Is Olswang in danger of losing its long-cultivated image as one of London’s brashest, but most successful, legal upstarts? With the top 50 UK firm this year set to announce a record 20% growth in turnover, taking its 2005-06 income to £75m, and partner profits on course to exceed £500,000, the firm’s reputation as the driven new kid will surely need some revision.
Still, as the corporate media specialist this month celebrates its 25th anniversary, the firm can find ample compensation for any loss of professional cool.
Certainly, its results will put the firm, which was founded in March 1981 by Simon Olswang and incumbent senior partner Mark Devereux, in the front ranks of the City’s increasingly confident band of mid-tier firms.
That performance is, in part, the result of the decision to diversify its practice following the technology, media and telecoms (TMT) crash of 2001.
The firm did this most notably in 2003, when it took on the bulk of the property department from the disintegrating DJ Freeman. Olswang then acquired niche property firm Julian Holy Solicitors last year. Property now generates about 20% of its revenue.
Perhaps most pleasing for a firm once synonymous with the media — and in the view of some critics, the more modish excesses of the UK legal market — is that its current success has been achieved over a five-year period during which its core TMT client base has struggled.
Olswang chief executive Jonathan Goldstein comments: "We strongly believe in the sector approach — we do not want to be all things to all people. While ensuring that our corporate group — which generated around 40% of our revenue this year — continues to thrive, we have balanced the firm more deliberately."
But the firm’s development is signalled by more than its new-found status as a real estate player. Entrepreneurial and expansive Olswang may be, but it is telling that the firm now has one of the UK legal market’s longest-serving management teams, based since 1997 around Devereux, Goldstein and chief operating officer Kevin Munslow.
Goldstein, who at the time of his appointment hit the headlines as the youngest lawyer to run a major London practice, himself turns 40 this month.
Some rivals would argue that the firm could have done more to use its TMT brand to secure work from larger clients, despite some notable client wins in recent years and headline instructions on media-driven private equity deals.
One managing partner at a rival London firm comments: "One of Olswang’s problems is that it has been trying to leverage off its TMT connections to get into corporate work and it has not really managed it — but it has still done bloody well to go from nothing to where it is now."
But the firm gives every impression it is happy with its UK business, which looks set to benefit from a technology sector that has only partially moved into recovery mode.
Goldstein sums up the current thinking: "Between 1998 and 2000 work poured in, but some of our decisions were too market-led. This time we are spending more time deliberating on our hires and we have tried to diversify our income. We should have done well in this market and we have. We want to be able to do well in all markets."
The firm is currently placing the focus on seriously beefing up its international profile in the wake of last year’s formal alliance with Miami giant Greenberg Traurig.
"The thing that was holding us back was our international capability, which is something we have started to overcome. For the first time, we are getting pushed by clients to be there," Goldstein says.
The firm now plans to expand its European capability and is working with its US partner to establish alliance firms in Europe and Asia.
At home, Olswang will mark its anniversary with the aim of raising £250,000 for urban youth charity Fairbridge, a commitment the firm will back up with pro bono advice. The firm is also set to clear its debts this year, which at the depth of the dotcom depression in 2002 had exceeded £10m.
Paying off debt and supporting charity — how establishment can you get?
