Ashurst's new London managing partner Simon Beddow has not picked an easy time to take up the newly created role.

Beddow, who previously co-headed Ashurst's corporate practice, has a remit to reinvigorate the firm's largest office, which has – in Beddow's own words – been "lacking something" of late.

Disappointing firm-wide financial results in 2015-16, when profit per equity partner crashed by almost 20% and revenue by 10%, are fresh in the memory of both partners and rivals. As is a flood of exits – many voluntary in response to the poor financial performance and others at the request of the firm – that has seen multiple partners leave, including 12 in September alone.

The exodus has slowed in recent months, however, despite Pinsent Masons and Burges Salmon picking up a partner apiece this month, and Beddow seems confident that the London office's problems are fixable.

He says: "For 2015-16, we have to put our hands up and say the money wasn't good enough, and we're fixing it. If we spend a little bit less money this year, if our markets are kinder to us, if we're focused and disciplined about how we charge for our work, we'll correct our money."

He attributes some of London's woes to communication issues in the wake of the firm's post-Australia merger expansion.

"We'd lost a bit of connectivity across the London office," he explains. "Every other office would have regular partner meetings run by the office managing partner, where they could follow through with initiatives happening throughout the firm, and that probably wasn't happening in London. As the biggest office in the firm, it was lacking something which lots of smaller offices all had."

Beddow was appointed to his new role in June, when global managing partner Paul Jenkins began his own term.

Previously, the firm's global managing partner – who has traditionally been London-based – had overseen the City base as well, but with Jenkins living in Sydney, the requirement for London to have its own office head became apparent.

"The role of firm-wide managing partner is so global, and they have to travel so much, that the thought of that person also running London was unsustainable," Beddow explains.

Beddow, who managed Ashurst's German offices for five years until 2009, has three key objectives as London head: to increase internal engagement with staff, to put a spotlight on the office's profitability and that of its partners, and to act as the external face of the firm when engaging with professional bodies such as the City of London law society.

He has reintroduced quarterly partner meetings and quarterly staff meetings, as well as a monthly drop-in surgery where anyone can book a slot on the last Monday of every month.

Previously, he says the focus had been more around practice divisions than offices, allowing disparities to appear at an office level. Changing this will mean improving consistency in areas such as how partners are quoting and billing for work.

"Just because a particular fee may be quite good for a division doesn't actually mean it's good enough for London," he says. "We're being much more disciplined on how we quote for work. We're making sure that before people quote, they talk to other partners to see if it's an appropriate fee. If there's going to have to be a fee discussion, partners need to make sure they talk to peers first so they know where the boundaries of flexibility lie."

He argues that London is now on its way back up, and the decisions of finance heavyweight Nigel Ward and regulatory partner James Perry to back out of agreed moves to US firms and stay with Ashurst will no doubt have helped morale.

"Around June and Brexit there was a lull, but we've become increasingly busy – we're on an upward curve," he says.

Eighteen months ago, Ashurst introduced a work allocation pilot in its corporate group to streamline the process of giving work to associates. The firm's work allocation officer has what Beddow describes as "a full map" of each associate, which includes information about what they have worked on, what they would like to work on, which partners they've worked with, who they would like to work with and the performance levels they are expected to have hit. When a piece of work comes in, partners speak to the officer, who then finds the appropriate associates. Nine months ago, the programme was rolled out in finance and has been recently introduced to Australia as well.

Beddow says he wants to see the system expanded to also improve associate feedback and holiday handovers.

Associates are currently given feedback twice a year by partners, but Beddow now wants to make sure that team members are given proper feedback in a formalised way as each matter closes.

In an attempt to reintroduce some degree of work/life balance for associates, he would also like to introduce 'proper' holiday handovers.

"When I was younger, when you went on holiday, you actually went on holiday," he comments. "Modern technology means people work all the time, but it's very important people have proper downtime."

Ashurst made seven lateral partner hires in London during the first six months of the 2016 calendar year, including Herbert Smith Freehills TMT head Nick Elverston and real estate partner duo Darren Rogers and Patrick Williams from King & Wood Mallesons.

While Beddow says the firm continues to look for appropriate additions, it does not have a "burning need" for anything in particular. More pressing to his mind are succession issues at the firm and improving its pipeline of associates and junior partners to tackle this.

He says: "If someone is due to retire in five years, you need to think now about how you fill that gap. One problem we have had traditionally is we have had very low attrition in terms of when people become more senior, they can slow down a bit in terms of output. If we were more direct in our discussions with partners in those circumstances, we wouldn't have that problem."

Beddow is clearly realistic about the challenging period the firm has been through recently and the changes it needs to make to improve its bottom line.

Both he and Jenkins have both said that the first half of 2016-17 has been very strong for the firm, and Beddow describes himself as "supremely confident" about the business – but he is also realistic about trying market conditions.

When asked how he would judge his time as London managing partner as a success, he concludes: "A stable office, with people who really enjoy working here and who are doing extremely high quality work for really good clients. We've got most of that at the moment, but in a market that is becoming more and more competitive to keep providing to clients and to keep people doing it happy, that's quite hard."