Dispelling the myths about Keystone Law

From disruptive startup to a tech-enabled top 100 UK law firm, Keystone Law has grown rapidly over the last 20 years. As one of the longest-running consultancy model firms, its business model is now firmly established as a permanent fixture of the legal landscape. Despite its size and growth trajectory, many misconceptions about how the firm’s model and how it truly works still exist among solicitors. Here we speak with Mark Machray, Keystone’s director of growth and development, who explains what makes Keystone stand out among other fee-sharing firms and he dispels some of the myths.

Many solicitors who contemplate joining a fee-sharing firm worry that they are going to be on their own. How do you reassure them that they won’t?

If you think of Keystone as simply a platform, then it’s easy to understand why lawyers might think of it as a solitary way of working, but Keystone has so much more to offer than that. We have over 400 senior lawyers who regularly interact with each other, who by nature are entrepreneurial and see the benefit of developing strong relationships with colleagues.

Almost 30% of client work at Keystone is cross-referred internally for that very reason. We also have a dedicated community and engagement team whose role is to make sure our lawyers are connected and integrated from the start so that our strong culture of support and collaboration remains.

In what way does Keystone support its lawyers?

Keystone provides all the usual back-office support you’d expect to find at a conventional firm, from accounts and compliance to IT and marketing. In that respect, Keystone is no different to the traditional model, but the difference lies in the way that support is given. The sole focus of our support teams is to make our lawyers’ practices as efficient as possible and go the extra mile to make sure our lawyers can provide outstanding services to their clients. A significant part of this efficiency stems from our award-winning proprietary IT infrastructure, which is a one-stop-shop for everything from time recording to collaboration. That technology, in addition to our support teams, dramatically reduces the time our lawyers spend on administrative tasks, freeing them up to focus on what they do best.

What about the relationships that exist between the lawyers themselves? How do they get to know one another?

It is often assumed that relationships are built in the office, working next to one another five days a week, but we have learnt that is far from the truth. Relationships form and develop outside the office; and no firm hosts more events outside the office than Keystone! We host over 50 events per year exclusively for our lawyers, which are entirely voluntary but very well attended. These include lunches/dinners, CPD sessions, wine tastings, theatre trips, art exhibitions, sports teams, and two firm-wide parties, on top of skiing, cycling and horse-riding holidays which are arranged by various lawyer groups. Our lawyers recognise the value and importance of getting to know one another, and we offer a community which caters to everyone.

What do you say to those who might suggest the model encourages individualism and goes against the ethos of partnership?

I would say the complete opposite is true! Firms which describe themselves as partnerships are usually nothing of the sort. They are corporate entities with each lawyer focused on meeting their own targets for personal advancement. The great irony of Keystone is that while lawyers are financially independent, they work in true partnership with one another. Such independence and autonomy removes politics, allowing for a far more collaborative approach. They get to choose which colleagues they work with, are naturally predisposed to teamwork, and they work together for everyone’s financial advantage – the very definition of ‘partnership’!