Although it seems like I’ve been around forever, I wasn’t here when Legal Business first hit desks in January 1990. I was probably listening to Soul II Soul’s Club Classics Vol. One, worrying about my 16th birthday and GCSEs coming up that summer.
I joined Legalease in the autumn of 1997 amid a very vibrant time for the UK and its legal market. We were just a couple of months into the heady days of New Labour; the accountants were all over Big Law; and the Magic Circle firms were rampaging all over Europe.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that making predictions about the direction the industry is headed is the proverbial mug’s game, especially for journalists. We’ve certainly called some events correctly (the emergence of in-house legal for one) but there’s also a few things we’d like to forget about (a cover feature suggesting Herbert Smith should join the Magic Circle?). But all of these were written with the best intentions of provoking and entertaining.
A leader article from one of the very first issues of LB in 1990 set the tone: ‘Many managing partners convinced themselves that they were good businessmen, whereas the reality is that the law industry was going through such an unparalleled boom that they would have been fools not to make money… now the crunch has come.’ And this is the recurring theme of the past three decades – as some leaders point out in our review of the past 300 issues, the most dramatic changes to the industry over the years are unavoidably linked to times of significant economic upheaval.
The mantra that has followed LB readers around for the past 30 years or so has been ‘go niche, go global or go bust’ and a closer inspection of the names featured in the inaugural LB100 in 1993 gives a stark illustration of what can happen to firms that either lose focus or try too hard to be something they are not. Mid-market innovators such as Frere Cholmeley, which collapsed under the weight of debt and over-zealous expansion in the 1990s; Halliwells, which imploded shortly and spectacularly after the credit crunch; and SJ Berwin, the most recent in a line of firms to fall foul of hubris.
It is usually best to leave the predictions to the experts, which is why the concluding section of our review and the Last Word is given over to what law firm leaders believe will happen in their businesses over the next decade. The majority see the industry capitalising on lessons learned in the pandemic, galvanising institutional changes away from archaic working practices and focusing on simply doing things better. Let’s hope that is the case.
This 300th issue examines the themes of the past to see what the future holds. Many thanks to our readers for your support in what will doubtless be another incredible stage of the journey. Here’s to the next 100.