Panel Member Quotes
"Sheer joy… as ever!"
Steve Williams
"I very much enjoyed the debate at the last roundtable. It was most interesting and it is always more fun when different views are expressed."
David Cheyne
"I much enjoyed the breakfast, a bit of conflict is always fun!"
Dermot Mathias
"It was, as ever, an interesting discussion.
Kristy Whitehead
"It is always instructive to hear the view of senior internal counsel, so I learned something – as well as enjoying the event."
Jerry Walter
"Thanks for organising a fun event."
Richard Linsell |
"In the time allotted it was excellent."
Michael Hatchard
"I do so enjoy your roundtables and hope they work for GG".
Richard Linsell – Partner - Addleshaw Goddard
"Many thanks for the breakfast roundtable. It was all really good fun as per usual!"
Robert Webb QC - Chairman - Autonomy
"Lovely to meet you this morning and thank you very much for this morning's discussion - very interesting and a good debate!"
Claire Chapman – General Counsel & Group Company Secretary - Inchcape
'A stimulating and rich debate of issues critical to law firms and their clients'.
Nigel Boardman – Partner - Slaughter and May |
Summary
Our last roundtable “Merger: Solution or Distraction” raised interesting issues covering: the importance of size; delivery of service to client; relationship of trust; increasing globalisation and the impact on client needs; outsourcing and the need to deliver value as well as driving cost down.
In walking the tightrope between providing value and competitive pricing, debate became animated.
The conclusion seemed to be that merger could both be a solution and a distraction, the secret lying in the success of post-merger integration as well as having a strategic aim.
Clients’ concerns are highlighted in the quotes selected below.
Law firms should take heed before embarking on a merger strategy.
Robert Webb
“One of the troubles that you get as a client with a merger is that your solicitor spends 10 years describing his strengths, and then when the merger discussion starts he spends the next two years describing his weaknesses. It is the first time you have ever seen him in this candour mould and it is a bit disconcerting.”
Richard Wiseman
“It is very rare, in my experience, to say to a firm ‘we do not think you have enough people working on this, and if only you would merge you could throw some more fee earners at our problem.’ “
Stephen Williams
“If we wanted to instruct the firm they had merged with we would have been instructing the firm they had merged with already.”
Richard Rosenthal
“We are not going to go to a law firm just because you have offices in three relevant jurisdictions. If it creates more internal disruption, you really cannot deliver that level of quality on a global basis, then it is not going to be an advancement from a client’s perspective. I think a merger is very good if you can broaden your depth and capabilities and provide a much stronger, integrated and local service, on a global basis.”
Claire Chapman
“Clients are very fickle: we want everything, we want it now and we want it our way. I think there are huge benefits to merging, but I want everything to change and stay the same at the same time. Take away my relationship partner and I would get very upset.”
Andrew Garard
“I do and I do not agree whether the clients actually do care about a merger. I really do not care about the nuts and bolts, but I do wonder why some firms feel the need to proliferate expensive services in London, HR, accounting, IT, rather than looking at a model of going North, as we do. But also, I have found with some firms who have merged, it does actually affect me as a client in ways I do not like, because all of a sudden the culture changes, there is a stricture on the way that service is delivered. So previously nice, cosy relationships disappear, and I find that the partners who were very happy in the pre‑existing environment all of a sudden become not so happy and the team starts to fragment. That gives me another headache; I then have to try to look to the panel as a whole and see where I can get the expertise which may have just disappeared.”
|
