‘It’s good to talk’ – Linklaters repositions with focus on team work, innovation and a lot more soft stuff

Matthew Field meets Linklaters leadership as City giant outlines a much-changed agenda

For observers familiar with the legacy of former Linklaters chief Tony Angel, the rhetoric coming out of Silk Street right now could not be more of a break from the past.

Rolling out managing partner Gideon Moore (pictured) and senior partner Charlie Jacobs in the wake of its annual conference at the end of March, the pair are at pains to emphasise the shift from the Angel years and his successor Simon Davies.

Angel was renowned for ushering in detailed benchmarking of partner performance. It was always controversial internally but was also hugely influential in the legal industry as Linklaters prospered during the 2000s boom. But the wheels started to fall off the wagon in the post-Lehman years amid a series of turbulent restructurings and mounting discontent with management.

While Davies and former senior partner Robert Elliott were seen as technocratic and top-down in approach, Moore and Jacobs have gone out of their way to position themselves as close to the coalface partners and willing to listen. A lot.

This stance helped Moore build consensus relatively smoothly for an overhaul of Linklaters’ lockstep pay model last November. The active dialogue has continued with the launch of one of the largest consultations ever undertaken within a major law firm, with Linklaters engaging adviser Oliver Wyman to run a series of ‘town hall’ sessions with partners and staff to canvass more than 300 partners and 500 staff for input on the firm’s performance and strategy. Some 130 clients were also contacted, with Jacobs taking a personal hand in securing external views. The process, which ran from a pilot in December through to mid-March, culminated in a 72-hour online ‘jam session’, which secured feedback from over 2,000 staff.

Key messages coming back included a desire to bolster innovation, boost flexibility for staff and – most pointedly – break down the silos that Linklaters had become notorious for in recent years.

The feedback shaped the agenda unveiled at the City thoroughbred’s partnership conference in Monaco. The most symbolic outcome is plans to ditch individual partner metrics in favour of broader measures focusing on team or practice performance.

Moore tells Legal Business: ‘We won’t have individual partner metrics for billings and other measures. Some might see it as taking away the streetlights and the signposts, but we are looking at other things such as client successes, regional and global practice performance.

‘Being a lockstep firm means two things – pay is less of a distraction and the firm has uniform expertise across the network. With individual metrics, people would be less likely to feel that their indirect contribution was appreciated. This is a way of giving the partnership back to partners.’

‘This is a way of giving the partnership back to partners.’
Gideon Moore, Linklaters

The ‘strategy refresh’ was unveiled to the partnership in a speech by Moore, alongside a single-page brief. The new style of partner assessment is touted as being harder to game, while encouraging client winning and team development.

The shift also aims to address the defensive behaviour among partners that is widely felt to have dulled Linklaters’ entrepreneurial edge in recent years. The new regime is expected to operate with more regular and fluid team-based discussions. ‘How will we work this out?’ asks Jacobs. ‘The answer is: “It’s good to talk.”‘

There is no doubt that this collective change in approach has had a positive impact on morale. One Linklaters partner comments: ‘People liked what they heard and were willing to keep an open mind on how it translates into practice. It will be hard to wean people off metrics. It will be interesting to see how we collectively move away from that and how well we can drive positive behaviours.’

Moore comments: ‘The feedback that we have had is that there was a really good buzz.’

Other focuses of the conference included reports from the firm-wide innovation group, which is set to receive substantially increased investment (see box). The firm also discussed opening up more flexible routes to partnership, citing the promotion of its Asia head of employment and incentives, Laure de Panafieu, who made partner this year after a career break. Linklaters also has an unusual pilot to allow German associates to work shorter hours for pro rata pay, which may be extended. The firm in addition says it will allow agile working on request, with managers who want to refuse such arrangements being required to justify it on individual grounds.

The indications are that attempts to build bridges with the partnership are making progress. One of Linklaters’ top transactional partners observes: ‘I normally go to these things not wanting to be there. But [Moore and Jacobs] did a really good job in November, and I went to Monaco thinking: actually, this is going to be okay.’

matthew.field@legalease.co.uk