Making the grade

It is nearly two years since David Gray succeeded David Ansbro as managing partner of Eversheds. In that time, he has had a lot to live up to in continuing the firm’s transformation from a regional to international business operation. Caroline Poynton finds out what Gray has made of the job so far and how he’s likely to impact the future development of a firm that has become something of a trendsetter in the legal marketplace.

I am beginning to suspect that the Eversheds team have a singular aversion to London living. On arriving at the London headquarters to meet managing partner David Gray, I am welcomed by PR manager Imogen Lee, who tells me that she has just bought a house up in Yorkshire. Similarly, a chance meeting with head of CRM Geoff Harrison concludes with him saying he has to catch his train home to Newcastle. As for Gray, he is quick to admit that the greatest challenge of his role is being apart from his wife, as he travels down from his Yorkshire home to stay in London during the week. By the end of it all, I’m beginning to wonder if any of them actually live and work full-time in London, or if these offices are a convenient central meeting place for weary travellers on the commute of the century.

Such lifestyle revelations, however, provide a timely reminder of where Eversheds has come from. In just a few years, a regional firm made up of disparate offices has combined to become a single entity, with a surprisingly strong brand identity, considering the firm’s relative youth. It has also managed to use its regional background to its advantage. Gray explains: “Our business model is different to many of the purely City firms. For example, when you talk to in-house counsel, they are all under enormous pressure to reduce their legal budget. We can respond to that because we can manage client services all across the country and we can do things much more cheaply as a consequence.”

Competing against the City firms involves a lot more than geography and price, but signs of changing client expectations could also work in favour of firms like Eversheds. Essentially, clients have become more sophisticated. Not only do they demand cost efficiencies from their external law firms, but many now talk about the relationship as a partnership, where external lawyers have to think in tune with their clients, that is, commercially and strategically. Law firms can no longer survive on the assumption of old that they can name their price and expect client satisfaction in return.

Indeed, for the first time, the past year witnessed falls in profit for magic-circle firms as a shortage of M&A deals reaped its whirlwind on year-end figures. Eversheds, on the other hand, has published profit hikes for two years running and has to its credit a cartload of awards to reinforce its already sturdy list of facts and figures. The law-firm league tables are unlikely to be overturned just yet, but there is plenty to suggest that firms like Eversheds are meeting these new client requirements and pushing the established boundaries of legal-service delivery, the long-term impact of which could be anybody’s guess.

Gray says that Eversheds has succeeded because it has a central tenet of regularly asking clients what they want and then acting upon it. A comprehensive CRM programme, which includes independent partner reviews to assess the ongoing success or otherwise of its client relationships, and the existence of a client-advisory board, are concrete proof of the firm’s desire to impress, but it is the firm’s flexibility on its business model that sets it apart. For instance, the firm’s Legal Systems Group deals with commodity business, such as remortgaging, but the firm as a whole is now using those skills to increasingly embed business processes in all the services it provides. “A lot of lawyers like to think that what they do is somehow special, but it’s not; they’re selling a service that people can buy from most places,” says Gray. It is a view that also supports Gray’s ambition of transforming lawyers into business managers. “I always say to people that you should be problem solvers with a legal background. I get frustrated when I came across lawyers rather than problem solvers because that’s not what people want,” he says.

Such a view seems to well suit Gray’s own personality. He says he hated law at university and seriously considered following an alternative career of merchant banking on completion of his degree. The necessary further years of training that would require, however, convinced him to become a corporate lawyer, a job that he has loved because of the negotiation and the “tremendous amount of time you spend with your clients”. He has never changed his core view of the law, however. “I always say that you have to remember that a lot of this is intrinsically dull. You might find it interesting, but our clients won’t – you have to make the experience enjoyable somehow,” he says.

