Meeting client needs: A regional perspective

The rise of the regional law firm has been a noticeable trend in the legal market over the past ten years and TLT Solicitors, which recently won a UK ‘Regional law firm of the year’ award, is the latest example of a regionally-based firm to achieve success on a national stage. Managing partner David Pester assesses the firm’s development to date and explains the firm’s management strategy for past and future success.

Five years ago, TLT did not exist as a single firm. It has since become one of the highest profile and fastest growing firms in the region. We have worked hard to position the firm both as a serious alternative to the South West’s traditional powerhouses and a national player in a number of industry sectors.

Market profile is worth nothing, however, if it isn’t translated into commercial results. Crucially, we have ensured that our growing reputation has been paralleled by strong financial performance. In our last financial year, the turnover increased by 11 per cent to £17.5m, building on a 14-per-cent increase in the previous year, and the number of lawyers also grew by 15 per cent, paralleling the previous year’s growth of 20 per cent.

Changing perceptions

The roots of the practice go back a long way, and the merger in 2000 brought together two long-standing Bristol firms – Trumps and Lawrence Tucketts – creating a new opportunity.

Prior to the merger, we suffered from the perception that we were not sufficiently big or specialist enough for certain types of work. It is a common problem for smaller firms. While clients like you and appreciate your expertise, there are concerns over capacity and depth. The glass-ceiling effect that can hinder individual career progression can also impact on business development.

The merger immediately gave us the additional capacity and the resource to get into areas of work and sizes of projects that we couldn’t have done before. By merging, we gained a lot more leverage in the market; it enabled us to change perceptions.

We had time to think carefully about how we structured the firm. We worked hard to make sure that the merger made a tangible difference to our performance and we purposely didn’t go overboard on merger publicity. It is important that we have facts to point to, not just aspirations, because people judge you on results, rather than what you would like to achieve.

People power

My approach to management puts people at the heart of the firm, whether it is internal people (our staff) or external people, namely, existing and potential clients.

Because of this, I make the effort to regularly talk to people at all levels to get a feel as to how things are working. I want to ensure that everybody is delivering the services that clients want, in the way that they want it, and not in a way that is more convenient to TLT.

We strive to instil an open and inclusive atmosphere within the firm, as you can only be as good as the people around you. I believe in encouraging individual empowerment to drive team success. Making sure that the firm has the right working environment, that the quality of work is interesting and that people feel properly supported, makes a huge difference. I don’t think that the legal profession has a very good track record at creating an environment where people are prepared to take risks, yet feel secure and able to develop professionally.

We have implemented several people-focused internal strategies, including running regular coaching and training sessions for sector teams, and briefing sessions for particular client teams. We are also in the process of implementing new client-service plans, covering the way the firm works with key clients. That includes input from the clients themselves, for example, how they want services delivered, how discussions are structured and how they envisage their legal needs developing.

Realistic targets

I think there’s a danger in measuring only financial targets. Lawyers need space to develop their relationships with clients without the constant pressure of ominous billable-hours targets. This ultimately leads to stronger and more sustainable client relationships and happier and more effective lawyers. Measuring a wider spectrum of contribution recognises the range of skills needed.

This all helps in a very deliberate sense to create an atmosphere where lawyers see that the most important thing is being focused and efficient at looking after the client and responding to their needs. It also creates an environment where lawyers themselves are acknowledged, supported and their efforts recognised.

A colleague once told me a story of a management meeting at a firm where partners spent hours discussing management strategies and alternative-development plans. After an hour of talking, no-one had mentioned the word client or considered the clients’ viewpoints. It illustrates the danger of being too analytical and getting so bogged down in management technicalities that you lose sight of the main issue – which is supporting and promoting the client’s aims and objectives.

Competing against London

A key area of growth for TLT has been winning good commercial instructions from companies that five years ago would not have considered using a firm outside London. It has been an important driver for growth across many regional law firms, as clients have looked to maximise their legal spend and regional law firms have expanded their expertise.

Competing against London, however, has not been the sole focus of TLT’s strategy. Our competitor marketplace is the firms that practise in the same sectors as we do. It means we have different competitors for different things. For example, there is a particular set of firms that we regard as competitors for the work we do in this region; in other certain specialist areas, it is another group of firms. That definition includes some quite large London firms, but we are confident in our offering. We have the advantage of a lower cost base, quality expertise and, due to our size, the ability to be more responsive and flexible in adapting our services to client needs.

Regional advantages

The big debate, though, is around where the cut off is and at what level clients will say that they need a City firm for a particular type of work. Our experience is that more businesses are prepared to look outside London for an increasing range of services. The perceived distance between London and Bristol is less than Leeds or Manchester, even if in terms of travel times, the difference is less significant.

TLT has also been able to capitalise on its location to attract quality expertise to the practice. Recent recruits include people from Freshfields, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Masons, Martineau Johnson, Manches and Osborne Clarke.

An argument often used in favour of a regional location is the availability of City expertise at a lower price, brought about by the reduced overheads of the location. But it’s more than that; it’s about service, which includes developing good systems so we can work with better price certainties, and can confidently say how much work is involved in a project, how long it will take and, therefore, how much to charge. Clients should not subsidise business inefficiency and we’re under no illusions. I’ve recently come across firms discounting services or City firms low-balling to win work and we need to be able to respond to that.

Sector focus

TLT’s success is built on knowing its own strengths, both existing and potential, and knowing how to use them to its advantage.

Our strategy is focused on building our regional reputation as a serious commercial practice, while developing a national reputation in a smaller number of specific areas, while all the time adding value for clients.

It is essential that as business lawyers we are pragmatic and commercially astute. We need to be not only technically excellent, but also able to provide the client with more. Clients need practical, well worked out legal solutions to business problems, where risk is assessed properly, but the commercial goal is never overlooked. We need to have a solution that identifies what is important to the client, rather than what matters to the lawyer.

We run several industry-focused teams, not practice-sector-led ones, as it makes more sense for clients to deal with lawyers who have a good all-round knowledge of their industry.

There are common themes in industry sectors. In the leisure industry, for example, there’s a strong theme of commercial-property services. It means we’ve got to have certain expertise to provide services to that sector, but we can use that expertise to service other business clients too.

There might be a temptation to try and cover everything, to say that we are going to provide services to the UK’s manufacturing industry, for example. But that would be so fragmented, with so many different industry sectors, as to be meaningless. We make sure we define our focus tightly and we consciously evaluate the prospects of achieving our objectives by analysing our competitors and getting regular feedback from clients.

So far, this strategy seems to be working. We have several major Plcs on our client list, including Alfred McAlpine, Avon Rubber, Imperial Tobacco, Hanson, First Choice Holidays and Punch Taverns. We are also one of seven firms on the national corporate-recovery panel of Barclays Bank.

Despite recent growth, with 39 partners and over 300 staff, TLT is much smaller than many of its national rivals. In my view, however, size does not necessarily dictate whether or not a firm is successful, but only how many areas it can be successful in.

David Pester is managing partner of TLT Solicitors in Bristol. He can be contacted at dpester@tltsolicitors.com