It just can’t be done? Building a law firm from scratch

It is all very well discussing strategic HR within the context of a well-established firm that is looking for new ways to build profitability and growth. However, what part does it play in the bigger picture, in building a business from nothing to win a good reputation with clients and staff? Professor Lorne Crerar, managing partner of Harper Macleod, describes the development of the firm from its first days in a converted sandwich shop to double-award winner at the Scottish Legal Awards 2003.

When, with my friend Rod McKenzie and a handful of staff, I set up Harper Macleod in 1989 in a converted sandwich shop in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, I vividly recall a well-known Glasgow banker with whom I had previous dealings, saying: “To create a meaningful, commercial law firm, based in Glasgow, serving Scotland, from scratch – well, it just can’t be done.” On the contrary, I always believed that our original vision could be fulfilled and now there are 19 partners, 64 fee earners, and a complement of 140 staff. So how have we managed to grow our business?

To enable us to grow, we needed to identify what potential clients would seek from us by way of advice. It was also critical that we delivered our services in the manner our clients wanted. Our firm ethos has remained a foundation of our client promise: to be, and be recognised as, a firm that is expert in its specialist areas of law, partner-led, innovative and solution-driven. We have, since we began, adhered to our ethos and it is very important to us. It makes some decisions easy for us too, as altering the fundamental building block of our business is just not an option.

Twelve years ago, we took the brave step of moving to our current premises at The Ca’d’oro in Glasgow. For some time, we were not able to fully occupy the floor we had let and that was very concerning. Thankfully, we eventually grew into and changed our office space and have now taken additional space in the building. We also now have a second office in Glasgow and have just opened our Edinburgh office in Melville Street. Growing a business isn’t easy, and when we moved to The Ca’d’oro, I remember the strictures of money pressures to the extent that I recall cutting our milk order and newspapers. However, while for a short period we had a hard time, it was always fun and our growing client base was unswervingly supportive.

It’s good that we can now, when necessary, return the loyalty and support of our long-standing clients. As we grew, we predictably evolved into a departmental structure similar to most other commercial legal firms: corporate, commercial property, litigation, commercial recoveries, banking and private client, which met the needs of most of our clients at that time. Eight years ago, we evolved a practice-group structure that focused on areas of a more niche basis, meeting new demand for particular services, or what we thought would be a future demand.

Alike to other businesses, we must invest in research and development and two good examples are our sports and social-housing practice groups. Both of these groups hold the number-one position in Scotland but, interestingly, when we created these specialist groups, we had no clients in these sectors. We had to develop the expertise and promote our specialist groups to what we believed would be an evolving sector requiring these services.

Being a young commercial firm, we believed that we had to better demonstrate the technical and practical applications of our skills than the traditional suppliers of legal services – the long-established, older firms. This is the reason why some 11 of our lawyers teach or tutor at the Glasgow universities. We are (as far as I am aware) the only Scottish firm with two part-time teaching professors. I teach banking law to Honours’ and Masters’ classes at Glasgow and Strathclyde universities, and my colleague, Professor Robert Rennie, is the holder of the chair of conveyancing at Glasgow University. A key feature of our ethos is innovation, for which we must know our legal disciplines inside out. After all, how can you innovate unless you really know your subject? Each year, we employ up to six researchers during university vacation times, who help us research new cases and prepare background information for the writing of text books, articles and newsletters for our clients. Some of these researchers are from foreign jurisdictions and it is good to learn from them about what is happening in their countries. It is also good for the office to have enthusiastic, embryonic lawyers with us and it is from this group that we pick our trainee lawyers.

Our people policy is critical to the growing of our business. We pick our trainees carefully as we expect them to stay post-qualification, becoming associates and, thereafter, hopefully, partners. Happily, there are many instances of that policy being successful.

Eighteen months ago, we adopted and declared to all of our staff our internal vision of becoming an employer of choice within three years. I believe that we are on target to achieve this goal. The criteria of satisfaction for being an employer of choice is physical environment, colleagues, the clients and the quality of work we do for them, and the financial rewards we give to our colleagues and staff. Consistency of adviser is very important to our growth and it enables our clients to deal with the same individuals and for us to have faith that our key members of staff will remain with us. It also means that we can confidently invest in the development of their skills.

