How would you define your firm’s culture? How important is firm culture to you?

Culture is vitally important to our Firm and to me personally. We often talk about the V&E Family, which I believe is real. Our lawyers and administrative staff become part of that family when they join the firm. We have a huge alumni base that we communicate with on a regular basis. We also host an event where we invite all of our former lawyers to reunite with their colleagues. The atmosphere is electric as you witness dear friends, who started their careers together, reminiscing about their days at V&E.

I would venture to guess that few firms have that. My belief is that, in an era where the legal market is increasingly competitive for talent, our culture, which focuses on collaboration, working in teams, mentoring younger lawyers, and embracing diversity and inclusion efforts, make a huge difference in our ability to attract and retain our people.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm in the past few years that will benefit clients?

We have focused on ensuring that we have consistent excellence in all the areas that we choose to pursue. We have eliminated certain practice specialties that we thought were becoming commoditized or where we didn’t see opportunities for growth. We have spent an enormous amount of effort on communication across the firm to ensure we are aligned in our goals to be an elite global firm. This has required us, at times, to make hard decisions in where we invest our resources. In the last several years, we have strengthened our ranks and attracted quality laterals in key areas of growth for us, such as private equity and finance in London and New York and white collar and government investigations in Washington. If financial performance is any judge, we have been able to achieve record profitability the last two years and are on a path to have another record year in 2018.

What are the biggest misconception of Vinson & Elkins – do you find yourself pigeon-holed by historical reputations?

We have always been perceived as one of the premier energy firms in the world. While that is a core strength that we want to maintain, we actually are much broader in the overall practice areas we serve and compete in. Four years ago, we added a REIT practice to complement our leading capital markets practice. We represent the Panama Canal Authority on one of the largest construction disputes in the world. In fact, we have been involved in three of the four largest construction disputes around the globe. Our white collar, government investigations and IP work is largely non-energy. We are expanding our significant private equity practice in areas outside of energy. Our work in London involves clients in the telecom space, high-yield,
special situations, construction disputes and non-energy acquisitions. I believe that we will always dominate the energy space and that great work will continue to help us expand and grow across industries needing sophisticated legal work.

Differentiation is critical to buyers of legal services – how do you stand apart from the rest of the market?

Differentiation from your competition is critical to success. Clients today are much more sophisticated in hiring law firms. Many companies want to ensure your commitment to their needs and talk about “partnering with their outside law firms.” This requires that you develop a strong relationship, really listen to them, and understand their issues and needs. One way we stand apart is that our compensation system does not have formulaic origination credit. Those sorts of systems can incentivize lawyers to not work collaboratively, which can have negative repercussions for clients. We work hard at collaboration to assemble the best team for the particular assignment. We also have a very deep bench, which allows us to allocate substantial resources to meet our client needs in a cost-efficient way.

What do you think are the top three things most clients want and why?

Clients, above all, want an excellent legal team committed to their matters. We pride ourselves on making sure that we get to know our clients’ business and work tirelessly for them.

Clients also want practical and creative solutions. You need to not only identify the risks, but come up with suggestions about how to tackle the issues. Relationships in the legal business are key to building trust and delivering good advice. Many of the issues our clients face are difficult, and it is important to partner with them and help resolve those issues together. Having great judgment and an ability to communicate positions well are essential.

Clients don’t like surprises, and so we focus intently on staying ahead of them on the issues, making sure the value proposition is there and that we are viewed as delivering excellent results that are viewed as value-add by the client.

What have you found is the best way to retain talent – both at partner and associate levels?

Our lawyers are called everyday by other firms trying to entice them away. Fortunately, most have elected to remain, and I believe it is because of our culture, where we care about each other and we truly like working together. It is critical to have a compensation system that is competitive in the market for both associates and partners. Lawyers enjoy working on very sophisticated, high-profile transactions and cases.

People want to feel that they are a part of something special. It is our commitment to our lawyers that we offer great work, in an environment that fosters their ability to grow and excel in their field of expertise while developing close professional relationships. I like to think that although we are very serious about the legal work we do, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we enjoy practicing together and have a lot of fun doing it.

Recently, I have been pleased that we experienced the ‘boomerang effect’, where lawyers who left the firm return to rejoin our ranks, and they become the biggest advocates of how our culture really is truly special.

Since becoming chairman, what has surprised you most, either internally or externally?

We have spent a lot of time educating our lawyers about the economics of practicing law. I was surprised to see how eager our partners were to embrace the changing legal landscape. Competition is intense, and the way we practice has to change with it. Clients are more cost-conscious, and we must be able to still deliver excellent client service while we continue to train and grow the next generation of outstanding lawyers, and we must field more diverse teams in order to obtain outstanding solutions for our clients. We must embrace technology and invest in it becoming more efficient in how we deliver legal services today and in the future.

