Elevation gone wrong: why law firms lose winnable bids

Big firms often have all the machinery of bidding nailed down: templates, trackers, review cycles, and design rules.

But “elevation” can easily go wrong. In the rush to refine, polish, and systematise, firms start elevating the wrong things — and losing bids they could have won.

In many large firms, the bid engine hums beautifully. It just isn’t always pointed in the right direction.

Elevating style over substance

Big firms love gloss and polish. Templates are refined, the fonts match the brand, and the graphics are slick. But too much energy goes into how it looks, not how it lands.

Why it happens: Large firms have brand teams, design standards, and layers of review. It’s easy to confuse aesthetic consistency with persuasive impact.

Why it’s less than ideal: Style isn’t strategy. A beautifully formatted but shallow bid won’t survive a probity review or a rigorous scoring matrix.

Try instead: Use your brand to support the story, not to be the story. Focus on clarity, relevance, and proof points — then make it look good. Consistency is king for branded materials, but templates and “rules” around their use should allow for intelligent and skilful adaptation to tell the story in more compelling ways, rather than defaulting to precedent.

Don’t spend hours formatting or finessing draft copy, tables, or team charts that are likely to go through multiple rounds of review — rough drafts are best for collaboration, and finalised text can be dropped into templates or diagrams later.

Elevating process over performance

Every big firm has a process: trackers, colour-coded reviews, portals, and checklists. Useful, yes — but not if they become the goal.

Why it happens: Process creates a sense of control. In complex organisations, it feels safer to stick to the system — especially when multiple offices or practice groups are involved.

Why it’s less than ideal: When process becomes the focus, you end up optimising for internal order, not persuasion. Time gets swallowed by version control, formatting reviews, and “rules” that are disconnected from reality. Sure, it’s not the way you would have done it, but if it gets the right result quickly — honestly, who cares?

Try instead: Keep process light and purposeful. Build in genuine review points (not just “check-ins” for compliance) and focus the team on what actually drives the win. Sometimes you need to skip a few steps to make progress, or work outside the “official” process to get a sharper, faster, more convincing response.

Team members who show initiative often feel defeated when they’re pulled up on “issues” that are really a sideshow. There’s a bum-covering culture in many large organisations, and it’s exhausting. Trust that enough of the critical process elements and standards will happen.

There are lots of ways to do things — diversity in approach isn’t a bad thing. Don’t shut down someone who brings a fresh take just because it doesn’t fit the template.

Elevating politics over candid conversations

In large firms, the hardest part of any bid isn’t writing — it’s managing egos and agendas (and no, not the kick-off meeting kind). Everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants their patch represented. There are overt and covert drivers at play: soft, indirect, and occasionally too assertive power moves that shape the process.

Why it happens: Partners want visibility for their practice, client, or person. Contributors, from pitch teams and BDMs to creative and shared services have boundaries to defend. No one wants to say, “This isn’t our strongest play,” or “We should step back.”

Let alone, “I’m not putting my team on the hook again for another last-minute scramble.”

When everything is cross-checked and politically filtered, the safest option often wins, not the best one.

And by the time those tricky issues surface, you’re out of time anyway. Cue the familiar chorus:

“Oh well, we just got it in … best we could do in the circumstances.”

Then the debrief never really happens, and nothing changes.

Why it’s less than ideal: Politics drags out decisions, waters down messaging, and kills momentum. Bid teams waste hours trying to keep everyone happy rather than building the most persuasive case.

Then comes the constant back-channelling. The dreaded Teams pop-up: “Can I juuuuuuuuuust call…” followed by a meandering chat about perceived (or occasionally real) issues that could’ve been resolved in five minutes with a direct question to the partner: “Jay, just a reminder we need a final decision on the team list before this call ends.” Instead, decisions drift, and you’re left guessing what the partner might want after the fact.

It’s tap-dancing, pussy-footing, and pure distraction. Before you know it, it’s nearly 6pm, you’ve still got hours of work ahead, and your (micro) manager gives a (micro) smirk of satisfaction … oh yes, you can suffer along with me.

Try instead: Have the difficult conversations early. Be clear about who’s leading, who’s supporting, and what the non-negotiables are. Protect the bid team’s ability to make calls and keep things moving. It’s better to have one uncomfortable conversation at the start than ten rounds of polite redrafting later.

If you’re in BD or pitching, map the key decisions, their timing, and their impact on the critical path, then advise your partners accordingly. Don’t close the meeting until you’ve nailed the answers you need.

Courage and candour are the antidotes to politics. Empower your bid lead to tell the truth (about fit, pricing, and where you’re weak) and create an environment where people can challenge ideas without career risk. A healthy debate sharpens a bid; endless diplomacy just dulls it.

Elevating the right things

When style, process, and politics take over, results vary - wildly. Teams start cloning old proposals, stuffing in credentials, and hoping something sticks. They panic over team charts instead of sharpening the value proposition. Tasks expand to fill the time, and it’s always easier to keep “prettying up” a document than to wrestle with the harder question of why us?

You can spend hours pouring tea for the partners only to have someone spill it later by undermining decisions that were supposedly made.

It’s performative labour disguised as progress. Sometimes the short cuts, or the moment someone finally blurts out what they really think, become watershed moments that reset the whole team and get things moving again. “Thank you for saying that, right I think what we need to do…”

The truth is, strong bids come from clear thinking, not constant tinkering. From honest conversations, not endless “Hi…” messages followed by the call you were dreading. And from courage: to focus on persuasion over production, substance over style, and purpose over politics.

Elevate what wins, not what looks busy.