Leadership in the professional services has its own unique challenges but after more than twenty years in the same legal practice, Romaine Thompson still finds plenty to reward her in the role: building client relationships, developing communities and guiding people to reach their full potential.

Romaine is Senior Partner at Anthony Collins Solicitors, the largest legal service provider for social housing, charities and community regeneration outside London. Here she talks to Lesley Griffiths about life, law and leadership.

What does being a leader mean to you?

It’s a privilege and a responsibility. Here in our firm I see it as stewardship of 35 years of history and legacy. I’ve seen us grow from the equivalent of a high street practice into a place where people are able to develop their passions.
Now we’re in a new season, we’re of a sufficient size that you can’t just do your own thing all the time. We have to keep all the good that comes from people doing what they really want to do and making the difference they really want to make, while stewarding that into some sort of consistency - without loads of rules, red tape and bureaucracy.

What do you feel are the specific challenges affecting the professional services?

A key issue is how you add value to your clients. We do give immense added value in the way that we work with our clients. We’re more than lawyers, but we need to ensure that’s happening across the firm. I think there are some areas that are more discipline-focused and I want to make sure that we’re hitting that bar and asking that added value question all the time.

We need to be confident in saying: ‘This is the way we work and we’re looking for other people who work in a similar way’. It’s a friendship, a relationship thing. So in the tough times they can ring us up and say, ‘we’re really struggling, have you got any ideas?’ Well, that’s not a lawyer’s job, it’s the job of a strategic friend and that’s what we want to be.

Does your recruitment focus less on legal discipline and more on those relationship skills now?

Putting people into boxes when they first qualify is not the right way forward. To be distinctive we need to  develop people who can build relationships. I’d like to see people being attached to a client sector, rather than a particular discipline, to gain an understanding of the sector so that we can then add value to it.

Is staff retention still an issue in the sector?

I think it is and we’ve been mediocre in that respect in the past, but thinking more strategically has moved us into a place where our retention rate is now much better than average. We’re focused on the longer term career development of our senior people enabling them to operationally manage the units, the teams, the delivery to the clients, freeing the Partners to develop opportunities and think strategically.

How does the firm deal with succession?

It’s a big issue for any firm - we do have a number of Partners who are the same sort of age so succession is part of the whole thought process.

I think we’ve raised the Partnership challenge from being a fantastic fee earner to owning the vision and the strategic direction. Looking for new Partners is a whole different ball game now and we’re alert to seeking out potential candidates from a very early stage in their career with us.

One of the problems that the professional sector has had is the perception that you’ve failed in your professional career if you don’t become a Partner. I think that’s a sad place to be - what matters is that people are realising their potential, delivering the contribution they can make and that there’s a proper value attached to that contribution.

You’ve recently worked with Caret to restructure leadership roles, what has been the impact of that?

It’s given us freedom and clarity to recognise, ‘if I’m not fee-earning that’s okay, because I’m delivering what the business needs’. It’s made a massive difference. Planning what the future looks like, what we’re trying to achieve and why, those are now common questions. There’s definitely more energy around mission and purpose.

What first attracted you to a career in law?

I like the intellectual challenge involved in  law. I joined here in 1989 as a tax lawyer but you can’t compete with the likes of Pinsents (where I started my career and for whom I have an enormous amount of respect). Nine months in I said to Anthony [Collins - founder of the firm], ‘I think I’m going to be a drain on the practice, I don’t think I’ll be able to generate enough work,’ and he said ‘I think you should do Charities’. I don’t know where that came from, but he was a gifted leader in terms of matching people and possibilities. He gave me what he saw I was looking for - although I didn’t know it at the time - and it completely transformed my career.

Your work with developing communities must be one of the more rewarding aspects of the law.

It’s fantastically rewarding, but a lot of us have that. I have Partners who do what I call the ‘tough end’ of the law - the childcare, child protection issues, the matrimonial side - it’s tough stuff and the reason they do it is because they want to make a difference to lives. People are passionate about the job that they do but it’s not so much that they are a lawyer, it’s the fact that they are in these sectors. They can see that actually what they do - although it’s the mechanical, backroom end of things - really makes a difference.

© Caret, 2009. All Rights Reserved

Click here to download as a pdf