It is always educational and entertaining to view how the industry has evolved through the eyes of those veterans who lived it, and this – the 30th anniversary of the LB100 – presented the perfect opportunity to do that.
Some of the recollections from pundits on the 1990s speak of a time that appears far more archaic than seems likely of a mere three decades ago. RPC managing partner James Miller’s observation is a case in point: ‘When I joined RPC in 1995, we had a bunch of disconnected terminals, and we still had typewriters. You could also still smoke in the office – we had enormous ashtrays everywhere!’
Pinsent Masons managing partner John Cleland makes the point that 30 years ago, the legal press didn’t exist. Of course it did, or we would not be marking this landmark issue, but a leaf through that very first LB financial report from 1992 just goes to show how much has changed in the industry, and along with it, legal journalism.
Some of the recollections from pundits on the 1990s speak of a time that appears far more archaic than seems likely of a mere three decades ago.
On a fundamental level, the report was a much smaller animal 30 years ago than it is now, with only 35 firms meeting the £20m plus revenue criteria for inclusion in the hallowed list. Now the comprehensive table is bookended with DLA Piper’s £2.642bn at the top end and Boodle Hatfield’s £30.7m at 100th place.
Perhaps not especially shocking, but diversity was not really a thing back in 1992 either, with only one solitary woman featured in the pages (needless to say, no one senior). A female senior partner in the Magic Circle would have been unheard of, notwithstanding that the collective term had yet to take off in earnest 30 years ago.
There is no nod whatsoever in our first financial survey – and neither would there be for a good 20 more years – to diversity of gender, ethnicity and thought making for good business sense. Neither is there any mention of talent retention because, well, lawyers didn’t move firms back then. They just waited it out for management to tip them the partnership wink, or not, as the case may have been.
Intrinsically linked to this is the leaps and bounds development of technology, with many commentators in our 30-year retrospective citing the dawn of the BlackBerry age as being among the most transformational shifts of the era, albeit that it turned out to be a double-edged sword. As Cleland notes: ‘When the technology was introduced, we thought it would increase our leisure time – the technology would manage everything and we could sit back for the rest of the day. Instead, it raised expectations and return times for clients – there’s much more pressure now.’
There are shades of familiarity and parallels that run between then and now. In 1992 the almost non-existent legal press was asking how firms would handle a recession. What with the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and the volatility of interest rates and inflation, not to mention the almost daily sideshows from the government, it looks like we are here again. With bells on. Interesting times, indeed.