Tom Moore on the challenges faced by BLP’s new leader
While Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) staged something of a recovery in 2013/14, longstanding managing partner Neville Eisenberg – who had attracted some internal criticism following a punishing 2012/13 trading period – announced just before Christmas that he would not seek another term. Will Lisa Mayhew, who in February was elected to succeed Eisenberg on 1 May after an intense election campaign, be able to refocus a firm that has faced some internal discord and a listing international strategy?
It will certainly be a challenge considering the firm’s recent setbacks, with the exit of four past and present practice heads, including head of restructuring and insolvency Ben Larkin to Jones Day; the departures from its much heralded advocacy unit after the exit of two QCs; and the decision by senior figures within the firm to block key hires. Already late to the international expansion game, BLP failed to replace its only Paris-based partner when Antoine-Audoin Maggiar stepped down late last year and its overseas hiring was limited to DLA Piper’s former head of Asia, Bob Charlton, in the last six months of 2014.
One partner says the firm has ‘clawed back its international expansion’ and pinpoints Eisenberg’s impromptu gathering of 20 influential partners at the start of 2013 as the moment plans for further international expansion were halted. Eisenberg had sought support to hire a three-lawyer projects team in Hong Kong, which he had made a key element of the firm’s international plans, but failed to win support.
With what critics argue is a disconnected set of overseas offices, Mayhew faces a decision whether to retrench into a City-focused firm or fully invest in expansion.
‘The partners made the right choice. Lisa’s a much more open-minded person, she’s a fair person and she does listen.’
Former BLP partner
Many partners feel Mayhew will bring a fresh approach to leading the firm, having only been on the firm’s board since November 2012, when it expanded to make decision-making more diverse.
It was then that Mayhew got her first taste of campaigning, drumming up support at a partner retreat to be elected onto BLP’s board after being placed on a four-person shortlist drafted by chair Robert MacGregor. ‘The board was quite a cliquey inner circle,’ claims one former partner. ‘Lisa’s role was very much listening and learning while making constructive criticism where she thought she could add something.’
Using her board position, Mayhew showed she had the capability to build agreement within the firm, teaming up with influential head of real estate Chris de Pury to introduce a gender diversity target of a 30% female partnership by the end of 2018.
Still, her progress into the final two to replace Eisenberg in January came as a surprise to some but she had influential backers in the form of de Pury and commercial dispute resolution head Nathan Willmott. The contest between Mayhew and the firm’s head of corporate, David Collins, was pitched as a battle between old and new BLP, and highlighted a divide between partners brought in since 2006 and the old guard who wanted the firm to focus on corporate work.
In the end, Mayhew prevailed in an election that was closely fought. She was perceived to have more strategic nous than Collins and won wide support in all practices outside of Collins’ stomping ground, with some partners unmoved by his plans to invest more in the corporate team.
So, before deciding whether to renew the firm’s international strategy or opt for a City-centric approach, Mayhew must build bridges within the partnership and return BLP to the upwardly mobile form the firm long sustained after the 2001 merger between Berwin Leighton and Paisner & Co. Mayhew seems well placed to do so with a former partner saying: ‘Of the two people they had, the partners made the right choice. Lisa’s a much more open-minded person, she’s a fair person and she does listen.’
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk