ALMJ
Q&A – Nick Mann: “I feel like a football coach getting to bring great people to an organisation and seeing them do outstanding work.”
In our latest Q&A, Polaris Lawyers founder Nick Mann outlines why the Victorian personal injury firm is resisting growth for growth’s sake, and how its advocacy for people with a disability and injury is making a difference.
Can you tell us about some of the strategies that have allowed Polaris Lawyers to grow since it was launched?
When I started six years ago, it was just me in a small office with a very large photocopier, but we’ve since grown into a 15-person firm. Early on, I decided that it was important for us to not only have a shared vision and sense of our values, but also to put that down in print – to have something that we all sign up to when we arrive at Polaris. Outside the law, or with the bigger firms, that’s not unusual, but in the boutique space you’re so often on the hamster wheel of growing your client base and trying to serve those clients. During the pandemic, a lot of people were thinking ‘what am I doing in work and life?’ and for our staff to know why they are showing up, to have them working to a shared vision and values has been something for us to rally around.
How does this vision translate into the firm’s decision-making processes?
Well, it has led to us turning down some opportunities. As an example, during the height of COVID-19 we had a chance to buy another law firm that was about the same size as Polaris. As an executive team, we initially believed this was a good prospect for potential business and revenue growth, but reflecting on the vision that we’d set with our team, it made no sense to acquire that firm. We knew that we couldn’t explain the purchase to our team through the lens of our vision and values. So, in the end we withdrew from the process.
What was the key problem with the deal?
Our vision is set around doing everything for our clients and staying boutique. The purchase opportunity was about growth and revenue for the sake of growth and revenue. It would have onboarded a whole lot of staff who hadn’t signed up to our vision and who didn’t necessarily share the same approach. It would have added a huge number of files to a team trying to provide a high level of service to a small client base. We’ve been very particular, to the point of being control freaks, about the culture we wanted to create and we would have been jumping into the dark from a culture, staffing and client perspective.
How has the firm fared during the past few years?
We’ve come through the pandemic very well. Whether it was by good design or good luck, we were well set up as a small firm for our staff to work from home and to have flexible work before the pandemic. As a result, the transition to hybrid work has been fairly seamless. The most exciting thing we’ve seen since the worst of the pandemic has been how our teams have come together and coalesced as a result of the challenges of the past few years. We’ve developed a really strong culture and a team that supports each other, and barracks for the success of their clients and colleagues.
Tell us about your culture.
I read something about culture being the way your stomach feels on a Sunday night about the prospect of work on a Monday. Do you want to go or not? The culture factor is a little bit easier in a small firm – we have 15 staff and we don’t have desires to take over the world. That means we can be very careful about the way we hire, train and have our teams working together. That helps to foster the culture we want, which we think is something felt by our clients – their legal teams genuinely want and have time and space to do great work. One thing from the outset has been encouraging our people to “bring all of yourself to work”. We’ve got teammates who’ve told us that they were an odd fit in a larger firm, but their uniqueness is welcome at Polaris. We have a friendly and welcoming group.
In terms of people management, how do approach this key area at your firm?
One factor has especially helped. Senior staff have a seat at the table and all staff have a hand in the decisions that are made and in the direction of the firm. Any organisation that weights the contributions of their team members depending on their seniority is missing out. It has been a huge factor to say to them, “I want you to help us grow something that can get better and better”, and they can do that by having some control over the future of the firm. Another piece of the puzzle has been flexible work – we have some superstar lawyers and support staff who, for family or health reasons need to work reduced or adjusted hours. By being flexible we get the benefit of contributions from amazing people who couldn’t be accommodated by large firms.
Do you have any other advice for start-up firms?
One of the things I didn’t appreciate when I opened Polaris was that you do get a bit of traction early on because of the shiny newness of the firm. It’s really important to try to take advantage of that in the early days and to channel the excitement of the business you’re creating. As a 6-year-old firm, you don’t have that same kind of buzz as a new-born firm, so in terms of your set-up, recruitment and business development, you want to take those opportunities in the first year or two.
