(Re-)Joining the Dark Side – my move back into private practice and the journey it took to get me there

Early last year, after leaving my role as GC at a company I had grown to love but which I had realised, did not offer me the growth potential I was looking for, I had a simple decision to make. What next?

As part of senior management of an organisation you are exposed to a lot more than the day job. Organisational strategy, board management, stuff that wasn’t necessarily “legal” in nature, had organically become part of the job description, and realistically something I was enjoying more than the pure legal side of things. Having dabbled with an MBA (which I had to give up on due to time and family constraints) I had already ventured into a place mentally, where I wanted to be more than “just a lawyer”. Ultimately, when the chips were down and the decision to leave was taken, the clock was ticking and I had a choice to make.

Soul-searching and keeping busy

For the first time in years I had time on my hands. No emails, no long ‘to do’ lists. The next steps were down to me and me alone. It was intoxicating and terrifying at the same time. I quickly realised that trying to make myself busy on the “what next” meant missing out on one basic step and THE fundamental question. What do I actually want to do?

I had always toyed with the idea of setting up my own business. Being my own boss. So the concept that had been the subject of many a lunchtime brainstorm suddenly became the focus. AssetSmart was born. A tech start-up looking at applying blockchain and automation technology to the process of buying and selling high value assets. We built the business plan, spent many hours designing the product, building a deck, looking at various commercialisation strategies. We met with potential investors and looked at the various options of bringing our idea to market. It was massively entertaining and I believe the idea works. But in business as well as in life, priorities take over and I realised that while I believed (and still believe) in the concept, I was not the right person to lead it and to take the start-up forward. Not because I didn’t have the skillset, but because I was not (and am not, currently) willing to cash in all my chips and take a big risk with my family’s savings by giving AssetSmart my full attention for the year or more it would take to get it off the ground properly. If I did it, half-baked, the idea and the product would suffer. And half-baked is not in my nature, in any event. So AssetSmart is still alive, but on the back-burner for now until I can find a collaboration or a team who I believe in, that can make it happen and bring it to market with me.

Pivoting back to law

The realisation that I wasn’t willing to take that risk hit hard. I admit to being disappointed in myself, but I am who I am and I tick the way I tick, there is no point fighting it. Not when so much was at stake. I still had plenty of options and I set about looking at each one in detail. The more I thought about it, the more the siren call of private practice began to seduce.

I resisted for a time. The prospect of filling in timesheets, the pressure of partnership … these things amongst others, weighed on my mind substantially. Could I hack it? Would I be successful? Was I ready for the changes to my work-life balance that a proper shot at a successful partnership involved? Realistically, coming from in-house I was starting from scratch. Building a practice isn’t easy at the best of times. Starting from scratch makes that even harder. It’s easy to think about the negatives and be put off, but the allure of partnership had always sat there at that line between conscious and sub-conscious thought. I had left private practice when I was on the cusp of partnership … would returning to it be so different? I was still me, I had value to add, I was older, wiser(?), more experienced. If I was ready then why wasn’t I ready now?

Self-doubt is healthy in doses. I find that my hubris tends to knock me down a peg or two when I over indulge. So armed with varying degrees of self-doubt and self-confidence and alternating regularly between the two I spent days building my business plan. Who am I? How am I different? What value can I add (under what circumstances and to which target markets)? Who do I know and who do I think would trust me enough to add that value? Where are the gaps in the market and how can I address them? All questions that were asked repeatedly, answered, re-worded, poked and prodded. By the end of it I couldn’t stand looking at that document but it was a realistic representation of what I would look to deliver. Would it work? There was only one way to find out, but reading through it one last time not only did I think “I can do this” … but I also thought “I’m actually excited by this”.

Talking to various parties, having interviews, having the assumptions of your business plan sense-checked, challenged, sometimes validated and seeing people engage and slowly but surely start to believe, can be an intoxicating exercise. Every meeting, every round of discussions, helps to build up a head of steam, reinforces your buy-in and self-confidence, reinvigorates you even more to a point where you start chomping at the bit. You’re doing your BD, looking at yourself as a product and building your personal brand, working out your angles, your unique selling points and your points of attack. The marketing and business development element that I had so missed when being in-house was fuelling the fire of conviction that private practice was where I belonged. So much so that when an in-house offer landed on my table I all but ignored it.

One of my favourite business books is “To Sell is Human”. It posits that whether we are employees pitching a new idea to colleagues, entrepreneurs looking for funding, parents cajoling children to do something, or, lawyers trying to onboard a new client, we spend a good portion of our days trying to move/influence/persuade others, that, is sales. The skill of “Selling” is an intrinsic part of practising law in private practice at a senior level. Whether you are selling your services, your firm, the value that you could add, the way forward to a belligerent and possibly obtuse client, selling with subtlety is an invaluable part of a lawyer’s arsenal. And while I did some of it in-house, by golly did I miss it.

When I signed on that dotted line and set foot through the door as a Partner, not only did I fulfil a childhood ambition that had never quite gone away, but also embraced one of the biggest challenges I ever faced.

It’s been 18 months now … and some of you may well ask “Well … do you regret it?”

The resounding answer is absolutely not.

It’s not easy. But we knew that. It was never going to be. Nothing worth doing usually is. The challenge is enormous but the satisfaction of succeeding … and I consider each individual instruction a success … is equally, if not more gratifying and just adds fuel to that fire. Has it all gone to plan? No it hasn’t … but where’s the fun in things always going to plan anyways?

Is it frustrating? Of course it is. Unreasonable deadlines, impossible requests, a race to the bottom on pricing which effectively devalues the contribution you are looking to make right off the bat. All of these elements need resisting and resilience. But the satisfaction of a win-win deal, looking at a transaction that’s been done well, with a client that’s happy with the outcome … it brings a smile to my face every single time. And I also occasionally get a thank you, which is nice.

And in addition to practising law I also get the opportunity to do more! “More? What does that mean?” I hear you ask … well, that’s a story for another time (and it’s not about MentorMeet – although that too is progressing). Watch this space and it’ll be clear soon enough.