Interview | Adrian Christmas: 'Genuine Clementi model'

Solicitor Adrian Christmas is selling the practice he has grown into a top-32 legal business to BGL, the company behind CompareTheMarket. With no firm plans at this stage other than being a one-day-a-week non-executive chairman, he talks to Solicitors Journal about where he sees the Minster Law brand - and the market - go.

Solicitors Journal: Is the leap from an independent law firm to being part of another organisation a challenge in terms of corporate culture and identity?

Adrian Christmas: We are at Minster Law a totally corporate entity. I'm chairman, and on the board we have a non-legally qualified chief executive, a non-lawyer chief financial officer, a non-lawyer chief information officer, and non-lawyer financial and HR directors. So the corporate culture at is not alien to us.

This structure was put in place since about year after the Corrie acquisition [in 2005]. It was set up in consistence with Clementi's views on how law firms should run. It's a genuine Clementi model.

Being part of a corporate entity is not a significant change. When the deal goes through, Minster Law will, in effect, form a division of a much larger organisation.

SJ: is your move emblematic of the Clementi ethos in that legal services don't need to be delivered necessarily through law firms?

AC: It needs to be delivered through law firms but the leadership and management and structure of these law firms need not be undertaken by lawyers. Some of our best performing people aren't lawyers. Lawyers have a natural tendency to think that because they advise businesses they therefore must be good at running a business. The two things don't necessarily go together.

SJ: Is the next step is to move to a system which is product driven rather than solicitor driven?

AC: We've worked hard at putting process into our legal service delivery, therefore I don't think the new owners will enhance that process significantly; it's already well-refined and that's how we've been successful at growing the business as we have. They will seek to build on that by way of introduction of new work and new sources of work. We're very good at B2B, but we're not so good at B2C, which BGL are - it's a natural fit; will it help Minster with market penetration? It certainly won't harm.

SJ: Will Minster remain as a brand?

AC: The term 'brand' is generally linked to longevity. We've not been around for more than 6 or 7 years; so, do we have a brand - no. Are we known in our industry - yes, because we're a big player; this helps with recruitment and retention of staff. It also begs the question: why would you want to change it; it works well. The other thing is of course, we currently have 70,000 clients a year through the firm. IN these circumstance we would expect - and we do get - repeat business, and that needs nurturing. So the brand is unlikely to change in the medium term.

SJ: The firm is known for its road traffic work but what about the other areas of work you also cover, such as will writing and employment?

AC: We knew RTA was going to be an area of growth, that it could be commoditised successfully, so that's what we've focused on very heavily for the first 4-5 years. That was the right thing to do. Since then we are now able to diversify out using the processes that we've developed, rolling them out in slightly different iterations of the claims industry.

Areas such as will writing or employment are set up to become incubators within the firm, ready for expansion into those areas should that be the commercial drive. Some of these areas are already in place as incubators - we have teams that are perhaps heavily processed for the work currently coming through, but they are in place ready to expand if that's the decision.

SJ: What are the growth prospects in the context of the latest portal rules and other Jackson reforms?

AC: It depends how you define growth: is it fee income rising or headcount and volume of work? Portal and reduction in fees will inevitably impact finances; there's not alternative to that - does that mean Minster is bad business? No, if a personal injury operation is well run, well managed and well financed, this industry is not in crisis. There is a lot of doom and gloom but that is not the case with businesses that are well run and not top heavy.

It is mostly a factor scale? Yes it is. The commoditisation of the portal process and other changes, unless you have scale you aren't going to be able to be in the game.

SJ: Does that mean the market will be divided into large volume firms like Minster on the one hand and niche specialists focusing on high value claims on the other?

AC: That's likely - although if large clinical negligence claims end up going through the portal, then the same reasoning will apply to the arguments around those. But there will always be room for very high end, very specialist operators. But the volume we have through has allowed us to develop very good, high end niche operation within the business because we're handling 1,000 multitrack and catastrophic claims at any one time. That is significant in the industry. Minster is looked at as a high volume, low margin, bottom end of the food chain work but there is much more there.

We are still getting these clients from the main channel, but we're starting to pick up work from outside our main channels.

As the marketplace consolidates around a few big players, inevitably when they look for growth, the obvious place for them to go is these high value niche areas. It may not be immediate but it will be creeping in. Practitioners who are exceptional have nothing to fear in the medium term but they will come under pressure.

Adrian Christmas was talking to Jean-Yves Gilg