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I help partnerships grow profits

Strategy      Leadership      Culture

COACHING        ADVISING        SPEAKING        TRAINING

Jonathan Watmough, award-winning former law firm Managing Partner and principal consultant at HelpingLawyersThrive

Hello!

I'm Jonathan, the Partnership Growth Coach, here to help ambitious partnerships drive  sustainable profitable growth

I am passionate about helping people succeed in the business of law in a human, sustainable way

I was Managing Partner of an award-winning, high-growth City law firm for 10 years

I know exactly what it takes to make it as a profitable partnership. I have been there and done it myself at a high level. I have written a critically acclaimed book about it. I can help you go there and do it too through clever use of strategy, leadership and culture

THIS IS FOR YOU

IF YOU are a law firm leader ambitious to grow partner profits

IF YOU want to cut through to the inside track of what really matters

IF YOU want to maximise your chances of success

IF YOU want to give yourself an advantage

IF YOU think it's for you, book your free discovery call with Jonathan

Law firms are uniquely complex places in which to drive sustainable profitable growth.

 

Profitable growth is a product of getting better. But getting independently minded professionals in a highly competitive market to drive annual compound performance improvement at a faster rate than costs are increasing, isn't easy.

But some are able to pick their way through this successfully and thrive. In my work, I encapsulate, and help lawyers, leaders of lawyers and law firms to emulate, what I’ve witnessed those people, and the leaders of those people, doing differently. And the surprising truth is it’s not that difficult.

It requires a firm to find and exploit a reasonable competitive advantage (strategy), create an environment in which its people can thrive (culture) and inspire and influence its people to actually implement the strategy and adhere to the culture (leadership).

But a shortage of leadership makes it difficult for a firm to maintain a positive culture. In which case strategy can't then be followed through on because 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast'.

My role is to help firms find the unique blend of strategy and culture which will work for them. And to then use leadership to enable the competitive benefits of that strategy and that culture to be liberated. This enables change to happen willingly and for difficult things to get done - not in theory but in practical reality. And sustainable profitable growth will be the natural consequence.

STRATEGY ... or 'creating competitive advantage'

Reviewing & revising your current strategy


The facts are constantly changing and even the best strategies require recalibration to keep pace. I can help you:
-  Assess what's changed and scenario plan.
-  Assess performance and profitability.
-  Realign your resources, structure, leadership and culture with your competitive advantage.
-  Resolve this to a revised strategic framework and a plan to implement it.
-  Inspire and influence the partnership to align behind this.

Building a new strategy


Building a new strategy is typically a collective exercise in harnessing the ideas, experiences and ambitions of the wider firm. I can help you:
-  Assess your competitive advantage and how this translates into relative market positioning.
-  Analyse your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
-  Scenario plan.
-  Build a compelling vision and narrative.
-  Align your resources, structure, leadership and culture with your competitive advantage.
-  Resolve this to a new strategic framework and a plan to implement it.
-  Inspire and influence the partnership to align behind this.

Lateral hiring and assembling winning teams

The game of commercial law over the long term is won by those who are best at attracting, developing, channelling and retaining the talent that matters most in their markets. The clients, and other talent, will always follow the talent. I can help you:

-  Map your teams and evaluate 'fit'.
-  Select in the right people by defining a compelling recruitment narrative and strategy, creating good candidate choice, selling, selecting, diligencing, deal structuring and making deals happen.
-  Integrate key hires into the partnership and the business.
-  Select out, in the right way, those that no longer fit.

Attacking new markets


Building out into new areas of practice, new industry sectors, new locations and even new countries can be an enticing prospect for driving growth, and yet comes pregnant with risk. I can help you:
-  Assess the competition and what how you might build a competitive advantage.
-  Assess the risks.
-  Assess whether you might best enter the market by using your existing capability, by lateral hiring or by M&A.

Mergers & Acquisitions

M&A has become a key weapon in accelerating law firm strategy. I can help you merge, acquire or be acquired by:

-  Assessing business fit.
-  Assessing cultural fit.
-  Undertaking due diligence.
-  Generating strategy for the combined firm.
-  Brokering terms.
-  Influencing and inspiring the partnership to align behind it.
-  Advising on post-deal integration.

Partnership structures, profit sharing & partner performance

How effective partners are is directly proportional to the clarity and flexibility provided by a firm's partner performance evaluation, reward and recognition systems. I can help you:

-  Define and design partner career paths, including the supporting structures.
-  Define and design partner reward systems.
-  Define and design partner performance evaluation systems.
-  Coach partners to improve performance.

LEADERSHIP ... or 'inspiring & influencing'

Talent spotting & sourcing leadership potential


I can help you:
-  Assess internal leadership potential.
-  Find, attract, assess and recruit external leadership potential.

Preparing new leaders


I can coach new leaders to:
-  Understand leadership of lawyers and partners.
-  Understand the firm's business.
-  Understand partnership and politics.
-  Understand themselves.
-  Define the boundaries of their role.

Developing existing leaders


I can coach existing leaders to:
-  Build 'savvy' to focus on what matters most and get things done.
-  Build influencing, communicating, storytelling and presenting skills.
-  Understand others.
-  Delegate and build support systems around themselves.
-  Have difficult conversations.

Building team strategy, alignment and cohesion


I can coach leaders and teams to:
-  Understand strategy, differentiation and competitive advantage.
-  Analyse their business and their markets.
-  Define their ambition.
-  Plan and prioritise.
-  Build alignment and a team mindset.
-  Form, storm, norm and perform as a team.
-  Map themselves and analyse 'fit'.
-  Multiply themselves by inculcating widespread leadership.
Select in the right people by defining a compelling recruitment narrative and strategy, creating good candidate choice, selling, slecting, diligencing, deal structuring and making deal happen.
-  Integrate key hires.
-  Select out, in the right way, those that no longer fit.

