At last year’s The Lawyer Business Leadership Awards the firm that walked off with the Grand Prix Business Leadership Team of the Year prize was CMS, thanks largely to its move to tech-driven, open-plan offices in Cannon Place.
CMS’s move was the culmination of a three-year programme of change that included its transformative merger with Scotland’s Dundas & Wilson and the development of its business services deal with global outsourcing business Integreon.
The changes the firm and its operations staff had implement did not go unnoticed, with one judge claiming that “CMS has come of age”.
But the nub of the firm’s transformation was the move into its new building. All CMS’s business services teams played their part in the move and, ultimately, in the firm picking up the prize.
“It was very inclusive, very topical and very relevant,” says CMS UK managing partner Duncan Weston. “I’d describe it as a physical reaction to many of the big trends in the market and the significant issues clients are talking about.”
It is not only clients talking. Weston says a large number of firms, including US ones, have been interested enough to pay a visit to check out how technologies such as Skype for Business and Surface Pro are working, how lawyers deal with open-plan and how space-planning operates.
“We’ve won some awards since last year and been shortlisted for others, and I’ve been asked to speak at several conferences off the back of the changes we’ve made here,” adds Weston. “There’s certainly a lot of momentum.”
The impact on CMS’s business services teams has also been positive, says Weston. While a large part of CMS’s operational team is run by Integreon there are about 80 people at Cannon Place including communications, IT and finance, all of whom were all engaged in the move.
“Engagement and momentum within the business has gone up significantly,” says Weston. “We recently ran a staff survey conducted by Acritas and the scores pretty much across the board were higher than average. Also, utilisation rates were amazing in the first six months. We’ve measured the cost savings at around €100m [£79m]. I believe the move has had a significant impact on the profitability of the firm.”
Weston is acutely aware that while this saving is beneficial CMS’ move was, to a certain extent, forced upon it.
“Everyone in the market knows they have to change, firms can’t afford to move people into large buildings in central London,” he argues. “Firms need to use technology, be more mobile, more efficient. But to achieve that you need the right space.
“The markets are not providing sufficient organic growth. There are increasing costs every year and flat growth coupled with constant pressure on fees, so everyone’s struggling to increase profits. Firms have to find ways to change their resource. That leads to changing your physical space in your London office.”
This dynamic was one of the drivers behind CMS’s merger with Dundas, a deal that provided it with 300 lawyers in Scotland and helped change its resource base.
Less obvious are the benefits that have only become clear since CMS made its move. The technology at Cannon Place, a major reason why it won the award, has helped create a more flexible and mobile environment for lawyers and staff.
“People can walk about with their office in their pocket,” adds Weston. “You can’t contemplate agile working unless you have the tech.”
The next stage for CMS will see it place yet more emphasis on agile working, with closer scrutiny of desk ratios and the physical location of lawyers and staff. It will also pay close attention to the success of the Mayfair private wealth hub it launched last year which, according to Weston, is “paying dividends”.
“There are still too many law firms,” he adds, “and the question is – if law firms are going to grow, where are they going to be based? You could double in size but use agile space without changing your physical space. Use northshoring, flexible workspaces – ultimately, it’s almost a reversal of what it used to be in terms of buildings. We’re looking at a different concept, not just joining two big law firms together.”
Throw into the mix the impact of Integreon, which employs 700 lawyers globally along with hundreds of support staff, and, as Weston concludes, “it has completely changed the way we work”.
The Lawyer Business Leadership Awards 2015: Business Leadership Team of the Year
A strategic review at CMS ultimately led to it posting a revenue increase of more than
30 per cent and average profits of over £800,000 in the UK end of the business. But this was just the most visible result of the review, which focused the firm on two clear objectives: to win more work from its existing key accounts and strengthen its offering through global and domestic expansion.
The firm’s merger with Dundas & Wilson was one of the keys to this in the UK market, while in London specifically its move to state-of-the-art, open-plan offices at Cannon Place, a building designed to integrate the firm’s practice groups within core sector areas using trailblazing technology, was also aligned to CMS’s strategic goals.
Other initiatives include: the expansion of CMS’s Glasgow-based Legal Services Unit; the opening of an office in Mayfair to support opportunities in the funds market; and a new partner model that sees all of the firm’s partners brought into the equity and aligned with market and individual performance.
