Mishcon de Reya managing partner Kevin Gold explains how his firm managed to increase turnover by 170 per cent in eight years without losing its core culture ahead of speaking at The Lawyer’s Business Leadership Summit 2016.
Can you foster and encourage growth without disrupting your firm?
I think we have fostered and encouraged growth without disrupting the firm. In July, Mishcon de Reya’s average profit per equity partner (PEP) hit £1m for the first time. We have increased turnover by more than 170 per cent since 2009, when revenue stood at £47.3m. In that same time period, we have more than doubled the number of our people, and we continue to thrive.
Last year alone, we converted to LLP status, and moved into our Africa House office. Growth and consistency are not mutually exclusive.
Looking ahead, we are expecting even more change.
That’s why this year we’ve set out our 10-year vision. This was developed with input from all individuals across the firm in order to have a sustainable, well managed and profitable business. It is as much about what we want to preserve as what we want to grow, recognising that in an ever changing world we must adapt to remain relevant.
How do you maintain a culture when you are growing?
We have over 700 people now and we see growth as a very positive thing – we like to share in our successes as a firm. However maintaining our culture through rapid growth is one of the biggest challenges we face.
We are, and always have been, a values focused business – our core values are at the heart of everything we do and we live them in the day to day running of the business. We believe in diversity, respect, open-mindedness, innovation, integrity and frankness and have a constant appetite for continual self-improvement. And we love our people. By always being led by our core values, we are able to maintain the culture that has defined the firm.
Our graduate recruitment programme is specifically designed to attract people who will live the core values. It’s not an accident that on the list of core competencies we look for in a trainee “generosity of spirit” comes before “motivation” and “drive”. The graduate recruitment campaign and process is geared towards selecting the best people to forge the firm’s future, and we invest a lot of time and energy in getting this right. We know a Mishcon person when we meet them.
Once we find our people, we want them to feel valued and to stay with us, so we invest in them. In 2014 we were the first law firm to roll out an agile working protocol – part of Mishcon Works –enabling our people to manage their time in a way that suits them and their personal needs. Our flexible working scheme relates to a range of working practices and arrangements and can, for example, include part-time working, job sharing, home working, flexi-time, term-time working and annualised hours.
In 2014 we launched the Academy – our in-house place of learning – which has a programme of lectures, seminars and courses specifically designed to promote the potential of each individual. It was created to improve how we capture, develop and disseminate our institutional knowledge, and to champion our social impact work and lead new thinking. This is helping us to maintain our culture and to continue to prioritise the things that make us Mishcon.
How does opening new offices and bringing in laterals affect your firm’s culture?
We have consolidated our offices and now operate in much closer proximity as a firm. Africa House is a large building that has been key in helping us to address one of our most significant challenges: staying true to our Core Values and maintaining the culture that makes Mishcon de Reya such a unique place to work. It was and is a statement of intent as to the type of business and the type of lawyers we want to be. It reflects our ongoing investment in technology and innovation from the state of the art conferencing facilities to the coffee machines in the meeting rooms.
The space we now have at Africa House enables us to embed this environment of collaboration, between our clients and their lawyers, between our varied networks of contacts and intermediaries and between our colleagues.
As with graduates, we have to ensure that lateral hires are the right cultural fit for the business – that they are people who will complement our existing offering and help us to offer a more advanced service to our clients. We have an appetite for growth and for developing and expanding our client offering, but not at any expense. First and foremost, anybody who joins the firm must embody our core values.
What is it like being a lateral hire in a growing firm?
When I joined Mishcon de Reya in 1995 with my corporate team, the culture and way of working with our clients was very similar to how it is now, but the firm was operating on a much smaller scale.
Mishcon de Reya’s most significant growth has happened throughout the time I have been managing partner, so it’s difficult for me to answer that question.
What I would say is that, however you join a firm, whether you be a graduate straight out of university or a lateral hire many years into your career – and this is especially true for a firm like Mishcon – once you become a part of it you don’t look back. Its successes become your own successes. I still feel very proud to be a part of this business, and have felt that way from the day I joined.
Mishcon de Reya managing partner Kevin Gold is one of the speakers at the Business Leadership Summit on 28-29 September. Find out more about the conference here.
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MDR would do well to follow Keystone’s flexible arrangements, not least as it seems that space is an issue. A good firm, with good values, but can you grow that quickly and maintain a happy workforce doing quality work, without this true, not flashy, flexibility? I wonder…