| Summary: | Malaysia is set to embrace the liberalisation of legal services. This will pose strategic
challenges to Malaysian law firms and will impact on industry competition. It is not
certain as to how Malaysian law firms perceive the liberalisation of legal services, and
what strategic actions will be taken by them in order to maintain their strategic position
and competitiveness. Against this backdrop, this study seeks to find out the answers
to the questions as to how Malaysian law firms perceive the liberalisation of legal
services – whether it is perceived as a threat or an opportunity; the strengths,
weaknesses and core competencies of Malaysian law firms in face of the liberalisation
of legal services; and the strategic actions taken by Malaysian law firms in order to
maintain their strategic position and competitiveness. The bodies of literature that were
used to inform this research are the conceptual framework of Porter’s five forces and
the theory of the resource-based view. Using qualitative approach, this research seeks
to examine the research problem by interviewing participants who are partners of
Malaysian law firms as well as a representative from the professional body which
represent the largest State Bar Committee in Malaysia, i.e. the Kuala Lumpur Bar
Committee. From the fieldwork, it was found out that Malaysian law firms generally
perceive the liberalisation of legal services as both a threat and an opportunity. It was
also found out that Malaysian law firms do have their own strengths, weaknesses and
core competencies in face of the challenges that arise from the liberalisation of legal
services. This research confirmed and prove the usefulness of Porter’s five forces
framework to assess the attractiveness of the legal industry in Malaysia based on the
strengths of five competitive forces and the resource-based view to analyse the
internal asset (i.e. resources, capabilities and competencies) of Malaysian law firms.
Future research may be built upon this research to study the impacts of the
liberalisation of legal services on Malaysian law firms.
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