Managing partners stress too much about whether they have the ‘right’ model. I could point to five very successful top 50 UK firms that have made massive strides in recent years despite operating wildly differing strategies and organisational structures.
A case in point is Macfarlanes, which has spent the past 10 years comprehensively ignoring the received wisdom of what modern law firms ‘should’ do. It hasn’t opened abroad, or even set up a network; it avoids lateral hiring like the plague and has been led for eight years by a senior partner as far removed from the identikit smoothie as you can get.
