Lawyers are right to find floats guilty of long-term harm

WHEN asked why he refuses to move with the times, Rumpole of the Bailey responds: “If I don’t like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.”

Rumpole may be a fictional barrister, but many lawyers feel similarly about the current fashion for floating their firms on the stock market. City brokers and investment bankers may be profiting, but it’s doubtful the firms themselves will fare so well in the long term.

As DWF gears up for a £600 million float, the worry is that this get-richquick scheme for the current crop of staff will end in disruption and instability in future years.

Law firms are nothing but a collection of people and a common culture. The traditional partner model, where staff work for a decade in the hope of one day achieving partnership, is what keeps people together and engenders loyalty.

The partnership becomes most lawyers’ prime source of wealth, creating long-term thinking and stability in a firm. Rather than being focused on driving relentless quarterly earnings growth for external shareholders through illadvised takeovers and other tricks, partners’ interests are based on the strength of the firm decades hence.

So, for example, they will be less likely to fire staff as the economy dips, leaving themselves struggling to re-hire when the work picks up.

Replacing all that with shares staff can easily buy and sell on the market seems a pretty poor substitute.

Rumpole would rightly give a loud harumph to the whole idea.