if it lacks the operational capacity to onboard it. A slow intake process puts a firm at risk of losing the client before the work even begins.
It also limits growth. Midsized firms are currently attracting high-performing partners from top-tier firms who want to offer their clients lower rates. However, these expensive hires are wasted if they cannot clear conflicts quickly. With the right process and technology, conflict checks can take less than 24 hours, preventing the runways of delays that plague some larger firms and frustrate clients.
Unlike large supertanker firms, which can take years to initiate change, midsized firms can implement these systems quickly. With a demand uncertainty looming, it’s never been more crucial to start preparing.
