Last Tuesday, former Allen & Overy senior partner Wim Dejonghe was named Management Partner of the Year at the Legal Business Awards, at a glittering ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel.
Dejonghe signed off from a 23-year career at the magic circle firm in May this year after pushing through the long-awaited, transatlantic merger deal with US firm Shearman & Sterling.
In this Life During Law interview, originally published in the run-up to the transformational deal going live, he looks back on his career at A&O, discussing lessons learned from previous merger talks, his future plans and his views on the ‘unhealthy’ levels of money in law.
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I wanted to go into sports. I was a sailing instructor, close to professional. But then I had knee issues, so I needed to change my plans last minute. I still do a lot of exercise, but I hate the gym. That’s how I relax, reflect, enjoy myself, and get energy. I do a lot of sport with my sons, who are all into sailing, biking, jogging, and skiing. I can still keep up with them on the bike, but in skiing I have no chance!
I never planned to be a lawyer. When I started my law course I focused on international public law – the United Nations, NATO and international treaties. I wanted to be a diplomat but there are two issues with being a diplomat in Belgium: one is that you need political connections, and the other is that you’re not so relevant in the international diplomatic community. I worked as an assistant professor at a university but found it a bit too quiet. So, I decided to do a trainee internship as a lawyer, and never stopped. At the time I went into law, we were still obliged to do military service. I did six months in a law firm while I was waiting to get called up, then I went back to the firm after my time in the army, and technically I haven’t changed firms since. It wasn’t by design – it was more the elimination of other options.
There was a client instruction that changed my life. Strangely enough it was to do with dairy quotas. The client had to sell a lot of cheese, yoghurt, and butter across Europe, because the French production quotas were so much bigger than what they could get rid of. I did one deal in Belgium and the client was frustrated with the lawyers they’d been using in Spain. The French client asked me to go to Spain myself as a condition to work with my Spanish friend, and, though I didn’t really know the law in Spain or even the language, I decided to go. We did 25 acquisitions in total, and I got an offer to become a partner in another Spanish firm. But when I called the Brussels office to say I was going to take the offer, they said, ‘No, come back and become a partner here.’ So, I returned to Belgium and opened the Antwerp office. Each time I come back to Barcelona, I think, ‘Why didn’t I take that offer?’ It’s a great city. But you don’t know what it would have been. You have to take opportunities. I didn’t plan to be a lawyer, I didn’t plan to be in any of these roles but I did take the opportunities that came my way.
‘Failure isn’t a problem if you learn from it. I’m not someone who lives in the past. It’s easy to blame others. I’ve made many mistakes. But, with ageing, probably fewer.’
My predecessor as managing partner in Brussels did everything himself. There was no finance director, no HR director, no marketing director, nothing. But I didn’t want to give up my practice. So I said, ‘Fine, I’ll do it, but I’ll need support.’ And I recruited a fantastic team. That’s one of the best pieces of management advice I can share: surround yourself with people that do a better job than you do. It takes a big team of people to deliver results. I’ve never tried to micromanage.
I was given the opportunity to lead a 300 person law firm at an early age. I was lucky that the two founders of the firm in Belgium, at 45 or 46 years old, were happy to appoint me as managing partner when I was 34 or 35. So at a young age, I gained experience of setting up an office in Spain and creating an office network.
When I was at the Spanish firm, we ran out of cash. Failure isn’t a problem if you learn from it. I’m not someone who lives in the past. It’s easy to blame others. But what I try to do is say, ‘Okay, what did I do wrong, and what could I do differently next time?’ In Spain, that meant doing our billing collections sooner. I’ve made many mistakes. But, with ageing, probably fewer.
Within my first six months as managing partner, Lehman Brothers went bust. After the dot-com bubble burst I said, ‘I’m never, ever going to do this again, I’m not going to lay people off.’ It’s the worst thing you have to do in this job. And then it happened again, and I regretted taking the role. But if I hadn’t won the election for managing partner, I probably would have taken an offer to become CEO at a major bank – and I’m sure I would have regretted that as well!
Success in the past is no guarantee of success in the future. You have to constantly reinvent yourself – take inspiration, take on new ideas, and test them. The legal industry is relatively conservative, but there’s a lot we can learn from competitors and other industries on things like technology, delivery models, marketing, and HR. You test ideas, and some work and some don’t. And that comes back to the importance of failure. By definition, if you innovate, you will fail. But if you know you’re going to be successful, if you follow a proven recipe, then you’re not innovating at all.
‘As soon as the O’Melveny merger talks leaked, everybody’s negotiating. You’re negotiating with the other firm, negotiating with their partners, and negotiating with your own partners. And it becomes impossible.’