He also admits that moving into management became tempting because practising law had become frustrating. “Time and again, I’d work on transactions where there was a young assistant on the other side who didn’t have sufficient experience to prioritise and so manage the deal effectively. You’d end up wasting three or four weeks until the partner arrived when you could do things properly. I was getting wound up.” He also came to a point in his career where the lifestyle no longer appealed. A particularly significant client deal was the catalyst, when he had to rush down to London in the early hours of the morning to be ready for a 6am meeting. As Gray says: “With these deals, you lose your life for weeks on end. I suddenly realised that I’d stopped enjoying it.”

When Gray was elected managing partner of the Leeds and Manchester offices in 2000, Gray felt it was the right time to take on the challenge, but he had to decide whether he would retain some of his client work and balance it with his new management responsibilities. Fate, however, conspired to ensure that the firm would have the full focus of his distinctly business view of doing law, as serious illness struck just as he was due to start. “I was away for about four months and when I came back, all my corporate clients were happily ensconced with other partners. I couldn’t go out and build up my client base again at the same time as managing the business, so the decision was taken away from me really,” he says.

A full-time management role would better enable Gray to prove his business acumen and inspire change, but the move was never going to be easy. His experience as head of corporate for Leeds and Manchester from 1995, and for the whole firm from 1999, however, gave him an important headstart in management, while his professed enjoyment of dealing with people would provide a solid basis for driving the team forwards. Indeed, he describes the managing-partner role as one in which you have to encourage and persuade, which he calls ‘consultative selling’. It doesn’t sound too different to his role as a corporate lawyer where talking to external clients and internal teams across the firm was necessary to complete deals. However, he admits that he has had to soften his approach. “The things that I have done well are those where I’ve changed my approach depending on the work that I’m doing,” he says. “Being a corporate partner is cut and thrust – as managing partner, you have to soften your approach and calmly and constructively deal with people across the partnership.”

Such diplomacy is a skill he must have learnt fast when facing the election for firm-wide managing partner in 2002. As a straightforward Yorkshireman, he says that he has always hated politics, but his successful election campaign suggests that he was able to embrace the tensions that must have arisen in the close run between himself and London managing partner Michael Brown. He explains it by saying that he convinced himself that it was all about strategy, not politics, which made him feel more comfortable. But there is also a sense that Gray is tough, and for all that he has learnt about softening his approach for management, he is still very much the corporate lawyer.

For instance, Gray admits that he finds being managing partner less stressful than practising law. Part of the reason for that, he says, is that every decision in management has the backing of the executive team and partners and no decision has to be made instantaneously, as is necessary when working with clients on a day-to-day level. He admits that his wife, however, has pointed to another reason for his more relaxed outlook: that the only time he got stressed in the past was when people above him were making decisions that he didn’t agree with. Having won the role of chief decision maker, that problem, of course, now doesn’t arise. Combined with his comments that he needs to be constantly challenged in his career, together with his frustrations regarding other lawyers and his own practice, and a picture develops of a determined, driven and ambitious individual, who is extremely amiable, but clearly capable of getting his own way.

Whether this is the right mix for Eversheds might be ascertained from another comment Gray makes when he says that the leadership should reflect the people that are in the business. He then describes the firm’s people as straightforward, not pompous or full of themselves, but down to earth. He sometimes worries that the firm is not as confident as it should be but maintains that this is just part of the firm’s understated nature. “Because we’re not arrogant, we tend to think we could have done things better,” he says.

On the surface, this description also perfectly describes the character that comes through when talking to Gray, as if his 27 years with the firm have ingrained in him all the Eversheds qualities he describes. But it is the clients that probably better reveal the truth. As part of the review process, all clients are given a sophisticated system of questions to get to the nitty gritty of whether the relationship is working. However, towards the end, on a lighter note, the client is asked to liken Eversheds to a football team or animal. Results have varied, but Gray says that some have come back saying that they see Eversheds as a bear, terribly cuddly, but aggressive if necessary. For Eversheds and its managing partner, it seems like a fairly accurate summation of character. Gray thinks the firm needs to be more confident, but all the signs suggest that both he and the firm as a whole have more than enough to continue this success story. Let’s just hope that they can all stay in London long enough to really capitalise on the fruits of their hard labour.