There was a time when, before BlackBerrys were endemic and Google had reached world domination, if you wanted a ‘computer lawyer’ there was just one place you could go: Bird & Bird.
Looking back to a meeting in the 1990s, one rival recalls: “I remember the guy from the Government introducing himself and saying: ‘So, do you work closely with Hamish?’ It never even crossed his mind that I didn’t come from Bird & Bird.”
But with the once-unthinkable departure of former chairman and public sector head Hamish Sandison to technology, media and telecoms rival Field Fisher Waterhouse, the firm is facing a new chapter.
Under Sandison, the firm’s public law practice had for many years led the way advising on governmental technology projects, at one time holding more-or-less exclusive rights on the Government’s former Central Computer & Telecommunications Agency. But recent years have seen the likes of Field Fisher, DLA Piper and Pinsent Masons carve serious inroads into the sector.
Although Bird & Bird’s practice can still boast experience and a big name in the shape of head of IT Roger Bickerstaff, only four partners regularly work in the public sector, as opposed to the 12-15 partners that Field Fisher regularly fields in the sector. In essence, the firm’s public law focus is largely based on telecoms and key client BT, which it has advised on numerous public projects.
The lines into public sector clients are not what they once were, with flagship initiatives like identity cards, nuclear decommissioning and some significant Ministry of Defence projects going to rival firms in recent years.
It also seems likely that the Government’s revamped legal services panel, Catalist, will further contribute to the firm’s shift from Whitehall by opening up public sector mandates to no less than 48 firms. And Bird & Bird shares its place on the full commercial panel with 17 other firms.
Not taking a place on category eight - the major project section Ñ of the Government’s legal services panel will greatly limit the potential spoils for Bird & Bird. The firm has seen around £1m-£1.5m of fees from the panel in the last year. Some rivals claim to have seen multiples of this.
That said, Bird & Bird is certainly not alone in finding Catalist, which replaced the previous incarnation L-Cat, to be a damp squib, with a number of firms complaining the panels are badly organised and misunderstood by some Government departments. As Bickerstaff observes: “It has been a bit of a poisoned chalice for us. Few people have really seen it as a vehicle for new clients and there are just too many firms on it.”
So Bird & Bird finds itself at a crossroads. Does it look to regain some of the ground it has lost in the public sector or gamble on anchoring a specialist practice even more explicitly on commercial clients? Sandison, who clearly chaffed at his former firm’s recent direction, is decided: “Public sector work is more competitive than ever, but it can be profitable for a law firm which is totally committed to it from the top down and which is not too narrowly focused on a single area. Clients in the public sector nowadays want business lawyers for IT-enabled business projects, not just technology lawyers.”
For Bird & Bird, it seems increasingly clear that its heart is no longer with the public sector, beyond a targeted crossover with its telecoms and intellectual property practice. Given the influx of public sector competition it has faced, that is an understandable stance but it is not without its risks.