The merger talks with O’Melveny failed. That was a shame – but again, we learnt from the experience that it requires a team to run the process. I’m an M&A lawyer by background, and I thought I could do it on my own. But you can’t – even with all the experience I have. Another lesson was that as soon as the talks leaked, everybody’s negotiating. You’re negotiating with the other firm, negotiating with their partners, and negotiating with your own partners. And it becomes impossible. So you have to reverse the order. Of course, ultimately it’s the partners who decide. But you have to come with a developed proposal, and they can basically say yes or no. Because of the previous experience, you know what the sensitivities are likely to be. You know who’s going to have an issue with this provision or that provision or this clause, and you try to anticipate all the issues your partners might raise. You just can’t do it the other way, where you consult with partners on every detail. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way. With the A&O Shearman merger, we had a 99%-plus approval rate, so I think we got a pretty decent read of what the issues could be.
If you want to be properly global, you need to have credibility in US and English law. That’s non-negotiable. In the rest of the world, you need to be credible in relevant markets. But can you do without a practice in some areas? Yes you can. But the question is, for the Magic Circle as well as the US firms, ‘how do you establish credibility on both sides of the Atlantic?’ And your options are lateral hires or a merger. We’ve tried both ways. The Shearman brand is very, very strong, and so I think we will have that credibility. We have fantastic partners with established practices, it’s a 150-year-old firm with very strong client relationships. We’ve tried other ways. We’ve recruited a lot of people in the US over the years. But it doesn’t give you the brand nor the depth of bench that you need. But unless you do a merger, that’s your only other option. Which is what the other Magic Circle firms are doing. Those are your only options. Will they be there? Yes, if they’re successful in pursuing that strategy. If you don’t have capacity in both English and American law, you can’t be global – you’ll become a regional player. Now, regional could be large, but it won’t be global. You’ll miss out on the proper global transactions, whether it’s financing, really big infrastructure, energy transition, finance – whatever. You’re going to miss out on it. And that puts you at a disadvantage compared to competitors. Who’s going to succeed? I’m not saying the other Magic Circle firms won’t get there. They’re definitely trying, and they have had successes. They’ll have to continue to do that. But it’s a slower way to get there and more expensive.
Law has become more of a mercenary market. It’s a trend that worries me a bit. The money that’s being thrown around is unhealthy. The legal profession has a role to play in democracy and a wider responsibility to society. But with increasing competition it’s much more short-term. It’s harder to build something. The only way that model can work is if you work your people harder and push your prices up – and that makes the profession less attractive for the younger generation. I worry as an industry we’re going to lose out on some talented people. The reputation of the legal industry is already that it’s a sweatshop. We shouldn’t push that any further. Of course you need to be competitive on pay, but you also need to think about things like professional development, a positive social role, and interesting work. Work-life balance is a bit of a boring phrase, but you do need to encourage people to have other interests outside the profession. Ideally, you run a marathon, not a sprint. And running a marathon means taking a long-term view.
Be willing to compromise and don’t fight every battle. The one exception is values. I’ve never compromised on values. That can be anything from staff behaviour to which clients you represent and what kind of matters you take on. There’s no margin for compromise there. On all the rest, you don’t have to win every battle. If you try your best and you sense too much resistance, then you stop. There’s no leadership without followers. You can have your vision, but if your partners don’t come along with you, you’re not a leader – you’re on your own.
I have mixed feelings about handing over the reins. I love this – but there’s a time to go. We have a constitutional limit of two terms in each role. You have to respect that. There’s a lot of talent in this organisation. We had a fantastic list of candidates – all very capable people, any of them would have been able to do it, and I’d have been happy with any of them. But I am especially proud of the diversity of our new leadership and that both firms are reflected in our senior-most leadership. That tells you a lot about my partners. It tells me that, in terms of cultural shift, we’ve achieved a lot. While progress is still not fast enough, you don’t change overnight.
They have my number if they need me – but I don’t think they will. I’m going to take the summer off. Then my current thinking is that I’m going to take another normal full-time role. But maybe I’ll change my mind. The other option is a portfolio of directorships and advisory roles, but right now I feel I’d want to do another five to seven years of something substantial. Of course, that’s what I say now – but it’s probably wise to take a couple of months off and see if I feel the same way after a bit of reflection, a bit of time not being on the emails and the messages and the phones all the time. I’ve already had an approach to run another law firm. I’m not going to do that.
I really love my food and my wine. That’s one of the reasons I try to exercise as much as possible – I need to get rid of the weight! I eat and drink with my family a lot. We don’t have a wine cellar because we drink it too quickly. I have five sons, and they and all their girlfriends lived with me during the pandemic. It was a bit cramped and at one point I had to go and buy some additional desks, because we were all on our laptops at the dining table. Each time we had to eat, we’d have to move everything off. That was a fun period.
One thing people ask is, ‘Are you going to do a big trip on your time off?’ The one thing I’m going to do is not get on any planes! I’ve had enough of that over the decades.
Wim Dejonghe is outgoing senior partner at Allen & Overy.
alexander.ryan@legalbusiness.co.uk
Portrait: Brendan Lea
