10 Questions - Neville Eisenberg: Life after five terms as managing partner

Managing partner Neville Eisenberg has led Berwin Leighton Paisner through numerous innovations in client service, which include the launch of flexible resourcing business Lawyers on Demand in 2007 and, more recently, its integrated client service model in 2014.
Over the past four years, the firm's international business revenues have
grown by 71 per cent.

After five terms as managing partner, during which time BLP has climbed the rankings to become a top-20 UK law firm with £246 million in revenues, Eisenberg will be stepping down in April 2015 to pursue other interests within the firm.
In the second in our series of interviews
with law firm leaders, Eisenberg reveals
to Managing Partner what he has learnt
in the post.

 

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Key facts

Name: Neville Eisenberg

Age: 52

Position: Managing partner

Date of appointment: 1 November 1999

Location: London, UK

Firm name: Berwin Leighton Paisner

Firm revenues at last financial Y/E: £246 million

Year-on-year change in revenues: 6% increase

Firm type: International

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1. What have been your firm's biggest achievements over the
past three years?

Some of our big achievements over the past three years are part of our longer term objectives. For example, we have had a long-term programme of improving the quality of our people, clients and work, with a view to repositioning the firm in the market at the higher end. Over the past three years, I feel we have made very good progress in continuing to reposition the firm further upmarket and, although we had some difficulty at the end of the recession,
we have performed really well as the UK economy has recovered.

We have also pursued a series of significant innovations in terms of our client service, including the growth of our Lawyers on Demand business and the expansion of that flexible approach through the recent introduction of our integrated client service model (more on that later).

Finally, we have continued to expand the firm internationally. Over the past three years, we've opened up in Germany, Dubai, Hong Kong and Beijing, and grown our offices in Moscow and Singapore.

2. What are your firm's biggest strategic priorities for the next
three years?

We have started building up our international real estate and infrastructure business, so driving that forward is going to be very important over the next three years.

We have also recently announced new diversity targets, particularly around gender diversity in our partnership. Our target is to have 30 per cent of the London partnership as women by the end of 2018, up from the current 22 per cent.

I think there is a risk of unconscious bias in selecting candidates for partnership, so there are training and communication elements to this programme, as well as making sure that all of our policies help enable us to achieve these objectives.
We are making efforts to ensure that, whenever we recruit partners, the agencies offer us a diverse set of candidates.

It is also very important that we continue to make progress in integrating our various offices, continue to build up our global practice groups and continue to build on a seamless approach to high quality service across the firm as we grow internationally.

3. What are your priorities as managing partner until the end
of your term?

First, it is making sure that everyone is doing what they need to be doing to ensure that we have a good financial performance.

Second, it is developing our integrated client service model, which attempts to ensure that everyone in the firm is working in the most efficient way for clients. It brings together a number of initiatives - the office that we opened in Manchester for process-type work, our Lawyers on Demand service, our legal process improvement service Streamline (which we've had running for a few years) and also the partnerships that we have with law firms both in the UK and abroad to jointly work on client assignments.

The model attempts to integrate all of these into a new way of thinking on the part of our lawyers so that, when an assignment comes in from a client, instead of just diving into it in the usual way, a lot of thought is given at the beginning as to the most efficient way to resource it, using all of the tools and capabilities within the firm.

Because it's still a new way of thinking, it's a big priority for me to make sure that it is being properly implemented within the firm.

The client response so far has been very good, but it does require a different mindset on the part of lawyers when thinking about how they're going to work on assignments and, in particular, resource those assignments. It's always difficult to achieve
a change in mindset, so it's quite challenging but also exciting.

I think the main components of the service are there for the time being.
Over time, I would expect us to be deploying new technologies to help us to achieve it in an even more effective way.

Finally, I think succession planning for
a range of leadership positions within a firm should always be a priority for managing partners, and that is certainly on my list for the coming months.

4. In which areas does your firm intend to invest in the coming year?

We haven't got any major new investments planned in terms of new offices, but we will be investing in people, which could be individual lateral hires or teams of people in the UK and, even more importantly, internationally, because we need to build up the critical mass of some of our newer offices. We are also planning to invest more in training, and we'll be investing more in new technologies and systems.

We have no current plans on the merger front, so I would be surprised if anything materialised over the short term. I don't like saying absolutely not, because one never knows what might come about in the future!

5. Which activities take up most of your time each week?

Day-to-day operational management of the business takes up a fair amount of time, but you don't really have much choice as to whether you do it or not as it's a fundamental part of the job, you just have to get on with it and try to do it efficiently.

Communication is an important part of each week. I spend a lot of time talking to people, both inside and outside the firm. Sometimes this means making sure that
X knows what Y is doing, that people in
our international offices are aware of some
of the initiatives that are taking place in London and vice versa, communicating with the press, clients or with others in the market.

I do a tiny bit of client work - it's not something I have felt able to devote significant time to. I do spend a lot of time supporting other partners on client relationship management.

Refining strategy and working on the execution of shorter and longer term strategies and business priorities is also a big part of the job. There is always work to be done to make sure that everything is fully integrated and aligned, and that people are not wandering off in directions which are not consistent with what the firm is trying
to achieve.

