an unusual but humbling comparison

Posted by The LSN Team on 02 September 2009

When I caught up with an old school friend recently we got chatting about an article in The Sunday Times on his business.

In short, after uni he set up shop and now owns/runs a retail business that, as the article states, turns over £42m, is expected to turnover £70m next year, rising to £100m the year after - impressive by any standards and Bransonesque by others.

So it struck me, if they were a law firm, and going on The Lawyer UK 200 Annual Report for law firm turnover figures, his company would come in at number 61 on the order of merit last year, next year rise up to aprox. 43 and the year after the achieve Top 30 status.

Why is this incredible?
Well, for a start they only started trading 10 years ago, secondly the two guys that run the business are both mid-30's (not that amazing really - just I relate to it!) and thirdly, well I remember the first year they started out and turned over £59,000, and whilst in reality there is no real need to compare a retail company to a law firm, I still believe there is a message in there about the future of the legal market.

The example given demonstrates a meteoric rise in fortunes of a business supported largely buy outside investment. With the onset of the Legal Services Act and Alternative Business Structures I will be a keen observer as to the legal markets ability to grow and evolve through external investment.

The legal markets ability to attract the rising stars of business on an operational level is another on-going challenge. While its competing with growth busting markets like in this example, law firms creativity in attracting key professionals to the firm will be tested to a greater degree.

Finally, the need for the legal industry to take a long hard look at itself and how it will embrace the future will be essential. So much will change and with it I hope that many firms will find their minds wandering to new ways of running a law firm.

This all kind of ties in with our latest project at LSN which is to research the Top 100 law firm directors. In a few weeks we'll be releasing not only the results of the research, but also the analysis, statistics and interesting editorial around the whole research piece.

There is a huge opportunity for operational directors in law firms to leverage greater responsibility and recognition off the back of Clementi and the development of the legal profession and I for one will be extremely keen to see how things progress.