Inside a Law Firm That Took Private Equity and Tripled | David Kearney, Wotton Kearney

Can I ask a tricky question? This feels like a loaded question because I want to get onto your corporate structure.

accountability within partnerships is a pretty standard challenge.

So how do you keep partners accountable? It's always, you know, continuing to consider that future perspective and it's very annual in terms of, you know, what are you doing this year and how do you keep your partners accountable and is your corporate model supporting you in that as opposed to a traditional equity salaried partner model?

Yeah, so we spend a lot of time on planning.

We spend a lot of time on discussing with partners what are appropriate objectives, both in terms of what they're looking to achieve and does that match neatly with what the business is looking to achieve.

So it's about this time of the year, actually.

You know, it's July, August where we're sitting down with our partner team, you know, guided by their leader, their head of product, who he or she will have their own product line objectives and being clear on what they're looking to achieve over the course of the next 12 months.

But as I say, also thinking broader than just 12 months, and you asked me how this fits with being a corporate, and I think it fits in the sense that as a shareholder, as against a partner, what I love about it, Kim, is it gets partners focused on a broader time period than just an annual time period.

So thinking about what can they do over the next three to five years, which is going to assist the client relationship first and foremost.

And then secondly, our goal to build a business of value.

If we build a business of value over time, it makes us a better business partner for our clients.

So being really clear on objectives and noting that those objectives aren't just annual objectives, They're longer-term objectives as well, and that fits with the concept of a corporate model and this concept of building a business of value over time.

There's a couple of things I want to touch on there, particularly in relation to that longer-term vision.

I know and I've been in strategy cycles with firms when I've worked in them or as a consultant, and it is very short-term.

Whilst we look three to five years out, it's really looking at metrics and KPIs for this year, and it's very challenging to get partners to look beyond that for the most part.

When you look at that three to five, has that been something that your corporatized model, and maybe we need to go back a bit and explain that, but that corporatized model you think has driven, or is that something that you have always driven, which is kind of chicken and egg? Did you drive it, therefore it fit, or did the corporate model encourage that kind of mantra? I

think it's a bit of both.

I like to think from from day one um you know we've always been looking forward and thinking about the the type of law firm we now call it a legal business rather than a law firm but the type of legal business we're looking to build so always having you know a bit of vision um in terms of what you're aiming up for you know right now you know we want to be ultimately the global insurance legal business that's what we aim for it's a it's a you know it's a b-hag as they say it's um quite a gracious goal but but um You know, really clear on vision and that's changed over time.

Clearly when we started with two partners and four lawyers, you know, vision was more a vision around how do we become, you know, the national leader in insurance law services.

That's changed slightly.

So I think, I like to think from day one we, you know, looked forward and, you know, were clear on communicating vision to our team.

I think the corporate model really crystallises that.

You know, once you're in a corporate model, once you're starting to think about building a business of AU, which ultimately makes you a better business partner for your clients, you are looking at a time horizon broader than just annually.

You know, we talk now about trailblazing to 2030.

You know, that's our 2030 strategy.