I spent some 30 years as a solicitor in private practice, the last nine of them as Managing Partner and CEO of a successful regional law firm, one which I helped move from being a ‘High Street’ general practice to being a credible alternative to city-based competitors, and to a place in the UK top 200.
I am a former Chair of the Law Management Section of the Law Society (now Leadership and Management Section), editor of the same Section’s Merger Toolkit and an alumnus of Harvard Business School’s Leading Professional Service Firms course.
I began my consultancy work in 2013. My focus since then has been on just three areas: Value Pricing; offering constructive challenge and support to law firm leadership teams; and mergers & acquisitions.
My interest in Pricing was sparked by working with my former colleague Richard Burcher back in 2012. I subsequently worked with Burcher Jennings from 2014 to early 2022. I have been working in Pricing under my own name since March 2022. I am a Teaching Fellow in Pricing on the Master of Legal Business course at the College of Law Australia. I have trained some 100 firms in pricing, and worked in more than 10 jurisdictions.
I work with law firm leaders to help re-set strategy and challenge the way things get done (or don’t) in the firm, then help support them in overcoming obstacles to progress. I employ the phrase ‘a critical friend’ to describe this role, which may be as a Non-Executive Director or similar, subject to retainer, or on an ad hoc project basis.
While in private practice, I led on four mergers and/or acquisitions, and have subsequently built on that hands-on experience in my work in this area as a consultant and as part of Mosaic Legal.