Q&A: Patricia Ryan and Hannah Ellis – "Our mission is to provide commercially sensible advice and exceptional bespoke service without the ego and high cost"

In this Q&A, The Workplace principals Patricia Ryan and Hannah Ellis explain the reasons behind setting up their employment law firm; why they favour a ‘top-heavy’ partner model; and how they benefit from true flexibility in the workplace.

You have been running The Workplace, a specialist employment law firm, for three years. What are the major tests when setting up a boutique firm?

Patricia: “We had some initial challenges trying to fit the mould of a traditional law firm and realised that our version of ‘success’ and the reality of our practice were not aligned. So we made some changes and last year brought on another principal, Kim McGuren, which has proven to be a great success. While the legal market is flooded with talk of artificial intelligence and disruptors, what we have learnt in our practice to date is that there is very rarely a ‘run of the mill’ junior-lawyer task in the matters in which we’re instructed. We are almost always providing strategic advice and it is the quality of this advice and our ability to map the path for the client almost immediately that sets us apart. Now that we have bedded down our ‘top heavy’ model of senior and experienced practitioners, we believe we’re positioned for growth in an age when the work of many lawyers won’t exist in 10 years.”

What other factors have been difficult?

Hannah: “As is the case in any small business, it is a constant challenge to find enough time – while not sacrificing other priorities – to work on the business and not just in it. We are very pleased with what we have achieved in three years. We have loyal clients we enjoy working with, a wide variety of work across the whole spectrum of employment law, and we have some wonderful opportunities ahead of us.”

Your lean model of having experienced lawyers who are supported by contracted services teams, where necessary, seems to be in vogue for boutique firms. Why?

Patricia: “It certainly suits our practice. Most of our work is advisory, rather than litigious, and junior lawyers are probably better suited a lot of the time to a litigious practice. We have clients who can call us at any time of the day. They only need five to 10 minutes of our time, but we’ve got to be able to answer questions on the spot. We just don’t have a lot of work that would keep a junior lawyer engaged fulltime for the week. Our structure enables us to have the flexibility that we need individually, as it means we don’t have to be ‘in the office’ all the time.  For clients, this is more efficient and saves them money – there is faster turnaround and no doubling up of lawyer time or work.”

Hannah: “And if we look at the market more generally, in the boutique practices where lawyers are engaged in specialised kind of work rather than transactional work, client relationships are still the foundation of such firms and a high level of emotional intelligence is required to maintain those connections. That’s another reason why this model works for us – it’s not just about getting the work done; it’s about nurturing our clients. As an employment law specialist, we might be in a unique position in that we deal all day with HR directors and managers and they are people-people. They want to talk to someone and have a relationship.”

A lot of boutique firms have emerged during a time of disruption and technology advances. What’s the key to positioning a boutique firm in this new era?

Patricia: “We’re in a really exciting phase in the legal profession, especially for boutique, specialist firms like The Workplace.  In our view, the key is being able to articulate your point of difference and to actually deliver real value to the client with whom you’re partnering.  It’s also important to take advantage of our agility – to meet the clients’ needs and work in the way that they like to work. Our clients know that if they have a really quick query and it’s dinner time, we’ll pick up the phone and we’ll have a chat. We have business clients that are operating 24-7 and things can happen at an unfriendly time and our clients know that we are available.”

A recent article quotes you as saying you would like to change the way people think about lawyers while trying to avoid over-selling and over-complicating your firm’s services. What perception are you hoping to create, and what response are you getting from clients?

Hannah: “Our mission is to provide commercially sensible advice and exceptional bespoke service without the ego and high cost. Our client feedback tells us that we are valued as approachable, honest and commercial and that’s how we aim to stay.  The days of lawyers as ‘gatekeepers’ of information are gone and we are continuing to break down those barriers. We don’t provide lengthy written advice unless needed – for example, for a board –and we tailor how we work with clients based on their size, expertise in HR and experience.”

You both have significant experience in other firms. What’s the big difference now that you are working for yourselves?

Hannah: “It’s the two Cs: The first is control over the people with whom you work, when and where you work and, most importantly, where your career is taking you. The second is culture – we’re a cohesive and supportive team with genuine shared goals. Happy lawyers make for happy clients.”

Some law firms are getting serious about offering flexible working arrangements. What have you done on this front and what impact is it having?

Patricia: “As long as the work gets done efficiently, we don’t care when and where it happens. Two of our principals live a distance from the city, so working from home when not required in the city is a given. Hannah currently works part-time after a period of parental leave. This works for us because we have an environment of trust and no silos; all the principals have an eye on what’s going on across the practice and a knowledge of the clients, which enables us to help each other out when someone is under the pump. We have a policy of aiming to accommodate six weeks’ annual leave per year. As the co-founders, we took this flexibility for granted, until we had a fresh set of eyes. We have now come to appreciate this kind of ‘true’ flexibility is hard to come by and valued immensely. What’s more, it costs us nothing extra because the foundations for flexibility were there from the start.”

Hannah: “I’ve got a seven-month-old child and Patricia and Kim have been really supportive. As a parent, it’s about being present during the times when the kids are in need of help – that crazy period from 4.30pm to 6.30pm – so I can tap out during that time and come back online later if I have some urgent work to do. Being able to do that and drop my eldest daughter into school on the way to work is really meaningful and valuable. I can’t imagine being chained to my desk anymore and having to explain to a boss why I need to go to the pharmacy to fill a script, which is the culture in some other firms.”

Some law firms have resisted flexible working arrangements in the belief that demanding clients want their lawyers to be available around the clock. What has been your experience?

Patricia: “If the clients need advice straight away and one of us is away, they know they can ring one of the other partners because we work so closely together and we know what’s going on with them.”

Hannah: “It absolutely works for the client. I find that as long as we are flexible with how they want to work, they’re flexible in return. The idea of being at your desk for ‘face time’ is outdated in our view, and our business really booms when we are not at our desks and we are out and about meeting clients.”

As part of your goal to provide better and cheaper services, The Workplace has embraced useful technology. What sort of IT functions have worked for you?

Patricia: We have embraced cloud-based technologies and inexpensive direct marketing tools and sales tools to track our pipeline. We use a document management system suited to a small firm, which has an app for convenience and can do some clever things like link your mobile calls to the time-tracking component. We aren’t yet big enough for an in-house IT function so we have partnered with a local IT company so that we have local servers, security, back-up and quick responsiveness if there is a problem.”

You have set up the Table for 10 networking forum for HR professionals. What motivated that move?

Patricia: This was borne out of Hannah’s desire to provide meaningful networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities for tomorrow’s HR leaders. She noticed there was a gap in the market for this kind of thing for Gen Y and invited a hand-picked group to participate in bimonthly roundtable conversations with highly esteemed HR professionals, in a relaxed environment over wine and cheese.  Some would say this is a long-term sales strategy and it certainly has proven effective from this perspective, but more than that it’s a chance for us to engage on niche HR issues with people who have fresh ideas. We’re both qualified HR practitioners and it’s nice to be able to dive back into this area from time to time.”

Where does the firm go from here?

Hannah: “Our drivers for setting up the firm and moving forward are very much about balancing our family obligations and our external passions and hobbies with intellectually challenging work and fantastic client relationships. We’re not pursuing growth for the sake of growth; we’ve taken a very organic approach to growth, so moving forward we’re hoping to maintain that balance. When we work on our business strategy, we work out what we all want and need and what success looks like for us, and then we actually work backwards to determine how many hours and weeks we work. We don’t want to flog ourselves for the sole purpose of extra dough, as it’s not the only driver in our lives.”