Recruitment of people always takes up time, particularly at the partner end. What takes up more time than I expected when I first started in the role is dealing with people issues. It's a people business and, therefore, a lot of the day-to-day operational issues involve helping to resolve individual
people issues.

Another time-consuming activity at
the moment is our integrated client service model, helping people to understand the
new mindset, pushing that and driving it.
It is quite a big change initiative within the firm and change always requires considerable energy and commitment and time. I suppose I am always surprised at the fact that it always takes longer to get things done than I planned for, but that's just life.

6. Which books on management
and leadership would you recommend to a friend?

The books that over the years I have found particularly interesting and tend to go back to are by Peter Drucker - even though some of his books were written a while back, there's a lot of very wise thinking in them. In terms of professional services firms, books by David Maister's are excellent - they really hit the nail on the head.

In terms of people who have really been in the thick of it, I've always found Jack Welch, who used to be the CEO of GE, inspirational and helpful; I think he was
a very good business leader.

Coming more to the present day, I think Richard Susskind is a very challenging and excellent writer - some of his ideas are quite radical, but even if one doesn't accept all of his ideas, I think the trends that he identifies for law firms are important to take account of.

7. What do you think are the most important personal attributes of
a managing partner?

It's absolutely essential for a managing partner to have a real vision for the firm and of the future. If you don't have some kind of vision of where you would like to see the organisation go, then it's very difficult to inspire people and it's difficult to have a framework within which to take decisions.

Managing partners have to be able to think long term. For many people, it's difficult to get beyond the short and the medium term. However, as managing partner, you have to somehow learn to live in the future and be able to project how
the organisation might evolve, because
that really informs a lot of the things that you need to be doing now in order to
make progress over the longer term.

The flip side of that is that it's absolutely critical to be able to prioritise your short-term activities, because there are always a million things that you could be doing. It's really important to be able to focus on bigger priorities even though there might be a lot of pressure from other people to do different things.

Finally, I think the managing partner has to be resilient, because it's not an easy role and lawyers are, on the whole, highly intelligent, highly critical and highly risk-averse people. Therefore, you need resilience in order to be able to handle
the pressures that come from running
a law firm and manage some of the brickbats that might be flying around. Sometimes one has to just ignore some
of the noise and get on with pursuing
the really important objectives.

8. How would you describe
your leadership style?

I would describe it, in short, as a combination of democratic and transformative. I try to involve other people in decision making, to share the decision making and, wherever possible, to empower people elsewhere in the firm to take responsibility for their areas and to decide what needs to be done, but also to take responsibility for execution.

Being democratic in leading the organisation is important to me, but with that comes an absolute responsibility to be able to take decisions and push things forward once you have engaged with other people and given them an opportunity to express their views. Being democratic doesn't mean that you are relieved of having to take a decision; it means that you share the decision-making process as opposed to having an autocratic style where you don't really involve other people.

A key element of leadership is being able to move an organisation from A to B, so one has to work out what are the changes that need to occur and then inspire people and empower them to achieve that change. For me, continuous change is a critical part of the leadership process, rather than just making the status quo as efficient as possible, which is more of a management responsibility, whereas leadership is all about transformation.

It is also very important to lead by example. I don't think you can expect
other people to behave in a particular way if you don't behave in that way yourself.
If you want people to be open, transparent, helpful, collegiate and sharing, then you have to be a paragon of virtue in all of those areas yourself, otherwise why
should other people do it?

Also important is being very positive: you have to always be very positive as a leader. You can't show a lack of confidence; you have to be positive about the future of the business and about what people are achieving.

Finally, I think it's always incredibly important for a leader to let other people take the credit for success. Trying to take the credit for success doesn't really get you anywhere - you need to let everyone else take the credit for success, even though sometimes that might feel difficult and possibly even unfair.

9. What are the biggest leadership lessons you have learnt over
the years?

Listening to other people is important. I like to think that I've always been a reasonably good listener, but I have learned that it is an absolutely critical quality to being a good leader. Don't just pretend to listen, but really listen and understand what people are saying and even try to listen to the messages that maybe they're not saying directly but you can infer from the things that they are saying.

Being aware that things take longer than you plan is another big lesson. Being unrealistic in timescales for achieving things can be demotivating, not only for the leader but also for everyone else. If you're constantly saying we've got to do X, Y, Z by this time or that time and, in fact, it takes twice as long or three times as long, eventually it gets a bit demoralising.

Another lesson is that, even if you have the best idea in the world, you cannot ever take it for granted that other people will agree with it or that they will support you in executing it. Finding ways to engage people and persuade them, get their support and take them along with you is really important. Even if you have the very best ideas, you can never assume that people are going to follow you. You really need to find ways to build support and bring people along with you.

Finally, I would say passion is critical. If you can demonstrate real passion about something, that is very helpful in bringing people along with you, because people are inspired by passion. Being passionate about what it is you are trying to achieve and the successes and opportunities it brings is
really important.

10. What title would you give to
a biography of your life?

I don't want to only be defined by my working life but, on the other hand, that's obviously a very significant part of what I've achieved in life. So I don't know!

How about From the Bosch to the City? However, only South Africans from Cape Town area are likely to get that!

Manju Manglani is editor of Managing Partner (www.managingpartner.com)