Very few people leap at the chance of becoming the leader of a law firm. It is, after all, a fiendishly difficult job. Most are encouraged to stand for election and then must run the gauntlet of peer interrogation and appraisal. From our work with many different law firms over the years, I think it’s possible to identify the reasons why some leadership candidates get elected and others don’t. This is what I’ve learned along the way. The biggest challenge for any leadership candidate is to get the agreement of intelligent, free-spirited and opinionated legal professionals to relinquish some control and be managed.

It’s no secret that these are challenging times for some of the UK law sector as it tries to keep up with emerging digital trends and increasing demand from clients. But there is buoyancy in the market and opportunities for those businesses that are agile and brave enough to challenge the status quo – the traditional equity partnership model. We’ve seen it all too often where partners have been duped into putting their assets against a failing business that is riddled with debt. We’ve even received calls from partners to discuss bankruptcy and that the possibility of moving house is no longer possible, due to the LLP they joined going into liquidation.

The apprenticeship reforms were introduced to put quality at the forefront of training and skills improvement and to give employers more control over developing their workforce. At Browne Jacobson we have been doing just that. Our existing legal apprentices follow the paralegal standards and our plans for 2018 include recruitment of a further 12 paralegal apprentices in September, together with developing many of our own teams by offering apprenticeships in business administration, first-line management, chartered manager degrees and senior leaders master’s degrees.

Our ongoing mission is to help our law firm clients use the internet more effectively to grow their business. As such, from an online perspective, we look at every component of the journey their prospects make, from initial internet search to becoming a client, and even beyond that, helping our clients look in more detail at the experience they provide to their clients. We’ve never had any problem generating traffic for their websites. However, rankings and traffic are mere vanity metrics unless site visits are converting into good-quality enquiries which our clients can convert into profitable new business.

Some people think it is easy to run – and to grow – a law firm. I feel like I have had a lifetime in lawyer and team management and in law firm ownership and leadership. Taking all of that experience (of things done right and wrong), add the experience gained from working with a host of law firms since I left private practice, and harnessing the clarity of thought I now enjoy that few managing partners could dream of whilst in the hot seat, I believe I can point to at least 10 pieces of jigsaw that a firm needs to come together – over and above efficient IT and a solid compliance and risk-management framework – to make up the perfect foundations for a high-performance legal business.