GrayRobinson President and CEO Dean Cannon

Dean Cannon, a GrayRobinson lobbyist and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, officially took the reins as president and CEO of the Am Law 200 firm in September. He succeeded Mayanne Downs, a forceful leader who trimmed the firm's head count and boosted the firm's profits and revenue per lawyer.

Cannon spoke with the Daily Business Review about lessons he learned as a lawmaker and how he plans to maintain the firm's culture of unilateral leadership and individualism. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your background as a lobbyist is different from Mayanne's litigation background. Taking into consideration the firm's expansion into Washington, D.C. — its first outside of Florida— is GrayRobinson signaling a greater emphasis on lobbying?

My actual background as a lawyer for GrayRobinson began in litigation, land use and real estate development law in the late 1990s. Only later did I get into government service, then lobbying. First and foremost, we will always be a law firm, although we also always considered ourselves experts, not only providing legal services in the application of existing law, but also lobbying and government relation services where there's an argument to extend or change the law whether that's at the local, state, or now, the federal level.

So I think GrayRobinson has always helped clients succeed at the intersection of law and politics. Our D.C. offices completes the local, state and federal — the three levels of government — and reflects our continuing commitment to government relations and lobbying.

Mayanne's tenure was characterized by a contracting head count and greater profit margin. How will you build on or change this strategy?

She has positioned us well for a new season of growth. I'm looking at some targeted expansion into some Florida markets where we don't have a physical presence. We might also build out the D.C. office on the legal side as well as the government relations side. The D.C. office is a great platform to expand our healthcare and financial services practice areas.

So I'm looking at both geographic expansion, some added services at the federal level and then also building out some of our international practice groups. We have a pretty robust international practice and Florida is a hemispheric gateway, particularly to South America but also to the East and West.

How do your tenures as a legislator and House Speaker inform both your practice and leadership style?

I believe it's an asset because as Speaker of the House I had the privilege to deal with 119 legislators from all over the state. We have an incredibly diverse state: Miami is a different community than Lakeland, which is a different community from Tallahassee or Jacksonville or Gainesville. I learned that there's a great value in taking input from a multitude of different perspectives and synthesizing that into a common vision for how the organization will succeed. I'm hoping to bring that same approach to GrayRobinson.

One of the first things I did even before taking over as president was to send out a survey to the shareholders that asked about everything from our cultural values to some of our core operational elements and direction we want to go. It's important for a leader to listen and get input from everybody. Sometimes there's conflict, but my job as the president is to synthesize the collective input from our shareholders and clients.

Clients in 2019 and 2020 want more of an innovative approach in our practice. They want more efficiency in everything from billing to how you interface with them, and they really view lawyers more as business partners and allies than they did in the past.

GrayRobinson has a reputation for appointing strong, unilateral leaders. Will you lead in that same vein? And how will that affect your practice?

My primary emphasis is leading the law firm. Our strong president form of government allows us to be more agile in the marketplace, more responsive to client needs. One of the things that both our lawyers and clients like is that we have a very thin architecture of management and minimal bureaucracy. We can respond to a client or recruiting need quickly. We can redeploy resources very rapidly. We have what I think of as a sort of libertarian professionalism: We let lawyers practice to their maximum capabilities with a minimum of bureaucratic overhead.

That makes us an attractive place for lawyers from big firms where there's a lot of bureaucracy and hassle. At the same time it makes us attractive to lawyers from smaller firms because they get to maintain a high level of autonomy while having access to, literally, local, state and federal resources. It's been a great success for the last 49 years, and I intend to build on it.