Slaughters’ best friends – lots of necessity, not so much virtue

There is an interesting piece from the always good–value Dominic Carman, writing in this month’s Legal Business, built around a meeting with Slaughter and May’s best friends alliance of European firms. But if Slaughters hoped the piece would extol the benefits of the best friends model a decade after Giles Henderson first started selling it to the market, I fear the firm will be disappointed.

The picture that emerges is of divergent agendas as Slaughters and its key continental allies strive not only to educate the market about what its alliance is about but also to define for themselves what they are trying to achieve. And issues like attempting to prod deal stats-providers to class the alliance as a single unit for the purpose of M&A rankings not only seem intellectually unsound but an unstable basis for top-flight professional services businesses to base their strategy.

But then the problem with best friends is not the practicalities of whether it can deliver as a workable alternative to global firms. Even the most dismissive of big four rivals, concede that it does deliver for clients and that that if any group of law firms can make this work, this is the group to pull it off.

But it seems much of the problem with the alliance is motivation, meaning what they hope to get out of it. It’s hard to escape the feeling that Slaughters has largely chosen this path because, at heart, it simply didn’t want to adapt its cherished culture or hard-won status despite those pesky radical changes in the global legal services market. And the desire to maintain the status quo isn’t a very compelling concept behind which to rally the troops (or clients, for that matter).

There is also the suspicion that Slaughters has for too long defined its strategy in opposition: i.e. Not Being a Big Four Firm in the manner of its magic circle rivals. But then whoever said Slaughters had to buy into that particular brand of globalisation? What, for example, was wrong with the concept of the highly targeted, quality-first approach adapted in different ways by Cleary Gottlieb and Sullivan & Cromwell?

The problem, presumably, is that it would involve changing and Slaughters really doesn’t want to. For good or ill, Slaughters is now committed to its current path, whether it likes it or not. Luckily it does - but that doesn’t mean it will work.

alex.novarese@legalweek.com