I’m not sure I fully appreciated the time and energy it has taken to maintain an active legal practice while leading the firm. Fortunately for me, I work alongside Scott Wulfe, our managing partner, and we operate extremely well together with the deep level of trust necessary to run a global law firm in today’s complicated world.

The notion of government work has risen in recent years, with general counsel realizing how critical it is – do you see this trend continuing?

Yes, we do. Our country has weathered the Great Recession and now has fully emerged from those historically tough economic times. Even so, our national focus continues to be on preventing another recession, and from that perspective, we see the cost of overregulation in trying to avoid a repeat scenario. In some ways, the economic center of the country has moved from New York to Washington. So it’s natural for the C-Suite occupants of major companies and nonprofit groups, as well as mayors of our cities and county executives, to feel like they need to have a presence in Washington, given the risks of another economic maelstrom that could impact them if they aren’t there to give their input. Lobbying and the law – how do you work with both sides for the benefit of clients?

Consider the many pressing issues facing Washington today. They range from tax reform implementation and the regulation of the financial services industries, to the regulation of emerging technologies in the energy and transportation sectors. All of this plays into the sweet spots of those law firms that have regulatory capability along with sophisticated lobbying practices. In some ways, where we find ourselves as a country and an economy right now requires both skill sets to solve the major issues confronting companies and industry sectors. This paradigm shift has prompted Holland & Knight to establish a major practice in this area by combining our legal experience with a roster of top talent that includes senior professionals without law degrees. By doing so, we have created a policy group that operates much more like a business consultancy rather than a traditional law firm. For example, our office space looks more like Google than a law firm. We don’t track or bill time for our policy matters, and we work on fixed fees in order to put the right team at the table. Our clients have responded positively to these innovations.

What have been some of the key success stories for the practice in the past 12 months?

There have been several for Holland & Knight in the past few months. Here are just a few:

a) Holland & Knight delivered a bet-the-industry victory on behalf of the Biosimilars Forum, the first coalition of drug manufacturers that make medicines that are similar to biologic drugs, which are created from living cells or organisms. We ran a campaign that resulted in changes to government health care reimbursement policies that will create substantial savings and treatment options for consumers while boosting an important segment of the life sciences industry.

b) Seeing an absence of a national partnership between local leaders, businesses and the federal government to address homelessness, in 2017 Holland & Knight created a coalition: the Mayors and CEOs for U.S. Housing Investment. The coalition includes 18 mayors from large cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and major businesses such as Kaiser Permanente, which recently supported the coalition’s mission with a $200 million commitment to create housing through a partnership between the public and private sectors.

c) Holland & Knight represents the leading autonomous vehicle company in the U.S. as its sole federal lobbyist and is helping its client shape federal policy on this emerging technology as it comes before Congress, the Department of Transportation and the White House.

As much as you can or are prepared to say, what are the biggest issues clients need to understand with the current administration?

Every administration brings to Washington its own style and cadence, and the Trump Administration is no different. Advocating before it has similarities to the Obama Administration, but obviously there are significant differences as well. Our job in essence is to be able to read a person, an agency or a situation in seven seconds and determine the advocacy tools that will convince a government decision maker to accept our client’s position. That is our job; it doesn’t change. However, you need strong contacts within the White House
and the Cabinet in this Administration. You need to communicate an issue from the perspective of the President’s voter base. Additionally, you need to create an environment around an issue you are advocating for that will be persuasive to the White House so it will adopt that position.

Do you expect that to change in November with the mid-terms, and what’s on the horizon for 2019?

Should Democrats take one or both of the houses, obviously Washington will be a different environment in 2019. To the extent that Republicans maintain control in both houses, we wouldn’t expect things to change. In either case, presidents come into their own in the third year of their administration. They may have success in the first Congress, but they are really getting a feel for the job by the time they get to year three. While the president may be faced with more significant challenges if there is a Democratic majority in one or both houses of Congress, expect him to have a better grasp of the art of what is doable in Washington and how to move his agenda forward. In fact,
we’re already seeing that to a certain extent. Clearly, a Congress controlled by the Democrats will have a strong focus on investigations, administrative policy and ethics issues. However, at the same time, issues like infrastructure legislation and a continued focus on tax reform provide the opportunity for bipartisan compromise.

Investigations work has been growing across all areas – where do you see the trend heading with government investigations work?

