Hard as nails?

In a profession that is still new to the world of management, Addleshaw Goddard’s managing partner Mark Jones has been a singular example of managerial drive in the firm’s past decade of growth. It has been an exciting if demanding period in which he has had to make many difficult decisions, including rationalisation. So what is the story behind this old-timer of the legal management world? Caroline Poynton finds out.

For a lawyer, Mark Jones is making a good job of looking like a born-and-bred, bona-fide business manager. But then, having racked up eleven years as managing partner of a firm ranked as one of the big regional success stories of the past decade, you would expect him to have developed some mastery of the field. You would also imagine he has learnt some valuable lessons from the highs and lows of the role and, as the conversation flows, you hope that he will be willing to bare all. Thankfully, Jones quickly settles into cheerful reminiscing and it is clear that he is not going to disappoint.

Jones describes his decision to enter the legal profession as something that struck him quite suddenly. “I woke up one day between O and A Levels and decided that I wanted to be a solicitor having never had that ambition before and having no family members with legal experience,” he says. “To this day, I can’t tell you why I did that.”

It was, however, the kind of impulsive decision that he was destined to repeat. In 1992, despite building for himself the security of 15 years’ experience as a successful litigator with Booth & Co, Jones faced the prospect of relinquishing his legal cap for the unknown prizes and perils of the managing partner role. He remembers the concern of one of his clients at the time who said: “Let me get this right. You’re going to stop doing what you’ve been trained to do for 15 years and, I hate to say it, something you’re good at, and instead do something you’ve never done before, with no training, and no idea that you’ll be any good.” Jones, whether courageous or foolhardy, did not think twice. He accepted the client’s bemused best wishes, took the plunge and never looked back.

Since then, he has overseen two mergers, the first in 1997, which created Addleshaw Booth & Co and the second, in 2002, which combined Addleshaw’s multi-site regional practice with the quintessential single-site City firm, Theodore Goddard. It is a legacy that he has every reason to be proud of, but back in 1992 he had the benefit of only two days management training to launch him into the role. Outsiders might have been forgiven for marking his days as numbered but Jones was to prove a peculiarly determined contender for management success.

Undoubtedly, personality has played its crucial part in establishing his position as managing partner. He says that his greatest fear is boredom, a fact that goes some way to explain his career change. What could conspire to create inconsistency, however, has been tempered by a steady sense of commitment to the firm and its people. Consequently, in 26 years of working in the legal profession, Jones says that he only ever once thought about leaving his firm to join Eversheds, the firm at which his wife then worked. In an apparent contradiction, however, given his decision to give up legal practice, he concluded that he was better sticking with the devil he knew.

It was a decision, however, that would ensure Jones a perfect forum to play out his abilities to take risks balanced by the restraint of his longstanding loyalty to the firm. Whether he would have been so successful elsewhere is up for debate. Jones believes personal chemistry with a firm is an essential prerequisite for success. “I have a fairly traditional view of partnership in that the only asset a law firm has is its people,” he says. “If you’re not comfortable with your people, and you have any sense, you’ll move on.” Jones believes he could have been a partner in any one of the big six Leeds firms pre-1997, but he also knows that four of those six probably wouldn’t have wanted him, because the culture and chemistry were not right. He says that there was only one other firm where he could have been as happy as he was at Booth & Co and it had nothing to do with capability, market profile, size and ambition, it was all to do with people and culture.

Despite all the good fortune of finding the right firm, Jones would agree that it has not always been easy. On becoming managing partner, Jones wanted to turn Booth & Co from a law firm into a business, something he didn’t believe it or many other law firms had then achieved. To help the firm meet its potential, it was also necessary to break out of what was perceived as the Leeds glass ceiling. Jones remembers the firm’s senior partner, in the late 1980s, opining that Leeds would never support a firm of more than 400 people. By 1992, Leeds had six such firms, including Booth & Co. Jones says: “We needed to do something about it because it was getting to the point that Leeds was over lawyered and it was constraining our development.” This ultimately led to the 1997 merger with Manchester firm Addleshaw Latham & Sons. It also led to Jones experiencing some great successes, while learning some important lessons about effective communication.

In particular, Jones has 24 September 1997 emblazoned in his memory because it was the day he received a more than frosty reception from the firm’s partners to his ideas for growth. At that time, the newly combined firm was growing at five or six per cent per annum while the competition was growing at 13 per cent. On this fateful day, Jones made a presentation to the partners explaining that within five years the firm would need to increase growth to 15 rather than five per cent per annum. In that time, partner profits per equity partner would also have to at least double. He added that one mechanism to do this would be to ensure that the 76 equity partners then present would not increase to any more than 84 by 2002. The partners, not surprisingly, did not buy it. Jones, on the other hand, likens the day to standing in front of an iceburg.

It is to his credit, therefore, that in 2002, Addleshaw Booth & Co would boast a 20 per cent rate of growth per annum and a total number of equity partners of 80, rather than 84. It is a story that also reveals an underlying trait; a hard edge to Jones’s dedication to the firm.

This could not be better demonstrated than in April 2002, when he found himself asking a tenth of the partnership to leave for the good of the business. In remembering that time, Jones admits it was difficult, but he is also matter-of-fact about the situation and convinced it was the right thing to do. It is also a period that he now consigns to history as he looks forward to the challenges of managing the fortunes of Addleshaw Goddard.

It is difficult to pinpoint one characteristic that defines Jones and, in many ways, he seems a bundle of contradictions. He is clearly prepared to take risks and he seems to revel in the thought that at times his colleagues have thought him stark raving mad. In contrast, he is tremendously loyal and has demonstrated a life-long commitment to the development of the business. Similarly, in a sign of his affection for the people he works with, he has a tremendous ability to recollect things that his colleagues have done or said over many years. However, there is a hard edge to the soft interior, and he is clearly able to make difficult decisions when necessary. An accurate view of him is perhaps best summed up by a partner’s comment that he received on a performance review: “I don’t always agree with what Mark says and sometimes I violently disagree, but I’ve got to acknowledge that by and large he gets it right and on that basis, I’m happy to leave him to it.”

Above all, it is obvious that Jones has thoroughly enjoyed his time with the firm so far. When asked about the high points of his career, he happily reels off all sorts of things from managing the firm’s mergers, right down to successfully defending a young client on a charge of driving without due care and attention. He is happy to admit he has made mistakes along the way but he also believes that he can offer a lot for the future business development of Addleshaw Goddard. And thankfully for the firm, his animated expression when describing future challenges suggests that he is far from bored with the management responsibility.

Jones’s career so far is undoubtedly something of a success story but he has also had the good fortune to have found a firm so culturally aligned with his own personality. While it seems unlikely that he would have failed in any choice of career, his particular success must also be seen within the context of his relationship with the firm, something that must surely be recognised as a marriage made in heaven.

Mark Jones is managing partner of Addleshaw Goddard. He can be contacted at: mark.jones@addleshawgoddard.com