CULTURE ... or 'an environment in which people can thrive'

Deliver on your lawyers' professional needs


I can help you focus on delivering on your lawyers' professional needs:
-  The tools they need to do the job.
-  The support they need to do the job.
-  The professional safety they need to do the job.

Deliver on your lawyers' career needs


I can help you focus on delivering on your lawyers' career needs:
-  Career clarity.
-  Opportunity and challenge.
-  Training and development.

Deliver on your lawyers' personal needs


I can help you focus on delivering on your lawyers' personal needs:
-  Growth.
-  Flexibility.
-  Autonomy.
-  Belonging.
-  Clarity of objectives.
-  Reward and recognition.

Formalise all of the above


I can help you:
-  Write down all of the above in a top-to-bottom career framework, including partners, specifying all of the activities, attitudes and behaviours everyone expects of others and commits to themselves.
-  Generate buy-in to, and alignment behind, this framework.

Measure adherence to all of the above

For example, by using Quintillion's myTeamRadar technology tool. myTeamRadar is the tracker for workplace risk. It uses next-generation visualisation analytics to find and resolve hidden risk and governance problems in the workplace.

Find out more at www.myteamradar.com or watch this introductory video.

GOOD REASONS WHY I'M DIFFERENT & WHY IT MATTERS

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1. I am expert in the business of law

I spent 18 years as a partner in an award-winning City law firm, the last 10 as Managing Partner. I know the art and the science of what it takes to make it as a profitable partnership. I have written a critically acclaimed book about it. I have been there and done it myself. I can help you go there and do it.

2. I am independent & objective

I am on your side and I will tell you what you need to know.

3. I understand

I am one of you. I have done what you do. I have felt what you feel. I am there to provide friendly, non-judgmental, understanding support to help you achieve your ambitions.

ABOUT JONATHAN WATMOUGH

M&A lawyer, managing partner, coach, advisor, NED, author & speaker

I am passionate about helping people succeed in the business of law in a sustainable, human way.

I was born in the Yorkshire Dales but raised in the Sussex Downs. I have been a lifeguard, gardener, dishwasher, hotel porter, humper in a meat factory, pilot, fruit farmer, decorator, builder's mate and bartender. My parents both left school at 15 and I was the first in my family to go to university.

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I qualified as a Solicitor in The City of London at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain in 1993. Practising in M&A and equity capital markets, I became a partner at thirty, managing partner at thirty-eight and spent the next ten years helping to transform RPC from a London insurance firm into an international, multi-disciplinary professional services business.

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The firm delivered five consecutive years of double-digit top and bottom-line organic compound growth when the rest of the market stagnated following the Global Financial Crisis, won Law Firm of the Year three times, won the Managing Partners’ Forum’s strategic leadership award and was named five years running as Best Legal Employer. I was also twice-named within The Lawyer’s Hot 100 lawyers in the UK.

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After ten years as managing partner, I retired from the firm in 2016 to help lawyers and leaders of lawyers cut through to what matters and emulate the simple things successful people do differently in private practice. No theory, no platitudes, just practical common sense guidance on what matters most in the real world of the business of law, why and how to do it to get ahead. And in 2024 I encapsulated this in my book How To Thrive In A Commercial Law Firm.

I have also combined my entrepreneurial streak with my passion for understanding people and relationships and co-founded Quintillion, a technology group that develops cognitive and behavioural analytics. Quintillion’s flagship product, myTeamRadar, uses next-generation human factors visualisation to help reveal, diagnose and resolve hidden performance and wellbeing problems in teams.

"Under managing partner, Jonathan Watmough's leadership, RPC has become one of the most vibrant and best-run firms in the mid-market."

The Lawyer's HOT 100 lawyers in the UK logo

2014

"Cultural integrity and a move upmarket sees RPC named Firm of the Year."

Under Jonathan Watmough's leadership RPC won The Lawyer's Law Firm of the Year in 2014, The Lawyer logo

LAW FIRM OF THE YEAR 2014

"Praised by judges for its strong financial results, being 'innovative' and for 'really looking after its staff', the firm impressed on a number of levels. But what particularly impressed the judges was not its financial performance but the steps RPC has taken to position its business for the future - and the efforts it is taking to keep its staff happy."

Under Jonathan Watmough's leadership RPC won Legal Week's Law Firm of the Year in 2015, Legal Week logo

LAW FIRM OF THE YEAR 2015

"If you keep your people happy, then your clients will be happy too. Led by a Managing Partner who has no office and the same desk as everyone else who works in this open plan office, RPC achieved outstanding financial results in 2015, and has earned recognition as Best Legal Advisor by Legal Week for the last 5 years. Innovative initiatives to support employeees, a well-developed social-inclusion plan, and an unrelenting focus on understanding the needs of clients, have earned recognition as Best Legal Employer over the same five year period."

Under Jonathan Watmough's leadership RPC won the MPF's Strategic Leadership Award in 2016, Managing Partners Forum logo

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP AWARD 2016

How To Thrive In A Commercial Law Firm is Jonathan Watmough's 2024 book about people, relationships & leadership in law firms - book cover

For those who want to know how lawyers, leaders and law firms can thrive in a changing world

Whether you're an aspiring associate or a managing partner, how good you are at people, relationships and leadership will determine your personal, professional and business success.

These are skills which are not taught at law school and which many firms preach but few practice.

Jonathan Watmough led an award-winning City law firm for ten years.

He lifts the lid on what makes lawyers and law firms tick.  Why people, relationships and leadership are fundamentally important for lawyers, lawyer careers, law firm success and life.  Why they matter more than ever in a changing world.  And how to master them.

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