We also believe that business skills are critical if our lawyers are to effectively deliver our services to our clients. Our fourth nominee will attend Harvard Business School next year in the leadership programme.

It is important to understand not just our own business, but business generally and, in particular, that of our clients. As our clients’ businesses grew and changed direction, we had to align our business services to them, and our practice groups continue to reflect our clients’ needs. We now have 19 practice groups serving particular needs of industry sectors or legal-subject matter. Knowing our clients’ needs, and the pressures and challenges of their market is important to us in evolving our business around their requirements. It has also ensured that our practice groups have, in many ways, been the key to our growth.

Practice groups present us with two principal functions. First, we must make sure practice-group individuals have all the core skills required for effective service delivery. Second, we need to ensure they make services available to potential, as well as existing, clients. Our focus on being expert is critically important to these groups and, so far, we can say that there has been considerable success with their evolution. We were the first firm in Scotland to adopt a practice-group structure and 15 of our 19 practice groups are recognised by the main UK legal directories as being expert in their fields. The groups also fit our people policies, with our younger lawyers being the practice-group leaders, supported by more senior experienced lawyers.

Our client surveys have also been important to business growth. Rather than guessing the answer to the crucial question of what clients are looking for in their legal advisers, we embarked upon a client-survey system about six years ago. The process remains a vital element of our marketing strategy and six years on, we have held meetings with a wide range of key clients, intermediaries and friends of the firm. With some, we have had as many as four follow-up meetings.

The overall aim of the client surveys is to monitor our overall performance in terms of the services we provide, but at the same time, identifying the changing needs of clients in accordance with developments in their business and/or the markets in which they operate. We also try hard to react to client comments, and we report to them in relation to what progress we have made in suggestions they have for our business. Sometimes, clients wish us to reflect their brand in the way in which we produce legal work for them and their clients; it is good for us that our clients rightly feel our business is an extension of their business. It also suits us that many of our clients require a commercial, business-focused legal service going beyond a pure legal-advice role.

In the past two years, the firm has grown by 51 per cent and I am confident that we will continue to achieve the growth that is so important to the well being of our firm and the advancement of our people. To retain our lawyers and key members of staff, it is important that they are able to grow with the business and do better. That is the reason why the firm’s growth has been important to us and I am convinced that growth will be a key feature in ensuring the future prosperity of our firm, despite the fact that growth can be expensive in terms of time, management, training and research.

On reflection, a very important part of how our growth has been achieved is that the firm’s promise to our clients has been fulfilled – we are what we promise we are. Marketing ourselves to clients and the general market is only going to be of long-term value if we fulfil the promises that we make in the present. We genuinely treat every matter that is a crisis to a client as a crisis for us. Our clients like the firm and I’m always happy to have third parties speak to any of our clients to find out what they think of us, as I am confident that they will be positive about us and how we deliver legal services.

I have come to understand that there are two essential markets for growth: the internal and external. Externally, our firm ethos has been important to ensure we fulfil our promise and satisfy clients both with the results we gain for them and the manner in which we deliver services to them. On an internal level, the people who work with and for us are critical for the growth of our business and we must ensure that this market is satisfied, so they can advance and enjoy their professional and working lives with the firm.

In 14 years, a great deal has been achieved and I hope there are many more and varied hills to climb. I can honestly say that if I was a prospective client with a problem, I would come here, and if I was a young lawyer, Harper Macleod is where I would want to be. That’s perhaps why we would never say to a client, far less ourselves, that it just can’t be done.

I’m often asked whether there is life outside Harper Macleod. It is called Gairloch, Wester Ross, where I can be found most weekends. Legal clinics in Gairloch are strictly by appointment only.

Professor Lorne Crerar is managing partner at Harper Macleod, Glasgow. He can be contacted on: 0141 221 8888.