Law firm profile: Davies Lavery

Davies Lavery has enjoyed rapid growth and success since its launch in 1987 and has recently won awards not only as a premier insurance law firm but also as an industry player. Caroline Poynton talks to Claire McKinney, the managing partner at the Birmingham office, about her experiences of the firm and how the practice has developed so far.

Davies Lavery is a young firm, founded by Trevor Davis and Magdalene Lavery in 1987. It has, however, grown rapidly since those early days and, although Claire McKinney is keen to point out that the firm will remain a niche practice within the insurance industry, the firm has already grown to three offices: Birmingham, Maidstone and London.

Law firms have made significant moves in recent years to relinquish the rather stuffy and male dominated impression of the profession and many are openly advertising their friendly and flexible working environments. Davies Lavery is no different in this respect but perhaps the culture has had a helping hand from the start in that the firm was founded by a male and female, which immediately moved the firm away from, as McKinney puts it, the ‘traditional male macho’ environment. Today, looking at the headed note paper, the male to female ratio is almost dead on 50:50 with 18 partners and a total staff of approximately, 120.

Davies Lavery has been dominating the awards scene of late. In 2000, the firm won the title, ‘Insurance law firm of the year’, and in 2001, it followed up its success by winning the highly commended title in the same awards. McKinney is particularly proud of their recent success when the firm were finalists in the 2002, ‘Claims Initiative of the Year’ awards saying: “To be a finalist in awards for insurers was a real mark of our success”.

An obvious question in response to all this success is how did it came about? McKinney is quick to pick out their research and strategic plan as key factors in their business development. “In 1997, we carried out a big programme of research. Internally we looked at what staff thought of us and externally we researched clients and potential clients to find out what we did that they liked and what we did that they didn’t like.” From this, McKinney explains, they were able to formulate a strategic plan with several objectives, the main being: “To be a premier niche insurance law firm”. McKinney feels that they have so far, succeeded in their aim and now that they’ve, “done what they set out to do”, the firm is involved in further internal and external research. Wondering what they hope to achieve from further research, McKinney explains that a major driver is determining whether Davies Lavery is still, “the same firm we started out with”. The firm has recently made several lateral hires – appointments that have come off the back of their growing reputation and success in the insurance field. However, a growing company can quickly lose sight of its original aims and ideals and core values can be easily lost.

And what would those core values be? McKinney is quick to respond with one of their most important mission statements: “To work as a team with our clients so that, with mutual respect, we can come to a solution together”. With the recruitment and expansion of the firm, McKinney’s concern is that the brand or the core values of the firm will be diluted or that the brand will be weakened because new employees are working differently to the way they have traditionally operated. In carrying out a new research programme, McKinney believes that she can reinforce the culture and vision of the firm while remaining closely in contact with the feelings and motivation of the workforce.

McKinney is also keen to point out that the firm’s brand and core values are sustained from the first meeting with a potential candidate. “I believe that when you’re interviewing somebody, you have to really lay what you want and expect on the line. The first part of the interview is about selling your services but it’s also about the firm’s ethos. You should only be looking to recruit people who fit in with that.” Once a candidate has been chosen, the managers have the job of reinforcing the interview, integrating new team members into the company culture and working with them to ensure that they understand and abide by the firm’s core values. Apart from core values, McKinney is obviously enthusiastic about the importance of team work.

This extends from the individual team right up to the company as a whole. “People can start to think in terms of my team and my clients and you forget that you’re an overall team with cross-selling opportunities, etc.”.

To overcome this potential problem, Davies Lavery is a great advocate of team meetings (held weekly at the Birmingham office). Similarly, management gets together twice a year for a strategic weekend that brings together collective thoughts about the firm while providing the perfect opportunity to “enjoy each other’s company.” It is this approach that McKinney believes will engender the team spirit that is at the heart of the Davies Lavery vision.

The management structure as a whole is based around teams with line managers creating a non-hierarchical approach to the business. Each office has a managing partner, although McKinney frequently finds herself travelling to London as she is responsible for marketing across the whole firm.