If Democrats are successful in taking control of the U.S. House, Senate or both in November, we would expect in 2019 a significant spike in investigations work, focused not only on the administration but also on major business sectors. While the era of U.S. Reps. John Dingell and Henry Waxman, two of the greatest congressional investigators in our lifetimes, may have passed, the Democrats, who would take the helm of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, would be quite capable of providing strong leadership. Holland & Knight lawyers, such as John Brownlee, former Democratic House members, such as Gerry Sikorski, Jim Davis and Ron Klein, and our High Stakes Communications Team, which handles crisis management situations, will be uniquely positioned to help clients.

How would you define your Walker Morris’ culture? How important is firm culture to you?

If I had to summarise our culture in one word it would be collaboration. By that I mean not only collaboration internally and with clients, but also with other professionals, including from other law firms.

Having all our employees based in one location and working with each other on a day-to-day basis engenders a very special culture. It encourages seamless, collaborative team working and also means the board and I are very visible. We have a fairly flat structure anyway, but it helps us to be more accessible.

Collaboration is also at the heart of our relationships with clients. We like to empower our lawyers to give them the freedom to grow and develop their practices by having the time to really understand our clients’ businesses and collaborate with them to develop creative solutions. Daniel O’Gorman, one of our corporate partners, is a good example of that. When he joined a couple of years ago we gave him the space and time to develop his strong private equity connections overseas – which he has done with great success.

We’re able to support him with a very strong capability from our office in Leeds, often while he is overseas, to create a cohesive service for his US-based clients.

Finally, collaboration with other lawyers is a key part of our culture. Being a fiercely independent firm, our strong network of independent, overseas law firms is important to us. We work collaboratively with them, both in terms of work and shared marketing events. We have a long and successful track record of working with US and Magic Circle firms, providing specialist support – such as pensions, labour law and real estate – on transactions where they do not have full service capability. There might also be opportunities for working with other independent firms, for example, in developing artificial intelligence capabilities – something we are currently exploring.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

Having only started the role on 1 May this year it is still very early days. I want to ensure my efforts are predominantly outward facing and client focused. I am working my way around our key clients and we are re-invigorating our key client programme as part of our strategy renewal. As part of that we plan to extend the range of specialist services we offer within our core markets. We
will provide these additional services in response to identified needs of existing and prospective clients, both in the US and UK.

The other major project we’re working on is our move to a new building. It will be the largest professional services relocation in Leeds for almost 15 years, so it’s a big undertaking for everyone in the firm. The move is more than just moving to a new building. We’re using it as a springboard to radically change the way we work. So it is one, albeit key, element of a programme of major infrastructure investments we’re making to give our lawyers the freedom to manage their time differently and the flexibility to work more efficiently from any location, be that in the office, remotely from home, with clients, or on the move. Investments include new document and case management systems, a practice management system, improved remote working capability and the difficult, but important, shift to a paper light environment. We’re also trialling AI systems as we speak, which is very exciting.

What are the biggest misconceptions of firms such as Walker Morris – do you find yourself pigeonholed by historical reputations?

People sometimes fail to understand our business model as we don’t fit neatly into the pigeonholes of a regional, national or international firm. But whatever misconceptions there may be, they don’t hold us back. With the largest headcount in Leeds we are (unsurprisingly) dominant in our regional market, but what many people don’t realise is that over 70 per cent of our work is from outside of the region with around 20 per cent of it from international clients.

Our international clients really value our City-quality offering without the overhead. Relationships are critical so we invest heavily in our clients; we visit them often, whether they are in London, Leeds or Milwaukee, These factors plus great tech make a compelling proposition so that, frankly, our clients don’t mind where their work is being handled.

Differentiation is critical to buyers of legal services – how do you stand apart from the rest of the market?

We differentiate ourselves in a number of ways. We have a deep understanding of our clients’ needs in key sectors, mostly in the real economy. We aim to give a genuinely full-commercial service to those clients, which means continual adaption so we can deal with a plethora of emerging issues, such as clean energy, technology/data, competition and the impact of sanctions.

We are also aiming to give our lawyers a real competitive edge through technology. We’ve already started with the basics, investing in infrastructure and systems security. Clients tell us how vital it is that the integrity and security of their data is protected. Indeed, we see in the media all too often the far reaching consequences for companies who face security breaches. We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made in this area. In fact, in a study by cloud intelligence company OnDMARC we were the only top 100 law firm to pass its security tests. We are now looking at ways we can use technology to streamline service delivery and free up the time of our talented
lawyers so they can spend their time on the ‘rocket science’.

Finally, we’ve also differentiated ourselves in our international approach to service our clients’ international needs. To that end we’ve invested in developing strong connections with other leading independent firms worldwide so we can identify the local firm that is best able to fit our clients’ specific requirements in other jurisdictions. This ‘best-of-breed’ approach has found favour with many of our international clients, particularly in Europe, the US and Asia who appreciate our knowledge of the legal marketplace in the European jurisdictions they wish to do business in.

