OC, CC and Simmons have one thing in common - bouncebackability

A theme running through the Legal Week Awards 2006 (see supplement) is the ability of firms that have run into to trouble to mount successful fightbacks.

Such is the confidence currently emanating from the International Firm of the Year, Clifford Chance (CC), that its partners seem to have wiped the difficulties of its recent past from their collective memories. CC’s rebound has, nevertheless, been remarkable. The current managing partner, David Childs - who was commended in the Managing/Senior Partner of the Year category - deserves great credit for the discipline he instilled in the firm. But his predecessor, Peter Cornell, laid the groundwork by restoring partners’ confidence in management (see blog entry).

UK firm Osborne Clarke (OC) is another firm that has put recent troubles firmly behind it. In OC’s case it was highly-rated corporate partner Simon Beswick who rode to the rescue. Beswick is the antithesis of his predecessor, the larger-than-life former actor Leslie Perrin. He took over management of the firm in 2003 at a time when it was leaking partners. He began the firm’s fightback by conceding, in an exclusive interview with Legal Week, that the firm had over-expanded (see story).

This lent credibility to his subsequent assertion that many of the partners who had recently left the firm had been managed out. One could argue he had little choice but to lay his cards on the table in this way. But such a candid admission remains rare in the legal market. It bought him, and the firm, valuable time.

OC pipped Simmons & Simmons to the post for the UK firm of the year award. But Simmons did walk off with the finance gong. It is yet another firm that has dragged itself firmly back into the fray. In contrast to OC and CC, however, it was being cast by many as a firm in slow decline. Then, in April 2004, it took the decision not only to axe 11 of the firm’s 94 London-based equity partners but also to explain precisely why it was taking such a seemingly drastic measure.

The good news is that all three examples demonstrate the palliative effect decisive action can have on a firm in trouble. Of course, it has to be the right decisive action. But the biggest danger facing the UK's commercial law firms is that they fail to spot the problem until it is too late.

john.malpas@legalweek.com