The other piece of advice I would give is that you should start the way you want to finish. When there were just three of us at Polaris, we spent a lot of time working on precedents, work flow and practice management systems, which would have seemed like overkill at the time. Now, managing growth is easier because we have good systems in place and we can scale more easily.
You have taken on an advocacy role for people with disabilities. How did this unfold?
My interest in the disability sector comes from my love of personal injury work, and that passion is rooted in what I see as a sense of fairness and access to justice. I didn’t grow up knowing any lawyers. My family were nurses and police officers and strong community advocates. What fascinated me about personal injury law – and it’s the same with family law, migration law and criminal law – is that it provides an opportunity for someone to access justice and for you to get a reasonable outcome for someone who may never have seen a lawyer before. You can use your knowledge to guide them through this stressful maze of legal processes. I can relate to my clients – to me, they’re a lot like my family. So, I feel connected to this whole world outside the law, which is great for grounding and retaining empathy for people who can’t afford expensive barristers and lawyers.
Are people with a disability getting a louder voice?
I had a lot of hope with the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), but there’s a lot of work to do to make it the kind of scheme that we all hoped for back in 2013 when it was piloted. There’s some incredible work being done by advocates, legal and non-legal. I also think there’s been better amplification of the voice of people with lived experience in disability than there was five to 10 years ago. Who knows whether that’s in part because of the NDIS and the need to advocate strongly or not, but it’s been a really positive change in terms of visibility and representation within the broader community.
Last year, Polaris Lawyers started a charitable group called FairCare Alliance, which provides support for people who have been harmed in the healthcare system. What led to this move?
We want to give a voice to people who have been injured during medical treatment. The purpose is to provide support and to advocate for reform – both medical and legal. There are still a lot of people who struggle in silence, or who are isolated from medical and legal processes.
What satisfaction does it give you to be involved in such a charity?
It’s enormous. One of the downsides of personal injury work is that it can start to feel like you’re waiting for someone to be injured, and you then litigate in a way that says things should have happened differently. There is only so much value in coming in after the fact and criticising the work of the health profession – especially if the system hasn’t learned and improved as a result. Many clients say to me that they want to make sure that someone else doesn’t have to experience what they experienced. In personal injury claims, we can help an individual, but litigation is a blunt instrument for systems reform.
This truth struck me a couple of years ago while working with a client in a medical negligence claim with the charity’s co-founder Vickie Veitch, who in 2017 underwent elective surgery and became a 'case' involving life-threatening complications and spent years getting treatments in Victorian hospitals. At the end of the case, Vickie asked me, “What has the system learnt about what happened to me?” and it struck me that there was nothing that the health system could learn from the legal process. All of the information that could be combined for reforming and improving was siloed. For Fair Care, it is about supporting people as they go through this journey and providing them with financial counselling and psychological support – and also elevating the voice of people to make the case for reform to systems that don’t protect the public as well as they can.
Where to now for the FairCare Alliance?
We’re working on building our member base and hearing their stories, so that we can elevate those voices and make the case for system change. One of the tragically common stories with medical litigation is that someone can experience symptoms in a hospital and then try to raise the alarm – and they’re just not heard. Stronger rules and reforms around patient-led escalation – that is, listening to the patient when they raise the alarm – will save lives. The medical system needs to learn from its mistakes and right now it’s not equipped to learn from those mistakes.
Thinking of Polaris Lawyers now, what gives you a great sense of satisfaction?
The success of the firm has meant that we have been able to attract high-quality people to the firm. Recently, we put on two new directors – Special Counsel Alice Robinson and Senior Associate Divina Moodley. To be able to attract lawyers and people of that calibre in the personal injury market is a huge vote of confidence in what we are building.
As you look to 2023 and beyond, what aspect of the firm excites you?
My excitement when I opened the firm was that it was a blank page. Polaris could be absolutely anything. There were so many things I’d learnt about old-law practice and I thought how Polaris could be different and I found that exciting. Now I feel we’re in this sweet spot. We have great staff, engaged clients and solid systems, yet we still have this opportunity to create something even better. The story is not finished, and looking at the ways we can improve, and where we can get to as a team is what’s really exciting to me.