Comment: Editorial board - Managing Partner

Regular

posted 18 Jan 2012 in Volume 14 Issue 5

Comment: Making the most of university relationships

By Stephen Denyer, Global Markets Partner, Allen & Overy

I have been involved in relationships between universities and professional service firms (specifically law firms) for many years. Major changes have occurred. To begin with, it was all about entry level recruitment of professionals. Nowadays, it covers much more, including business school style analysis of PSFs by universities and executive education programmes targeted at PSFs. Nevertheless, the PSF sector remains far behind many others (such as medicine and engineering) as regards the breadth and value of such relationships.

I am not encouraging PSFs to spend more money on expensive sponsorship, endowment or ‘naming’ packages. Nor am I suggesting that PSFs need to make more use of the bewildering array of gold-plated executive education programmes offered by a diverse range of universities. Rather, my messages relate to the way in which PSFs and universities view and manage their relationships.

Nowadays, more universities understand PSFs. The trend started (inevitably) in the US, at Harvard and Georgetown. It spread to the UK in Cambridge (both Judge Business School and the Moller Centre), Oxford (Said Business School), Ashridge and London (Cass). It has now taken hold in Continental Europe, in Paris (INSEAD and HEC), Germany (Bucerius) and Switzerland (St. Gallen and IMD). However, there is much more to do to reap the benefits already experienced in other sectors.

The steps listed below might help.

PSFs can:

Be clear about who has overall responsibility for university relationships. It should be someone with a strategic role, not a person only concerned with recruitment.
Map university relationships. Which members of the firm also teach and/or write academically? Which academics also work for the firm part-time? What about alumni?
Educate academics about PSFs by sharing real data and examples with them.
Encourage research related to their business. This might produce results to be presented to clients, governments/regulators or broader stakeholders in the PSF sector. It might also be used to help develop the PSFs’ own strategies.
Identify a core group within the firm who can visit universities to deliver lectures, workshops and roundtable discussions. These should not be positioned as recruitment events, but rather sharing knowledge and understanding.
Undertake pro bono and community engagement projects with universities. This could be particularly worthwhile if it involves secondary school activities that promote longer term diversity goals within universities and PSFs.

Universities can:

Appoint an academic to have wider responsibility for relationships with PSFs and not leave it to their careers or endowment teams.
Spend more time focusing on issues relevant to PSFs. These might involve the running of PSFs themselves or innovations in areas in which PSFs work.
Look for relevant research projects relating to PSFs.
Track and cultivate university alumni in PSFs.
Develop more global relationships with multijurisdictional PSFs.
Look for opportunities to hire retired partners from PSFs for university positions (either academic or administrative) and involve more current partners from PSFs in advisory boards.

Over time, these measures will move the PSF sector further down the path already taken by other more advanced sectors. It is not a case of PSFs spending or universities expecting more money overall, but rather about both being more focused and strategic about the activities undertaken and what they expect from each other.

stephen.denyer@allenovery.com