If I look back at the 12 months or
so I've been blogging, it is fair to say I've sometimes been a tiny bit critical
of aspects of the Big(ish) Law model.
Work/life balance, inflated salaries for junior lawyers and the funding by clients of high six or even seven figure PEP levels have featured in my
musings.
But this blog is in praise of Big
Law. And if that comes over as at all
patronising then I'm sorry, it is genuinely not meant to.
In the last quarter of last year, I
worked on two corporate transactions.
One was big and attracted a lot of coverage in the media. The other was small and attracted less (but still some). Both were challenging and I suppose even fun
in a rose-tinted glasses after the event sado-masichistic kind of way.
We used a different Magic Circle
firm on each project. It is on
transactions like these that you really see what well oiled machines Big Law
are for dealing with the blue riband events.
The raft of skills and disciplines on offer is incredible. You want to discuss an issue with the
corporate partner? You get strategic,
not just legal, advice. The documents
need turning - again - after a meeting which ended in the small hours? The associates turn them whilst the rest of
the deal team sleeps. A last minute tax
issue comes up and all of a sudden indemnity discussions are rife? Within minutes you have the tax specialist in
the room kicking around the various permutations. An obscure IP issue gets raised? And so arrives the copyright specialist. Everyone is hungry? A trainee will soon arrange for lukewarm
pizza to be delivered. And all of this
is done under deal pressure, under time pressure, under tired pressure, under
client pressure (not me, I'm far too nice) without any complaint to the client.
Now I realise that stating this is
to state the obvious. As one partner
said to me recently when I pointed all this out, well that's what we do. Whilst that might be right, I think it is
wrong to take excellent service for granted, law firm service isn't always like
this. The best deal teams in law firms are not a number of expert individuals,
but are a team of expert individuals genuinely clicking together as an even
more excellent team.
These deals aren't easy for
in-house counsel either and that might be the subject of a future blog post
where I try to garner sympathy for the poor in-house lawyer's lot in life. Suffice to say, the job of in-house counsel
in the run-up to signing of a big deal is to make strategic decisions, risk
calls and field a crazy number of emails from the Big Law team. But that role
is made easier with a strong Big Law team working with you, trying to make your
life as easy as possible.
You hear a lot of talk in business
about partnerships or a partnership approach.
Often such talk is trite. But corporate
transactions create a perfect environment for a partnership relationship between
in-house and out-house lawyers. We each
bring different things to the table, different perspectives, different
skillsets, different personalities. But
when these are combined with the entire team focussed on the same objective, it
can create a powerful force.
The old saying goes that nobody
ever got sacked for hiring McKinsey.
Well to an extent the same is true of Big Law in a corporate transaction
context. And there's a reason for
that. Because quite simply, they are
awfully good at what they do. Whilst it
is absolutely right in these changing times to challenge the status quo, to
examine the way legal advice is delivered, to challenge billing models, l don't
think clients should be afraid to acknowledge excellence when we see it. And this is an unambiguous acknowledgement.
This post is dedicated to any
corporate associate reading this late at night looking at the hundred page SPA
in front of them and wondering whether they can turn it before the 0800
breakfast meeting with the client. Course you can. Good night and good luck.
Nice post Tim - I think there's also a lot to be said not just for acknowledging excellence but saying thank you to the people involved. One of my principles when I was in-house was to always try and behave like the clients I enjoyed acting for in practice, and showing appreciation and acknowledging good service was definitely a part of that. Also worth giving the profession a pat on the back and acknowledging that in the legal services arena we have some genuinely world class businesses, and we should be proud of that.
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