Building the Predictive Advisory Firm: What We Learned From Linklaters, HSBC, and Harken

On Wednesday 23 September, we brought together Tricia Weener, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer of Linklaters, Alex Threipland, Head of Early Stage Banking, from HSBC Innovation Banking, and Charles Thornhill, Founder and CEO at Harken, for a conversation about building a predictive advisory firm: one that uses data to anticipate what clients will need before they ask.

Henry Whorwood, our Managing Director of Insights, hosted a panel to work out what that looks like in practice. 

Research we launched that morning with Penningtons found that the number of UK companies raising their first round of external finance in 2025 matched the record set in 2021 [add the figure], so there are as many companies as ever that need good advice.

The theme throughout the morning was that data opens the door for advisory teams to getting more clients, but ultimately, relationships still drive the outcome. 

Here are seven insights we learned about how advisory firms use data and AI, straight from the experts in the room.

1. Clients want advisers who see around corners

The panel agreed that technical expertise no longer sets an advisory firm apart, because clients assume they have it. Clients increasingly value an adviser who understands their business well enough to raise an issue before it arrives, and who brings ideas while there’s still time to act.

That’s a demanding standard for a large firm, where the insight often sits with one partner or one office and has to reach everyone else who works with the client. “Legal expertise is expected,” as Tricia put it. “The bit that really differentiates us is the contextual business insight we can bring.” At Linklaters, that means joining up across practices and jurisdictions, and relying on the client relationships that reveal where a business is heading.

2. Data has eroded the incumbent’s edge where relationships are weak

Holding the relationship used to be a defence in itself, but the panel felt that’s much less true now that anyone can build a detailed picture of a company from data. Every portfolio has clients who get less attention than the rest, and they are the ones most exposed to a well-prepared rival.

Alex’s team at HSBC Innovation Banking uses data in exactly this way to win clients from traditional banks. A competitor with a joined-up view can show up almost as strongly as the incumbent, he said, but that only works where the incumbent has gone quiet: “The tech out there will be better than a lazy relationship, but it will never out-compete a very good relationship.”

3. You can’t automate the relationship

The more sophisticated a firm’s data and tooling, the more tempting it is to believe that AI can find the opportunities and do the selling. The trouble, as the panel saw it, is that buyers of advice choose people they trust to understand their business, and treat the firm’s reputation as a qualifying condition.

Charles interviews a lot of general counsel through his work at Harken, and hears the same line almost universally: “I don’t instruct a law firm. I instruct a person.” For him, the role of data is to make those relationships better informed and easier to scale.

4. Signals give you the timing, people give you the conversation

A good signal tells you when to get in touch, and very little about what to say when you do. Firms that do this well keep their triggers narrow and leave the conversation to someone who knows the sector.

At HSBC Innovation Banking, that means watching for a funding round, then looking at who the investor is and what the founder has done before. Once a company clears the bar, a relationship manager researches it and shapes the approach. Alex’s test for a trigger is simplicity: “If your data or your signals indicate complexity, you’ve probably got the wrong signals.”

Signals can also be predictable. Funding runs on roughly a 24-month cycle at the moment, so a company that raises a Series A today will likely start preparing its next round within 12 to 18 months, giving an adviser a second moment to plan.

For a firm like Linklaters, the equivalent is any “moment of change”, such as a major acquisition, private capital investment, a leadership change, or new regulation. Tricia found patterns across these more useful than one-off events, and stressed that the response needs orchestrating so that contact comes from whoever holds the deepest relationship.

5. Start with the problem, not the data

Most advisory firms now have more data than they can use, so the challenge now is knowing what to do with that data. In the panel’s experience, firms that collect data first and then look for something to do with it tend to stall. The ones that make progress begin with a decision they need to make or a client problem they want to solve, and work back to the technology and data from there.

Charles had the line of the morning on this: “The data is like your high-performance engine that you put in a sports car, but you forgot to put the steering wheel in.” Linklaters has made a similar shift in how it thinks about clients, moving from “what more can we sell?” to “what is this client likely to face next?” Its structured client listening programme has already surfaced opportunities the firm wouldn’t otherwise have found.

6. Any edge from AI will be temporary

Early AI adopters are gaining a real advantage in research and opportunity-spotting, but nobody on the panel expects it to last. Best practice spreads quickly, and the models learn from largely the same data, so the panel expected most firms to have access to much the same intelligence within a couple of years. Once that happens, what separates firms is their proposition and the people delivering it, or as Alex put it, ‘what’s your strategy and who are your people.

Charles shared an early finding from his research on legal pricing: asked whether they’d move law firms for a better AI platform, about a third of clients said yes, a third said no, and a third were undecided. His reading is that a firm’s AI needs to be competitive rather than market-leading. A third of clients would move for it, so falling behind carries a real cost, but most aren’t ready to switch on AI alone.

There are two practical points to plan for in the meantime. Tricia expects the cost of AI to rise considerably, which makes it worth being selective about where it’s used, and clients increasingly want transparency about how their advisers deploy it.

7. Adoption comes from workflows and hands-on use

New tools get used when people can’t do their job without them, and training alone rarely achieves that. Linklaters built Salesforce into five core business development and marketing processes, after giving its business development and marketing team nine months to learn it ahead of the wider firm. Adoption across that team now stands at 78%. Tricia was frank that the change management has been significant, and that fee earners will need similar workflows before usage spreads.

AI skills come the same way, through use rather than courses. Mandatory e-learning got short shrift from the whole panel, with hands-on use and live demos seen as far more effective. “It’s an interaction, so you have to use it to learn it,” said Alex, whose best AI users are the people already using it in their personal lives. Charles’s tip for winning people over is to show them the output they’ll get before explaining how the tool works.

What the room thought

We ran three Slido polls to see what the room at large thought about some big questions. 

What has changed most in what clients expect from their advisers over the past five years?

‘Better use of data and technology’ was the highest response with 54%, which fits the morning’s first finding: clients now assume technical expertise and are looking at how their advisers use information to stay ahead of them. ‘Faster response times’ scored lower than the panel expected, coming in last place. Their explanation was that speed stopped being a differentiator some time ago and is now simply expected. Tricia added that the options missed one thing: how much clients still value the relationship itself.

Which business signal would most likely prompt your firm to engage with a prospect today?

This received a more mixed result, with ‘Funding or investment announcement’ taking the top spot with 29% and ‘Acquisition and transaction activity’ following closely with 24%. The panel’s view was that every option is a good reason to get in touch, and that the right one depends on who you serve. Alex pointed out that funding is a much stronger signal in AI than in consumer businesses, where overseas expansion tends to say more, while for Linklaters regulatory change is one of the biggest prompts. 

Alex also confirmed that a public signal brings competition with it, because every adviser sees the same announcement, and that an existing relationship counts for a lot at that point.

Where will AI create the greatest value for advisory firms over the next five years?

‘Identifying opportunities and market signals’ came out on top with 35% of votes. The panel shared the room’s optimism, with Charles describing research and targeting cycles that used to take a week or two and now take hours. Their caveat was that every firm will soon have the same tools, so the advantage will come from what a firm does once it has spotted the opportunity.

Who was in the room

It was a small and senior room, with partners, directors, and heads of function from firms, including partners and directors from two global law firms and an international investment bank, joining the teams from Linklaters, HSBC Innovation Banking, and Harken.