Personal Profile: Changing fortunes

Lawrence Graham hasn’t had the easiest time of it in recent years, but managing partner Penny Francis has serious ambitions for the firm’s success and growth that seems to include change on all fronts, including the firm’s location. Caroline Poynton finds out if Francis is ready and able for the job at hand, and asks whether the firm can live up to high ideals that Francis has in mind.

Lawrence Graham has an image problem, little helped by the ongoing Michael Fielding saga, in which a partner fled to the US, having taken around £2m from a client’s account. That the same client then announced in early 2004 that it was suing the firm for £30m, on a deal also undertaken by Fielding, seems to be a nightmare from which there is no dawn.

Managing partner Penny Francis and the rest of the team at Lawrence Graham must be sick of hearing articles that start on the same vein, harking back to episodes in the firm’s history that little reflect the forward-looking business strategy of a firm that is doing rather well. After all, in 2004, the firm broke through the £400,000 profit-per-equity-partner mark, a figure that understandably pleases Francis and outstrips the performance of many other national firms.

However, it is difficult not to mention events in the past as they have all helped ingrain a perception in the market that Francis is working hard to change. For instance, Francis says that the firm has come under the radar for its recent successes, but the reaction is more frequently one of surprise that Lawrence Graham is doing so well, rather than any expectation that the firm should be a success story on the national stage.

Francis also admits that reinforcing a more positive image is challenging from an internal point of view. “We hide our light a little bit,” she says. “We’re not good at having the confidence to tell the outside world how well we are doing, but it is my mission to tackle that because without doubt that leads to maintaining your position and doing better.”

Creating a more entrepreneurial spirit on an internal level, while changing certain assumptions about the firm on an external front, must be the dream of many an aspiring manager/leader. Those that succeed will not only put their businesses firmly on track for further success, won through an improved reputation and internal enthusiasm, but will assure themselves of a place at the top table of management distinction.

And that Francis should be the one attempting such change seems natural enough. She was born to the professional life, partly choosing law as an act of rebellion against the family tradition of becoming doctors. From the age of 13, she was spending her holidays working among professionals, finding out what career might be the most suitable. It was at that tender age that she worked with a lawyer in Croydon, UK, an experience that cemented her path into law, a route that she has since never regretted taking.

Becoming managing partner also appears to have had some ring of destiny about it. From 1989, when she joined Lawrence Graham, she set about building the property-litigation team, before taking over the running of the whole real-estate team from 1998. Becoming managing partner in April 2002 was a natural progression, as Francis says: “I’d worked with every client, so it was easy to run the business. And moving from real estate to managing partner was just a wider expansion of the role I was already doing.” As there were also no other candidates for the position, fate was clearly laying its cards on the table.

On a personal level, Francis’s upbringing and smooth career development to date has given her the confidence to take little heed of any real or perceived obstacles to success. The question of whether she has found it harder to make it to the top of the legal profession as a woman is one greeted with bemusement. “I don’t think it makes any difference at all. I think you have to earn respect and you have to do that either as a man or woman – the issues you face are exactly the same,” she says, adding that she has never encountered anything that made her think it was any tougher for her. There is no doubt that she is telling the truth, but her experiences belie those of many other women who have either found the lawyer’s life impossible to balance with the responsibilities of a family, or have suffered within firms that still maintain the atmosphere of an old boys’ club. Numerous surveys reveal a discrepancy between the large numbers of women entering law and the few that make partner, making it appear that Francis is either exceptionally focused on the job at hand or that she has been blessed with good fortune. And for the task of managing the changing image of Lawrence Graham, it would help if she could rely on a bit of both.

So far, some tough decisions and forward-looking strategies provide promising signs for both Francis’s ongoing management career and the firm’s strategic growth. First and foremost, the firm has faced the challenge of turning work and clients away to build greater strength in areas where they can really provide value to clients. Most recently, the firm ceased its high-volume/low-value claims work in the insurance industry. “We made that decision and we went to see major clients with whom we’d been doing that kind of work for some time. I told them that it just wasn’t right for our firm to continue in this area. They understand that we’re a business as well; it’s just a question of being open and telling people,” she says.

Francis has also spearheaded a recruitment campaign, which has brought in non-legal business professionals to head up the firm’s support teams. “They’re absolutely on side all the time in the decision-making process, so that they’re making the right decisions to ensure that we’re not wasting money and supporting the services that we provide to clients,” she says. It is a route that is now familiar to many firms, but one that combined with a commonsense approach to the firm’s structure and strengths may well explain the profit growth of recent years.

Significantly, Lawrence Graham has also recently merged with Tite & Lewis, which will provide greater depth to its corporate practice, balance what had been too much weight in property, and bring in an outsourcing practice that backs up some of the work already undertaken at Lawrence Graham. Francis also admits that such a combination would have been unlikely just four years ago. “I don’t think the focus was the same then,” she says. “The strategy was on its way but it wasn’t as developed as it is now. The profitability levels could not have been integrated and we would not have been a firm of natural choice for them at that time.” Such progression is compelling evidence of the firm’s success so far in meeting its aims to change and grow.

That Lawrence Graham is to move into new premises in London is another reflection of the firm’s changing outlook and image. Its current office on the Strand looks decidedly drab next to the homes of other law firms in London and beyond.

The planned move to a bespoke Foster-designed building in 2007, however, reinforces the message that Francis has been communicating in all her strategies: that Lawrence Graham is looking to the future and the profit that will come with it. Francis, however, is keen to mention that certain values will not be forgotten. “Although it’s a fantastic building, it isn’t in an area where it’s prime rent. It’s getting best value that is really reflecting what we’re about. It’s getting the best out of the situation and not being too flashy,” she says. The firm’s reputation for charging lower rates than many other City firms provides a ‘value for money’ proposition that Francis is reluctant to lose.

If Francis can succeed in combining enough of the business strengths of the past with the strategies for change currently being implemented, then the future seems promising. Francis agrees that there are some areas that she has to work on to improve her management technique. For example, she says that she can underestimate people’s lack of confidence to do things that she thinks them capable of, a trait that reinforces the impression that she personally has no lack of self assurance to get the job done. But, with her recent re-election to another term as managing partner, which will take her to 2009 alongside senior partner Bill Richards, it seems unlikely that her people-management skills include serious insensitivity to other people’s insecurities. And, with a merger in the bag and a building in the waiting, Lawrence Graham seems to have plenty to look forward to.