McKinney argues that any law firm that hopes to succeed on an internal and external level, must have a good management team to back up and drive the core values of the business. “If your managers don’t buy in to what you’re about and if they fail to help people who don’t abide by your core values, then you’re going to lose. Communication and management is essential.”

Many law firms are now bringing in non-legal expertise to manage the business side of the operation and Davies Lavery similarly believes in the benefits that can be won from this approach. The firm’s practice manager, Sheila O’Connor, deals with personnel, IT, administration and finance and, as a non-legal member of the team, provides a fresh perspective to the firm.

However, Mckinney is also aware of the potential dangers of bringing someone in who hasn’t got a professional services background. O’Conner has worked with the firm for over ten years so with the founding partners, has been instrumental in its development. For a non-legal manager fresh to the legal environment, McKinney sums it up simply: “They wouldn’t understand us and we wouldn’t understand them”. At the end of the day, “you can’t beat growing you own”.

While the firm has enjoyed considerable success in recent years, no business has an easy ride and Davies Lavery has had its share of challenges. Only last year, one of the firm’s biggest clients went bust and everyone had to work hard to pull through a difficult time. McKinney says, “We didn’t panic as a firm and we didn’t make any redundancies”. The firm’s coping strategy was different to many firms that have been quick in recent months to make cut backs. As McKinney explains: “We took on some PR consultants to assist in damage limitation from being associated with this bankruptcy.” Significantly, McKinney again stresses the importance of team work and while management was keen to let everyone know what was happening at all times, the team as a whole worked very hard to get through the challenges.

So, with the bad times in the past, the obvious question is where McKinney and Davies Lavery go from here. For McKinney, her future is with the firm although she believes she has probably reached the pinnacle of her career from where there is little further to go. Undoubtedly, throughout our conversation, her enthusiasm for the role makes you believe that she would probably be content as managing partner for a long while yet. I would not feel so sure about the satisfaction rate among other managing partners who are frequently placed between the demands of management and the traditional resistance of an old-fashioned partnership.

For the firm as a whole, the key is now to build on its success and learn from the past. With the research programme now being undertaken, it is likely that the firm will soon have a new strategic plan – it’ll be interesting to see where that might take the firm over the next five years.

A day in the life...

7am – The morning starts with the commute from Nottingham to Birmingham when valuable time is spent catching up with the trade news or generally thinking through what is coming up for the day.

8:45 – On arrival at the office, an important start to the day is meeting the troops. McKinney will take some time to walk round the office greeting people and giving staff members the opportunity to buy into a part of her day.

9:15 – From this point onwards, the day shapes itself according to need and rarely are two days the same. On this particular Monday, McKinney receives the news that three staff members are pregnant. The news is received with congratulations on all sides particularly as these girls have been with the firm for several years and have become very much part of the team.

10:00 – McKinney takes some time to go through the mail. She has also collected the financial statistics for the month’s end, so begins to go through the figures, where teams might be behind or ahead of target.

11:30 – McKinney still manages some cases and so part of the day is devoted to her clients. Some managing partners will give up the legal side of the job, but for McKinney, “My credibility is in carrying a few cases.”

14:00 – Meeting with recruitment consultants. McKinney feels that it is important to get together with recruitment consultants just so that each party is prepared for any likely future needs. McKinney was particularly happy with the consultant they used to recruit of their marketing manager and explains that the ease of that appointment was largely to do with, “the time that was put into meeting in the first place.”

15:30 – Supervision session. Davies Lavery has a fairly flat management structure typical of many modern law firms. McKinney meets with managers in weekly supervision sessions to check on financial performance, staff morale and any other issues that might come up.

16:30 – McKinney goes back to some of her cases for the final part of the day before heading for the 5:45 train (which of course, is cancelled) and home.

Claire McKinney is the managing partner at Davies Lavery. She can be contacted at claire.mckinney@davies-lavery.co.uk.