London managing partner Paul Rawlinson tells Alex Newman about his three-year plan to match magic circle

They may share a surname – and perhaps a certain chiselled likeness – but the London managing partners of Baker & McKenzie and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer are very different beasts: one is a technical IP lawyer, while the other is an M&A junkie. 

Paul Rawlinson, the recently installed successor to Bakers' long-serving City head Gary Senior, even bears the same full name as a brother of Freshfields' star corporate partner Mark, but he is quick to correct Legal Week's suggestion that they are kin.

paul-rawlinson-bakers-2013-webThe two Rawlinsons did meet once, however, when they briefly discussed Mark's high-profile attempt to acquire Manchester United football club in 2010 as part of the Red Knights consortium. With Paul counting advising his beloved Manchester City among his career highlights, there appears to be some (sky) blue water between them. But if there is one thing the pair share – aside from a surname and job title – it is their renown for client skills.

At Bakers, Rawlinson – a brand protection and intellectual property (IP)-focused lawyer who took over the London office in July – is the relationship partner for a number of the firm's highest-profile clients, including Calvin Klein, Frito-Lay, L'Oreal, HP and Cisco. In 2006 he was instrumental in forging a still-standing agreement with Unilever, which saw the consumer giant outsource almost all of its IP work to Bakers' Manila office.

His client-centric approach is likely to inform Rawlinson's three-year tenure. His strategic vision for London focuses on "enabling client conversations" – a contrast to what Bakers' business development team calls the 'hard sell' technique of other law firms. 

Rawlinson's stated hope is that if Bakers partners can have genuine conversations with clients, rather than offering a steady stream of generic pitches for work, business will flow more smoothly.

"The typical sales pitch of a law firm will be to say to a client 'let me introduce you to my tax partner'," he says. "We are focusing a lot more on getting close to the business and how the clients think." 

Rawlinson says he developed his own client skills "by accident". "Had I thought hard about the best way to develop client relationships, I probably would have arrived at the answer more quickly."

But establishing an understanding of clients' needs is not just the prerogative of the firm's partnership. Immediately before speaking with Legal Week, Rawlinson held Bakers' second client development meeting, attended by several hundred people within the firm – including personal assistants and support staff – to brainstorm ideas. "That sort of thing might be more natural to a corporate, but less so for a law firm," he says.

Successor planning

Rawlinson agreed to take on the three-year stint of managing London, knowing he was stepping into some – at least metaphorically – big shoes. An immediate post-recession downturn notwithstanding, predecessor Senior steered the firm's largest office to successive years of growth between 2009 and 2013, culminating in revenues of £135m, up from £115m, on a flat partner headcount of 82.

In the City, the only UK-headquartered firms with higher revenue and average profits per equity partner (PEP) than Bakers are found in the magic circle. And according to self-reported global figures, the group of equity partners that comprises around two-thirds of Bakers' senior lawyers in London each boast average PEP of £771,000.

"Before the recession, we were probably ranked more among the mid-tier of brands in the City on a lot of metrics," acknowledges Rawlinson. "Now, we are generally in the top 10 international firms in London in terms of our performance, our clients, our brand and the quality of our people. I'd like to see us referred to in the same breath as the magic circle by the end of the three years."

How this push will be measured, he says, is in the mix of FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 clients Bakers will count in its stable by 2016. Rawlinson is encouraging cross-office and practice collaboration to help maximise the potential of the firm's enormous geographical resources. In London, a great deal of this translates to partners making better use of the global network.

"In a relatively flat domestic transactional market, UK-based corporate work isn't the real value add for many of these clients," he explains. "Bakers' value is also that we have real strength in cross-border deal execution." 

If he can capitalise on this then Rawlinson will certainly be counted as a leader on a par with Senior, but, as to the aspiration of closing the divide between the magic circle and Bakers' itself, it will take more than making better use of its global network and client links to reunite the long-lost Rawlinson brothers.