Last month, Freeths was named Law Firm of the Year at the Legal Business Awards, capping off a remarkable period for the firm that has seen it post yet more double-digit financial growth, achieve B Corp certification, and receive unprecedented attention for its role representing the postmasters in the Post Office Horizon scandal.
LB checked in with national managing partner Karl Jansen and London senior partner Philippa Dempster to talk about how the firm got to where it is, its ambitious aim to become the leading UK national law firm, and how its brand has changed beyond recognition as a result of the firm’s media moment.
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Karl Jansen: We took a look at where we were in 2020, and saw that, while we’d reached our target of £100m in revenue, we didn’t have the brand recognition that we wanted if we’re to achieve our aim of being the leading UK national firm.
Philippa and I came in as part of the new leadership at that point, and we launched a new strategy to take us through to 2025. We decided to stay focused on the UK. It’s a very sophisticated market – there’s a lot we can do here without having to open offices overseas.
Though we’ve done a number of mergers over the years, we’re not a consolidator – we’re not rushing to merge with anyone who’ll have us. We’ve done some mergers very successfully, but eight of our 13 offices grew from nothing.
Philippa Dempster: We’re just starting the consultation now for the next five years. Everyone’s really on board with our UK national strategy.
When we’re recruiting people, they often raise issues complaining about their existing firms. They say, ‘They won’t let me have an assistant because they’re spending so much on developing another country, for example the US or Ireland.’ Some firms don’t have the money to invest in other areas in the UK, too. But we’re able to provide resources and empower people across our UK offices. That’s sadly missing in a lot of the bigger firms.
KJ: We can be really competitive because of our cost base. The people we recruit have had to say to clients at their old firms, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do the work anymore, I can’t get signoff on the rates. This sort of work isn’t really our firm’s bag.’ We’re not like that.
SMEs and individual clients are still an important part of our business, but we’re also layering on more and more bigger-ticket clients – what we call the enterprise and elite clients. They now account for over 50% of our turnover. And our UK focus lets us do the UK work for those clients, whether they’re a UK business or the UK arm of an international business, in a way that keeps their costs down.
PD: The market has changed as well. If you go back to 2015, those clients we’re now winning tended to do much more of their work with one or two firms, which tended to be magic or silver circle firms. Now, because of the higher pressure on budgets, those clients look at a wider range of firms, and once we win one bit of work that gives us the opportunity to build that relationship and do more for the client across our different service lines.’
KJ: We’ve heard it a lot: ‘At my previous firm, I had loads of opportunities, but I couldn’t exploit them.’ We’ve got people who don’t feel hamstrung by having to go and get all sorts of approvals. They don’t feel that they have to try desperately to get support from other people. It gives our lateral hires a new lease on life.
PD: This year has been a real transformation in terms of recognition. We’ve had the Post Office case, which has been fantastic for us, especially as the TV drama brought it back into the spotlight. We’ve been in all the national newspapers, we’ve been in some Australian papers, in the New York Times, and we’ve been on the TV. We’ve brought in a PR team, which we didn’t have before. It’s been really good to see it pay dividends. We’ve always talked about ourselves as a bit of a hidden gem. But now, we’re building momentum.
KJ: It’s not our natural tendency to go out shouting about ourselves. In the past, we’d have to explain more about ourselves before we can even get through the door. We’ve increasingly recognised that we need to be better at getting recognition for what we’re doing. The Post Office and achieving B Corp certification over the last year both really helped with that.
And it’s all paid off as we’ve gone into new markets, like when we opened in Bristol. Going in, we were already much better known – people knew about what we’ve done in other locations, knew what we were about, and wanted to be part of it. Whereas in days gone by we would have gone into a market and there would have been a reaction of, ‘Freeths who?’ We’ve been building steadily for a while now. Getting that recognition is the icing on the cake for us.
PD: The award win was a watershed moment for us. There’s a real sense of pride across the business. People have even more belief in themselves.