The results are in: PERSUIT Firms Survey

Over the past several weeks, we sent out a survey to law firms asking one simple question: How can we make the law firm experience on PERSUIT better?

Okay, I mean there were like 10 questions, but that was the gist.

Nearly 100 people responded — across Pricing, BD, lawyers, client value, legal project managers, and more. All candidly. Some constructively. 

I read and truly appreciated every single response.

This edition of our firms newsletter highlights what we heard and provides a bit about what we’re doing (or need to do) about it.

1. RFP clarity: It's not just you.

We asked firms to rate the clarity of the RFPs they receive through PERSUIT. 1 being very unclear; 10 being perfect. The average score was 6.8 out of 10.

Not terrible. Not great. Let’s call it “a polite shrug” with lots of opinions in between.

It’s very clear that lack of context, details and sufficient assumptions leads to suboptimal outcomes for all. 

Further, here’s a breakdown of what firms say causes the most confusion in RFPs (respondents were allowed to select more than one answer).

But the real signal came from the follow-up question: “What would actually make RFPs clearer?”

We got a flood of responses — and while they varied in tone (some constructive, some... cathartic), three themes came through:

• Scope clarity: What exactly are we being asked to do? What assumptions should all firms use so the client is actually comparing apples to apples?
• Strategic intent: What does success look like for this matter? Is the client aiming to settle? Trying to make a point? Going scorched earth?
• Business context: Why is this matter important? What’s the priority level? And crucially, who is driving the decision from the client side.

The takeaway: we’ve heard a lot of these before, especially on the assumptions piece. More clarity up front = fewer clarifying questions, tighter pricing, stronger proposals, and less back-and-forth.

So while a 6.8 might be our baseline today, we’ve got a clear path to raising it — one way is for PERSUIT to ask more of our mutual clients. Another is for PERSUIT to give them new capabilities to provide better RFPs. 

A third is on you, the firms. You can’t be shy about asking questions. This is another clear theme — that firms are often too hesitant to ask questions, which leads to our next topic...

2. Firms are still making a lot of assumptions about clients

As I read through the responses, a theme kept popping up: firms make so many assumptions about why clients are doing this, what they want and how they use PERSUIT.

So let’s unpack a few of the more common ones (don’t worry — these are completely anonymous), and add a bit of context from our side that might help clarify what’s actually going on.

Anonymous Quote 1: It often feels like the RFPs are launched by procurement teams without much input from lawyers, especially for litigation-related RFP requests.

Firms might be partly right, some of the time. But I can promise you not most of the time. There is most certainly an in-house lawyer involved somewhere, whether it feels like it or not. Clearly an assumption is being made, and instead firms should ask, clarify, and communicate to help make the process and outcome better. 

Are the RFPs perfectly scoped every time? No. We're building tools like AI Smart Scoping to help improve that. 

Anonymous Quote 2: We find [auctions are] strictly used to negotiate our client's preferred law firm down, rather than an exercise that actually has an impact on who is chosen.

I get the skepticism. And before my own reply, I encourage you to listen to Mary O’Carroll’s recent podcast with our founder Jim—they dive into the debate on reverse auctions. Mary disliked them at Google and has thoughts now at Goodwin. It's a solid, candid discussion.

Yes, clients can be price-sensitive, but as a firm, it might help if you don't think about this as a thing being done to you, and instead appreciate that the client has internal pressures they need to respond to. They need to show a level of financial responsibility to their CFO, their Board. Your active participation and support in this requirement of your client could go a long way.

On a more tactical note, when firms are more aligned around a similar price point, it allows the client to more heavily weight factors other than price: like strategy, team, and experience. They’re genuinely trying to prove a fair process and have a defensible decision. Fast and at scale.

3. PERSUIT’s ease of use: “Better than the other platforms”

We asked firms how PERSUIT compares to other platforms when it comes to ease of use. The average score? 7.5 out of 10.

So honestly… not bad.  

And when we asked “why?”, most say it’s better than the alternatives — cleaner interface, more intuitive layout, easier to log in, collaborate, and get responses out the door. One respondent even called it “the best proposal platform I've used.”

But that doesn't mean it’s frictionless.

Firms flagged a few recurring pain points: exporting to Word is helpful, but still has room for improvement. Pricing adjustments often require some manual “mathing” and some areas of pricing not being flexible enough. 

Some of these should be quick, easy wins, like improving the Word export. Others will take time.

4. The #1 problem we can solve today

When we asked firms what we could solve right now, the top answer was loud and clear: feedback.

Lack of visibility into outcomes. It’s the #1 frustration.

I actually wrote in last month’s newsletter how feedback is trending in the right direction, with 31% more RFPs receiving feedback in H1 2025 compared to H2 2024. But still, progress isn’t the same as a solved problem.

Firms want this to feel routine. And they’re right. Feedback helps firms improve, make better go/no-go decisions, and show up stronger the next time around. 

Close behind in second, we saw a lot of mentions for tight turnaround times.

I’ve personally campaigned to ban the “Friday RFP with a Monday due date.” Unless it’s a high-stakes litigation fire drill (but even then…).

So all in… we hear you. 

Part of enabling a better firm experience is through product enhancements. Part of this is continuing to educate clients on how to run better RFPs. When the firm experience is smoother, the output is stronger, and ultimately, clients get better legal outcomes. Everyone wins. 

And one final, big thank you to everyone again who participated in the survey.

PERSUIT for Firms is a monthly newsletter dedicated to law firm growth, written by Jordan Weinstein, VP of Data & Growth at PERSUIT. Click here to subscribe.