Managing partner, managing relationships

We meet Brodies’ new managing partner Stephen Goldie to find out the skills and experiences that are needed to lead a £100m+ law firm.

On May 1st, Stephen Goldie took over from Nick Scott as managing partner at Brodies. Stephen joined Brodies as a young lawyer in 2002, becoming a partner in 2007 and then practice area leader for the firm’s litigation practice in 2016. Having worked alongside former Brodies chairman Joyce Cullen, former Brodies managing partner Bill Drummond and Nick Scott, Stephen’s appointment marks an organic transition to new leadership, even if it was a role he never expected to assume when he joined the firm. 

“When you start your career, the most important thing is to become really good at providing services and legal advice to clients. I don’t think I had any idea that I would become the managing partner,” Stephen says.

“But as your career develops, you can see the opportunities that are there to become involved in leading more people. When I became a partner, one thing I did was to concentrate on being as successful as I could within the parameters of the firm to really help deliver my part of Brodies’ strategic review plans. Then, as I’ve gone through my career, each step has provided more experience to prepare me for potentially undertaking a larger management role.

“When I became practice leader, it involved managing 150 people and a big part of the firm’s strategic direction. Now, moving into the managing partner role, I’m taking on the responsibility and privilege of leading the entire firm. It’s my job to ensure we are getting on with the delivery of our new three-year strategic plan. That’s one of my primary objectives: to make sure that we’ve got the best foundation for people to achieve as much as they can via the strategic plans that we’ve got in place.”

Scottish commitment

As the first Scottish law firm to attain annual revenues in excess of £100m, Brodies is obviously a firm that aspires to achieve ever more. But Stephen is keen to point out that Brodies’ strategic plan reaffirms its commitment to the market that has given the firm its solid foundations: Scotland.

“Scotland has been a huge part of our success and the clients that we’ve grown with, and we are not going to take our eye off the ball in our own backyard. We have our biggest offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and we’ve also got significant offices in Aberdeen and Inverness – there’s plenty of opportunity for clients to do business in Scotland, so we’re going to make sure that we continue investing in our people and developing our services and sector expertise to accommodate that demand,” Stephen says.

“The legal market has changed over the years in Scotland and there’s been a number of new entrants into the market. It’s good to have healthy competition, there are many good firms in the Scottish marketplace at this time – and that is reflective of the talent we have here in the legal sector.”

The second and third parts of the strategic plan involve making good use of Brodies’ wealth of English-qualified and dual-qualified lawyers to satisfy clients’ requirements in other jurisdictions, particularly throughout the rest of the UK, although also with an eye further afield.

“Where we’ve got existing relationships, we’re finding there is client demand for us to help them with English law services, and we have the capacity to do that,” Stephen says.

“The third part of the strategy is how we help clients in other jurisdictions – being guided by their plans, where they want to do business, and then identifying how we can best support them. One example is the launch of Brodies Middle East LLP and an office in Abu Dhabi. That was a considered natural step that resulted from existing client demand in the energy sector and many years of working with businesses across the Middle East.

“Sector demand, too, drives our work in other jurisdictions – not just in energy, but also food and drink, financial services and tech. Having that sector expertise in our firm means we’re in a good position to advise both overseas clients investing into the UK, and on matters with no UK connection. We’re already delivering those services, from our base in Scotland, and it works well for us and our clients.”

Looking to the future

While the strategic plan outlines Brodies’ own firm-specific goals, Stephen also has to manage other more universal concerns of the day, not least the drive towards sustainability. Brodies has recently upgraded its Glasgow and Aberdeen offices to have enhanced energy efficiency measures, resulting in BREEAM Excellent certifications for sustainability. The firm also operates an electric car salary sacrifice scheme, and is focused on real reduction and improvements – including technical solutions like immersive readers and the use of larger screens – to reduce paper use and achieve net zero by 2050.

But Brodies’ use of tech goes beyond just sustainability goals. As we discovered in our interview with legal technologist Fiona Chute, Brodies also has its own artificial intelligence (AI) task force to help enhance its use of developing technologies.

“Legal tech is a fast-growing area – there are more and more products coming to market all the time – and I think it’s a huge opportunity for law generally,” Stephen says.

“The purpose of technology is to make people’s working lives more efficient and also to drive efficiencies for clients. That process is ongoing at Brodies. We’ve already introduced AI tools that we’re using within Brodies and we’re looking quite carefully at the new products coming to market.

“The other area that I think is interesting is the way that some roles will develop within law firms – the role of legal technologists, for example. It’s really about making sure the products that are available are integrated and adopted by the legal population in a meaningful way for the benefit of clients. That means having digital skills trainers and data analysts. These are all roles that we’ve created at Brodies, with an eye on the future.”

Key relationships

And that brings us to perhaps the most fundamental aspect of Stephen’s role as managing partner: being able to lead people in a constantly evolving environment.

“There are certain things that you need to have in your locker to go into a role like this. You’ve got to be prepared to work hard – as a managing partner you’re really invested in the role and how the firm is performing. I think you’ve got to be resilient. And you’ve got to be able to listen. A huge part of the job is listening to many people and taking on board information,” Stephen says.

“Inevitably I will change as I learn new things. It is a new role for me and there are things that I am doing for the first time. But the previous experiences that I’ve had equip me with many of the skills that I’ll need to deal with any challenges that emerge.

“A large part of the role revolves around how you manage people and always having an eye on what the clients want. Relationships are incredibly important across all facets of professional life – with your colleagues, with clients, the way that people relate to the culture and the values of the firm. The heart of this role really is all about relationships.”

Starting out: Stephen’s advice for young lawyers

“Anyone starting any career needs to soak up the experience and become really good at the role that you’ve been asked to do. That teaches you an awful lot about how you deal with people, clients, colleagues, and gives you a grounding in all the things that go into becoming a good lawyer.

“One of the things that you have to be prepared for in private practice is hard work, and it’s a sharp learning curve at the commencement of your career. I would say being part of a team environment is really important. Experience as much as you can, be curious about things and ask the right questions. That, combined with the ability to learn and being flexible is really important.

“For firms, it’s crucial they have all the right training and supervision in place to enable people to thrive. We are in a professional services environment where clients can be quite demanding and modern business can move fast. So it’s about making sure that people at the commencement of their career are equipped with the tools, the learning, the time and the space they need to develop their skills.”