Five year panel terms are out, here comes the quarterly panel review

Winning a panel place may no longer be the milestone many firms think it is. A recent City A.M. article reported that Revolut is moving away from the traditional panel model towards quarterly reviews of its legal advisers, with firms removed if they fail on key metrics.

That may be an early sign of where legal buying is heading: less emphasis on panel status as an assured relationship, more emphasis on continuous performance. Revolut is now building in-house AI tools to help lawyers run proposal requests, pre-select firms for specific instructions, and scrutinise advice and invoices.

In the article, Revolut’s Chief Legal Officer Tom Hambrett describes underperformance in terms that will feel uncomfortably familiar to many firms who review their own client feedback: poor client management, unmanaged scope creep, weak billing practices and lack of responsiveness. Securing a panel place may therefore mark the start of a more continuous assessment of how well the relationship is being delivered in practice, with more of the client experience open to scrutiny.

There is a wider marketing and business development implication here too. We see too often in client feedback that what is said in a tender response is treated as part of the win rather than the starting point for delivery. If promises made in a pitch are used as a measure of delivery, firms need a clear and quick transition from pitch commitments into ongoing client management so that what has been promised is visible, understood and capable of being followed through.

The clearest repercussion is not that firms should be asking for client feedback constantly, but that they need stronger delivery processes so that feedback is not their only warning system. This includes a service model that makes responsiveness, communication and consistency easier to maintain across the whole team, while still creating light-touch ways to spot friction early. The most effective model is likely to combine stronger day-to-day service processes and check ins with periodic independent feedback that gives clients space to speak candidly.

There is also a broader shift in mindset here. The focus moves away from simply getting the work done and moving on to the next matter, towards checking that the standard of delivery is holding up consistently across the relationship. This places more responsibility on both the client relationship partner and the wider team to stay close to how the client is experiencing the work and communicate with each other to spot challenges early on.

Revolut’s move raises operational questions many firms may not yet have answered properly. Do they have agreed service levels for different types of client work? Can they monitor how quickly emails are acknowledged, how long advice takes to turn around, or whether matters are drifting beyond scope before the client flags it? Are these patterns visible across the relationship, or is the experience still highly dependent on individual partners and teams? If clients begin to assess external advisers through harder metrics, inconsistency becomes much easier to notice and much harder to excuse.

What firms should be thinking about

What this points to is a more demanding model of relationship management than many firms are used to. It is no longer enough to win the work, do a strong technical job and move on, with the comfort of a five year tenure. The firms that stand out will be the ones that can turn pitch promises into a service experience clients can see, feel and measure day to day.