From collaboration to rough quarters to restoring market confidence, leaders at Legal Business 100 firms give us their views on the last financial year and the next 12-18 months.
Persistent challenges
‘I feel very optimistic about the economy and therefore the opportunities. Any firm would be foolish in thinking the challenges have gone and those challenges continue to be how we deliver immaculate service and efficiencies to our clients. The market as a whole is still over-lawyered and that challenge remains. It’s still fiercely competitive.’
Monica Burch, senior partner, Addleshaw Goddard
‘The UK and Europe continues to be a fairly tough marketplace. We’ve continued to see UK turnover recover, but we’ve seen nine months of good and then three months of bad for a long time now. The question is, are we going to get another bad quarter at some point? The last five years have been flat for the profession as a whole, so an uptick gets everyone excited and then the bad quarters deflate that.’
Rob Day, managing partner, King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin
Innovation key
‘The next 12-18 months will be about consolidating what we already have. Driving the innovation message in terms of all aspects of legal service delivery is important, as is delivering value rather than just hourly rates. It is going to be a competitive marketplace, but I always believe that in these disruptive times there’s an opportunity to actually put your stamp on the market and change your market position, which we’ve done over the last four or five years, so for us it’s business as usual.’
Bryan Hughes, chief executive, Eversheds
Best laid plans
‘Our plan in the global financial crisis was to invest heavily and we stuck to that plan. The goal was to do all this while maintaining or slightly improving our profitability. Now the game plan for us is to capitalise on the investments we made over the next year or two and to really drive the performance of the business. There is this trend for clients to reduce the number of law firms that they use and we thought it was important to be a firm that was well positioned for that. Given the number of panel wins that we’ve had over the last few months, the indications are that our strategy is paying off and we are either re-securing or securing new positions for clients who have reduced the number of law firms that they are working with.’
David Ryan, managing partner, Pinsent Masons
Wrong message
‘My fear with the collaboration model is that it starts to classify you as a firm that does the stuff good firms don’t want to do. Obviously we are targeting a particular market that Magic Circle firms wouldn’t target anyway and we are specialist there and we are the best in that market. Targeting work the Magic Circle firms can’t do profitably so they have outsourced sends out a confusing market message, so it’s not really something I would advocate.’
Victoria Brackett, managing partner, Thomas Eggar
Defying critics
‘The critics out there will look at us and say: “Look at that level of growth. How on earth is that sustainable? They are going to take a very big hit on profit, and it’s just not going to work and bits are going to fall off.” Actually it hasn’t and it didn’t. We’ve shown some growth, we’ve definitely improved our net profitability on the back of the mergers, we consolidated all of the firms we brought together, we are on one platform and it has all worked fantastically well.’
Andrew Leaitherland, managing partner and chief executive, DWF
Changing perceptions
‘There has been a serious re-rating in the minds of our clients and influencers as to the capabilities of DLA Piper. People now believe our peer group is a different one to what they had us pencilled against two years ago. We are now regarded as capable of competing against the very best in the world and clients are giving us the opportunities. We’ve seen a serious push in terms of clients and the complexity and value of the work.’
Sir Nigel Knowles, global co-chief executive, DLA Piper
Measuring output
‘There is still too much focus on the hourly rate rather than the cost of a job. Procurement specialists are driving the hourly rate, which is counterproductive, as it is the only metric that they can easily measure but I question whether this is actually cutting costs rather than just giving the appearance of doing so. As a result, the legal services sector is one of the few industries that measures input rather than output.’
Paul Olney, practice partner, Slaughter and May
Size matters
‘Everybody has got some spare capacity. If you look at the level everybody was operating on in 2006 and 2007, most firms are trying to make better use of the resources they have. As far as the global legal marketplace goes, there is space for a good number of firms, but there isn’t space for everyone. The question is, who is going to make it? Our combination with Patton Boggs is very much about being part of building on our firm to better compete in that space. Does bigger mean better? Size is not everything, but it is definitely something.’
Peter Crossley, European and Middle East managing partner, Squire Patton Boggs