Managing partners stress too much about whether they have the ‘right’ model. I could point to five very successful top 50 UK firms that have made massive strides in recent years despite operating wildly differing strategies and organisational structures.
A case in point is Macfarlanes, which has spent the past 10 years comprehensively ignoring the received wisdom of what modern law firms ‘should’ do. It hasn’t opened abroad, or even set up a network; it avoids lateral hiring like the plague and has been led for eight years by a senior partner as far removed from the identikit smoothie as you can get.
Yet it has been incredibly successful, rivalling the more profitable magic circle firms in productivity, building arguably the best corporate practice outside the City’s top 10 and maintaining one of the most cohesive partnerships in the UK. Oh, and the majority of clients actually like the firm, rather than simply instructing it.
A victory for the traditional partnership? Sort of, but not quite. The success of the firm has been to translate the traditional strengths of partnership for a modern business age, rather than dumping stuff that had become inconvenient. Key to this has been maintaining its focus on quality — meaning quality of staff. Corporate partners like Charles Martin, Tim Lewis and Charles Meek get the profile but pretty much all its partners are good, as are its lower-profile practices like private client and real estate.
And Macfarlanes is no old boys’ club, being one of the most robustly meritocratic and energetic firms in the City, though due to the Slaughter and May comparisons some lawyers still mistake the firm for a pure lockstep partnership. On that basis, the newly-appointed management team of Charles Martin and Simon Martin would appear to have a golden legacy when they take the helm next year (see page 8). The respected Charles Martin, viewed as the natural successor to senior partner Robert Sutton, certainly carries high hopes, promising to marry Sutton’s client-handling substance with a bit of the glitz and polish of the Vanni Treves era. Of course, the international issue will not go away, though both Martins have stints abroad under their belts. Ironically, this is less an issue in public M&A, where the Macfarlanes brand and wide referral links go a long way. But in private equity, where the upper mid-market houses that are the firm’s natural hunting ground are rapidly going global, it is less clear whether it can maintain its position from London. Some rivals also claim the firm is a bit old school in keeping an ‘us and them’ divide between partners and assistants. But niggles aside, there is a lot rivals can learn from surprisingly modern Macfarlanes.
