Stuart Fuller: How he is creating a 'challenger' global law firm

Asia-Pacific firm King & Wood Mallesons and international firm ?SJ Berwin plan to combine on ?1 November, creating the first global law firm headquartered in Asia. Ranking among the world's 25 largest, it will have around US$1bn (£657m) in revenues - more than two-thirds of which will originate from ?King & Wood Mallesons.

In recent weeks, global managing partner Stuart Fuller has been focusing heavily on the integration of both firms' people, clients and supporting systems. Having already managed a large-scale integration exercise when PRC firm ?King & Wood and Australian firm Mallesons combined in March 2012, ?Fuller says he has the benefit of "a lot ?in hindsight" this time around.

"We're a new challenger firm and brand, and that means we attract a lot of attention, so we need to execute well on anything that we do," he says.

"I think every time something hasn't gone to plan is when I haven't spent long enough talking about it with partners - ?and in a qualitative, not a quantitative sense. Partners are very clever people, they can get things very quickly."

He adds that his biggest lesson has been to "never assume people know as much as you know or can pick it up as quickly" and to put all communications in context. "It sounds almost too basic to be true," he reflects. "But it's a people business - that's the thing. It's a big business, but it's a people business at ?the end of the day."

Talking it out

Partner engagement will be key to Fuller realising his growth ambitions for the firm, which includes entering new markets after the combination with SJ Berwin goes live. For Fuller, face-to-face communication is a big part of achieving this - whether that means practice heads flying into the Hong Kong office to develop global client, people, product and business development plans or partners speaking regularly through videoconferences.

A big fan of videoconferencing, ?Fuller strongly believes that it minimises the risks of cross-cultural miscommunication because it forces people across various offices to look each other in the eye on a regular basis; this was another lesson from the firm's first merger. "It's all part of creating and deepening relationships," he says.

And then there is the added benefit of videoconferencing preventing partners from subversively checking their BlackBerrys during meetings. "You don't necessarily hold everyone's attention with a dial-in meeting," he reflects wryly.

"You've got to be in the same room to work a point through because, if anything needs to be done, you want to do it once, not multiple times, and also work out that everybody is on the same page."

Integrating firms

Fuller's approach to regular communication has been carried through to how the merger integration processes are being managed during the scheduled three-month period to the go-live date. These have been broken down into several workstreams: brand and communications (marketing, client and internal campaigns); IT (connecting systems and people, particularly via videoconferencing); ?risk and regulatory (authorisations, professional indemnity and conflicts); people (international secondments); and practice team integration.

The workstreams are carefully monitored using a time-based traffic-light system. "Each of the workstreams is broken down on a piece of paper with ?a project plan for every week between ?31 July and 1 November, with deliverables that need to be hit for each of them," says Fuller. "Then we have a weekly meeting of the key people to go through each of those workstreams. So there is a review on a fairly intensive basis of what we need to do."

"The guys in Australia give me a green, yellow or red code. So green is 'on track', yellow is 'OK but there could be some slippage' and red is 'we need to get the right people to focus on this because we're not making the progress we need to make'. And luckily at the moment there's not much red."

These efforts form part of King & Wood Mallesons' three to five-year integration plan, which was put in place ?in March 2012. "The combination with ?SJ Berwin will just form part of that," ?Fuller says.

But, technology (which he describes as the "pipes and wires that connect the firm up") and risk and regulatory efforts (particularly PI and conflicts) are being given higher priority this time around.

Another priority with the latest combination is ensuring the firm's ?new global structure is reflected in its way of working. "The big change or focus at the moment is back-office team integration. So, how do we start to globalise the firm in terms of running our practice teams as genuinely global practice teams?"

Fuller is looking to build on the past successes of the first combination between King & Wood and Mallesons. "During our first 12 months, we had 233 referrals or common matters simply between China, Hong Kong and Australia, which is well in excess of what we thought we would do," he says.

A couple of matters were work for a Chinese client looking to acquire an asset in Australia funded by Chinese or Hong Kong banks. Matters have also been done across the network into jurisdictions like Africa and Canada; M&A, finance and arbitration were the biggest areas for cross-border work.

Fuller says that ?the high number of referrals to date is due to partners genuinely wanting to increase ?work from established and new clients and taking personal pleasure in the ?new firm being perceived as having local depth and international capability.

