Joe Dougherty has been reelected to serve a second term as CEO of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, continuing in the post he took in 2016.

The head of the Pittsburgh-headquartered firm with more than 420 attorneys said Buchanan went through some changes internally during his first term. Now he's looking to extend the strategy changes outward with a new industry-focused structure.

The Philadelphia-based Dougherty was interviewed to learn why the industry-focused model is important to the firm's future and how he plans to grow the firm going forward.

The firm has Florida offices in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Tallahassee, and Dougherty sees room for growth in South Florida. His answers were edited for length and style.

What are your thoughts on Buchanan's progress since you became CEO? Was there anything that didn't meet your expectations, or where you had to pivot on strategy?

We've moved in an exciting new direction as far as our industry groups, which is really the thrust as we move forward now in 2019. That's a significant departure in how we move forward here internally, and externally with our clients.

The new industry group focus in 2019 is kind of our pivot. It's really more of a response to our perception of what client needs are and what client expectations are. We have frankly become stronger and leaner than we have been in the past. We did a lot of work internally to make us better. We're now much more externally focused on meeting our clients' needs and expectations.

What did you change internally?

There have been some new section leaders put in place in different practice sections. We have brought in some different laterals to give us better depth of experience than we had.

We have been proactively addressing succession planning and transition agreements to ensure the longevity of client relationships. That's really important. We coupled that with being stronger and leaner.

We've really made a lot of progress with the Mansfield Rule [a pledge requiring that 30% of leadership candidates are minorities and women], being Mansfield-certified-plus. We've made some pretty significant strides there, with some of our internal committees. The firm's awareness and actions have definitely increased. They were there before, but now we're paying even more attention.

It seems like the industry-focused structure is a big part of the firm's strategy as you start your next term. Is that the case? 

We spent most of last year planning for it and rolled it out at the beginning of this year. It kind of overlaps. It really doesn't have anything to do with my two terms, that's just the timing of it.

We've spent almost a year planning, identifying the industries and identifying what we want the focus to be. A decent chunk of that is planning how to implement it. Like any plan, figuring out how to make it work is the hard part.

What are the industries you've drilled down to?

Financial institutions, health care, energy and life sciences. The decision was to really go with our strengths. They're four industries we already are deeply entrenched in, [and we] have lawyers in multiple different sections that are working in those industries with a lot of experience, a lot of contacts, a lot of depth.

How do you implement that kind of structure in a large firm with offices in multiple states?

It's a very disciplined approach. We have not just the industry leaders, but we formed steering committees that include folks purposefully from various sections and offices. You make sure you have the broader firm perspective. But it's really filtering into almost everything we're doing.

We're focused on strategic lateral hires, and how they fit in with the industry groups, things of that nature. It's not just a rebranding effort, it's how we're thinking about things. We are pulling individuals out of sections and into industry groups. I think of sections for better or worse as silos, like business units. The industry approach allows us to pull folks out of all those business units and have them meet regularly to identify opportunities to collaborate more easily than they did in the section structure. That's a big part of the push.

Did you have to pare down any practices in order to focus on those industries?

We have not. We have not said, 'since you're a practice area that doesn't interact with these four industries, you're de-emphasized and no longer important,' because we're going to still do lots of work in other industries. What we're doing instead is emphasizing and focusing on those four industries, and [asking] how do we best create opportunities and provide much more holistic, more encompassing advice to the clients in those industries.

We're not doing away with others that don't focus on those industries. We have a lot of lawyers in sections that don't do work in those industries. But we're strategically focusing on those four industries to drive a lot of new creativity and thinking of how we work with our clients. And honestly, after those four industries are up and rolling, there will likely be more industries we roll out later, but there's a limit to what we're [able] to start with.

Are there any other ways the law firm is evolving or being more innovative?

We're definitely doing our fair share of alternative fee arrangements. We having a pricing coordinator who works very closely with our sections and lawyers on that. We're making progress with knowledge management and project management, trying to educate more of our lawyers with the internal matter monitor budgeting software that we're working on, that we'll transform into a share point with our clients soon. We're working on all those different fronts as well.

You mentioned becoming leaner and stronger. What's been the impact on finances?

We had a very strong year last year, our best ever. The economy is good, our lawyers are busy, we had a very good year last year.

We had a very strong momentum last year, and that momentum has carried into at least the beginning of this year, we're continuing to perform at frankly a higher level than last year.

Where do you see opportunities for growth in the near future?

In these four industries. I really think that in addition to delivering much higher value and better advice to our existing clients, our focus on these industries is already creating all kinds of new opportunities in those industries. I really see that as the biggest driver.

Is there any geographic growth that goes along with those opportunities?

We are very interested in growing in South Florida, California and Charlotte. 

There are other opportunities we are exploring. I'm not going to name them, because they're not public. But we're looking to grow in most of our cities, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., but we're also focused on creating a larger presence in those three markets I said.

Would you be looking to merge with a smaller firm, or even a midsize or larger firm?

We're always open to looking at different opportunities. There's nothing like that I see on the horizon, but like most other firms, there always seems to be some contact and discussion. We're always open to learning about what would be best for the clients.

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