What do you think are the top three things most clients want and why?

Outstanding quality of work and service levels are hygiene factors in the competitive world of commercial law. They are a given. Clients want advisers they know and trust – relationships are vital. We take the time to travel and see our clients, wherever in the world they are. Understanding your client’s market and business is key in helping them to manage risk, which is top of the list of all the general counsels we speak to. GCs are coming under increasing pressure to demonstrate value and manage tighter budgets. Helping them to deliver more for less is important and working with them to identify the costs savings really helps win friends. That might be achieved through technology and process for example of being innovative on fees or shared risk.

What have you found is the best way to retain talent – both at partner and associate levels?

The workplace is changing quickly and responding to those changes is vital in the battle to win and retain the best people. Allowing greater flexibility through agile working definitely, for example, helps. Offering greater flexibility in career choices and paths is also important. People have different needs at different times in their working lives; firms need to find ways of keeping their staff through these different stages.

We already have a great training programme for our lawyers. We now plan to roll out a leadership programme open to our lawyers and business services staff, giving us a pool of talent from which we can draw future generations of leaders. We’ve been investing heavily in our learning and development programme. For example, our mentoring programme has increased by 70 per cent in the last year and we also launched an online training academy to provide bite-sized content from leading experts.

Since becoming managing partner what’s surprised you most, either internally or externally?

How fantastically supportive the partners and all of our staff have been. I am very lucky to work with such great people.

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Malcolm Simpson became managing partner of Walker Morris on 1 May 2018. He has 17 years of experience as a partner in the commercial disputes team and, as IT partner, oversaw a multi-million pound investment in the firm’s IT systems and infrastructure.

How would you define your Luther’s culture? How important is firm culture to you?

At Luther, we are living an open, teamwork-oriented, and business-driven culture with a clear focus on the needs of our clients. We also encourage an environment of continuous learning. The firm culture is very important since it holds us together and sets the basis for our joint approach. It is also reflected in the Luther brand: ‘Hits the mark’. Luther stands for expertise and commitment. With enthusiasm for our profession and the matter; we work out precise answers. We strongly believe we can achieve more by bringing together experts with a broad range of knowledge and perspectives.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

In recent years we have increasingly concentrated on anticipating new developments in our clients’ industries and working together in interdisciplinary teams. We are always available for our clients, not just when problems arise. This kind of tailor-made approach is highly appreciated by our clients, as we are not only pure problem solvers but we also think about future obstacles in times of rapid change.

What are the biggest challenges facing firms of your size in Germany?

The handling of mass litigation is a big challenge. You need people, but you also need the tools and infrastructure to handle many lawsuits effectively. Besides, it is not easy to keep the balance between local and
organisation-wide commitment.

Our locations in Germany traditionally have strong roots in their respective regions. You have to remain faithful to these roots and at the same time integrate these structures into a growing organisation that operates on a national and international level.

One of the biggest challenges facing law firms in Germany is the recruitment of talent. The demand for legal advice is very high, but the talent market is sparse.

What are the best ways to retain talent – both at partner and associate levels?

To inspire candidates to work for Luther at the associate level, we maintain contact with universities and host events for promising candidates. A few weeks ago, for example, we invited former, active and future trainees to a joint evening in Cologne.

At partner level, we continuously offer new perspectives and support business development. This approach provides incentives for both, existing and new partners. At the beginning of the new financial year, we have, for example, appointed five new partners. The promotion of young talent is supported by our partner development programme, which we have been running since 2014. Senior associates with partner ambitions, and who have potentially great skill sets, receive support in developing their own business case for partnership. In cases where we would like to further expand specific areas, we naturally also make use of lateral hires.

What do you think are the top three things most clients want and why?

Competence, trust and a deep understanding of the industry are the cornerstones of a good client relationship. I am convinced clients want top-notch advisers they can trust, who think ahead and who have access to all necessary resources for handling complex situations. This is what we understand as full service: interdisciplinary teams that can be expanded or reshaped when needed. I also believe that the role of legal advisors is shifting towards more of a general consultant when it comes to new areas in which legal conditions are still developing.

Since becoming managing partner, what’s surprised you most about running a firm?

The most interesting experience for me was to be confronted with the idea of leadership in a new way. On the one hand, lawyers act very independently; we have a very strong entrepreneurial approach among our ranks. On the other hand, however, many are also seeking leadership and guidance. So, working together on large projects, between these two ideals, can lead to rather difficult situations. The challenge is to bridge the gap between independence and a managed law firm. Both can coexist.