When asked if partners were financially incentivised to refer work to their colleagues, Fuller insists that this was never the case. "We did not say if you refer a piece of work from say China to Australia you will get X dollars," he says. But, Fuller does admit that bills are split for combined matters and that partners were told that referrals would form a part of their appraisals.

"What we say to partners is that we'll take it into account in the assessment of partners' performance - that referrals are viewed positively and seen as a contribution to the network."

Ensuring longetivity

Aside from encouraging partners to cross-sell, Fuller is focusing on developing a long-term talent stream with international competency. Noting that law schools also need to update the way that they train lawyers, he says King & Wood Mallesons has introduced a strong international element to its graduate programme, with young lawyers moving around its offices in their first two years with the firm. He sees this as necessary to ensuring they are more effective as lawyers "in a way that clients want work to be done today, not the way that law firms used to do work five or ten years ago".

This all forms part of Fuller's wider view of what makes for a truly global law firm - albeit one formed under a Swiss verein structure. "I think there's a trend at the moment in terms of firm branding and how clients look at firms, and it's now much more about consistency, capability and geographic coverage than just a purely quality point. It's very difficult to differentiate on quality alone; you need to have more than that. I think you need to have something that's genuinely different."

For King & Wood Mallesons, that means having a strong connection to the Asia-Pacific region, which he sees as the base of the world's economic future and a key location for clients in the next 30 to 50 years. "China is going to be the world's largest economy. And if you say that you're an international firm, you need to have depth of presence in that market going forward," says Fuller.

"My simple view on this is that law firms break into two categories: those that want to create an empire for themselves (which involves small offices or dots on the map that don't actually generate any real capability in the firm) and those that are very client centric."

Client-centric focus

For Fuller, being a client-centric firm requires him personally meeting clients several times a week to understand ?what their concerns and pressures are, and then feeding this information back ?to the firm.

"I've always found when I've been speaking to either 10 people or 400 people, if you say 'what I think is happening is X', people will listen," he reflects. "But, if you say 'I was talking to X person at Y organisation yesterday and he said Z', you see people's recognition and interest go up, because it's not just you saying what you think, it's the client coming through you."

Part of Fuller's approach to keeping in touch with the client perspective involves accessing all of the feedback provided under the firm's client feedback programme, which is currently in place in its Australia and London offices.

"In Australia I get all of the client feedback, and I want to do the same in London," he says. "It's not from the perspective of being 'big brother' looking over a partner or a lawyer's shoulder. ?I want to have that connection, so I ?want to see the raw feedback."

Fuller is quick to act on strongly positive or negative feedback that he comes across. "I will quite often call people up or write them an email or ?even write them a note by hand if I've seen great feedback. And, if I've seen some feedback that concerns me, I'll equally pick the phone up and say 'we need to work this point through'."

Life as a global MP

Fuller clearly likes to keep an ear close to the ground to determine what is happening both within his firm and in client organisations; indeed, he sees it as a key part of his role as global managing partner. Consequently, he visits a different office in the firm's network each week and is 'always on'.

"It's a seven-day work schedule, so I call it work/life blend," he says. "I take the view that I need to be accessible to the firm the whole time, so I'm always on the Blackberry and/or on the phone."

His typical week involves "a series of internal meetings about pushing things", doing paperwork, walking around and seeing people within the firm and visiting clients - the latter of which he wants to do more of after the combination with ?SJ Berwin goes live.

Fuller attributes his continued presence at the helm of King & Wood Mallesons to his being very comfortable with flying. "The world divides very clearly into two groups of people: those who can sleep on planes and those who can't. And I can sleep on a plane better than I can sleep in a bed. It's like a little cocoon - nobody can get you."

He sees airplanes as "one of the last places on the planet where you can't get bombarded with emails or phone calls or people expecting an immediate response". Fuller feels so strongly on this point that he says that he will avoid travelling on any airline that brings in 'total connectivity' ?in future.

Reflecting on the demands of his job and its impact on his personal life, Fuller says he has no regrets. "It's hard work, but it's a lot of fun."

When asked what advice he would give to new global managing partners, he looks uncomfortable. "There isn't a playbook - you make of these jobs what you will," he says.

After a long pause, he concludes: "Communicate, trust your judgement and make sure you enjoy it. I've always had ?the view that if you don't enjoy what you do, you should probably change what you're doing."

For Fuller, this will likely mean ?several more years of travelling across King & Wood Mallesons' expanding ?global network - provided, of course, ?that his favourite airlines remain ?WiFi-free.

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