Eversheds Sutherland‘s co-chief executives (CEO) Lee Ranson and Mark Wasserman laid out client wins and a draft 2020 strategy for the future of the firm to around 680 people at the first partner conference since the firm’s tie-up in February.
Highlights over the last four months include a global panel win for Koch Industries in April, as well as additional work for joint client Shell, which Wasserman said the firm received as a direct result of the combination.
According to Ranson (pictured), there have been 136 joint panel opportunities since 1 February and work referrals from 32 countries in the 139-day period from the announcement around the combination.
In addition both Ranson and Wasserman laid out plans for the future vision of the firm, with a formal strategy to be implemented in September following further consultations with partners.
Speaking to Legal Business, Ranson said: ‘We talked about where we really wanted to be in the next period – 2020 was a suitable timeline. We caveated this by saying that we were looking for partners to understand where we had got to with the draft vision – but we did want to spend the next couple of months with them talking about the detail.
‘By 2020 we want to be a leading global law firm by reference to such metrics around clients, quality of the work we are doing, people we are employing and the areas we are employing them. We talked about specific initiatives around culture, quality of client experience – where we have pointed and definitive actions we want to take. We will formally launch that by September.’
In terms of plans to grow the firms’ international network, Ranson and Wasserman discussed international expansion and US expansion based around high-growth possibilities in new locations and strategic expansion around existing products and service lines, although they did not discuss specific locations.
Wasserman added: ‘It is important to our clients that they don’t see us just planting a flag in five more places, whether in the US or elsewhere. There is clearly a desire in the US to grow in New York and Texas, but in addition we are also looking at the Mid-West, in the North Pacific, North West – we have an office in California, we want more in California. But it will be all about finding the right groups or folks that match what we want to do for clients in those cities.’
kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk
