Tom Moore talks to Tony Angel, the former Linklaters managing partner who stepped down as global co-chair of DLA Piper on 1 May. Widely regarded to have been one of the outstanding law firm leaders of the past 25 years, he discusses diversity, harnessing technology and gifting Simon Levine a genie’s lamp.
***
What advice would you give to the profession?
First, operating a global business with a single business model is going to be an increasing challenge. We’re all struggling with how to make our organisations more efficient and aligned to client needs. But those needs are increasingly varied and a one-size-fits-all model cannot any longer meet them all. The accounting firms have been very good at managing different business models in a single organisation; law firms need to learn how to do that too or really narrow their focus.
Secondly, the impact of technology on law firms is still at an early stage, but it will have a massive impact. Why shouldn’t you be able to say to Siri on your iPhone: ‘Change the documents so the tax liability falls on party a rather than party b’ and for that to be done instantly by the computer and eliminate the need for some trainee to put in a guarantee? It ought to be possible for you to say that and for the documents to change in front of you in the meeting. Artificial intelligence (AI) like this will have a massive impact, and it will ‘learn’ and get better over time. If you can explain clearly enough to an associate how they have to change documents, it won’t take very long before AI can do just as good a job.
Is there anything UK firms could have done to stop US firms dominating the global stage?
It was inevitable that the London market would become a genuinely global market, but the UK elite firms could have done more to crack the US market. UK elite firms spent a lot of money not cracking the US market over a long period. Instead of spending $25m a year for ten years, we might have been better off spending $250m in one year and doing something dramatic. It would have been a hell of a gamble for a Magic Circle law firm to invest the amount of money that was needed – and at exactly the same time as they were investing massively in Europe. But if I were sitting again in 2000, I’d be looking at a merger with a top-notch firm outside of New York and using the combined brand to crack the New York market together.
How do you solve the legal industry’s problem with gender diversity?
The challenge comes in practices that work really unsocial hours. The profession is pretty good in areas such as real estate and employment, but has failed badly in high-pressure areas with hard-driving clients and long hours, like projects, M&A and capital markets. You can do something to break that culture around the edges, but it really is difficult for a law firm to say ‘we’re going to run our M&A practice on a completely different model and we’re not going to take calls at weekends or work until 5am’. You need to be able to service the client, and that’s where the real problem lies.
That said, there is still a problem with unconscious bias – thinking ‘this is the way I do it and I expect people to do it this way’, without recognising that someone else – perhaps a woman – could approach the task in a very different way yet achieve just as effective a result.
Unconscious bias tests are absolutely terrifying. They are subtle and I scored a lot less highly than I would have liked. It is frightening to realise we have been culturally attuned to think in a certain way. The tests should be compulsory as they help you see problems in a way you don’t always see them in day-to-day life.
Who do you admire?
One of my great heroes was Ferrier Charlton, who was senior partner at Linklaters in the mid-1980s. He was a fighter pilot in the Second World War, president of The Alpine Garden Society, a great corporate partner, an expert in capital markets and VAT, and a true gentleman and polymath. There were a number of partners like that when I was young and their breadth of interests would put many of us to shame today.
There are also lawyers who are doing really challenging and inspirational work in areas of law that make a real difference to the world. I have been fortunate enough at DLA Piper to be involved in pro bono work for Unicef, helping support the Bangladeshi government implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. When you see starving kids beaten by the police and thrown into prison at ten years old for stealing food from market stalls, and then you see some of the work that people are doing on the ground to change that, those are people who really deserve admiration.
What’s next for you?
When I retired as managing partner at Linklaters, I gave a crystal ball to David Cheyne and a genie’s lamp to Simon Davies; and I’ve just done the same for Nigel Knowles and Simon Levine here. No senior partner or managing partner should be without one.
I won’t be around much between now and October as there are things I would like to do with a free mind. I also promised my wife we’d go to Peru. But after that there are still things I want to achieve and some of that may be working on projects for DLA Piper. I’d also like to take on some non-executive roles, including in the not-for-profit sector, but not too many. I’ve found before that you can too easily lose control of your time. You can’t ask to move a Wednesday board meeting to Friday simply because you want to play golf.
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk