Supporting the cause

Professional support lawyers are growing in numbers and are now becoming partners.

Stephen ward finds out more about the role that many view as vital for law firms' success

Pauline Harrison was one of hundreds of partners made up by City firms this year, but she is seen in the profession as symbolic of more than just another successful lawyer.What makes her unusual is that she is not a fee-earner with her firm, Allen & Overy - or at least not directly.

She is one of the growing breed of specialist professional support lawyers, and exemplifies the conclusion that growing numbers of firms are reaching.

Experienced behind-the-scenes lawyers might not bill many or any client hours themselves, but they more than justify their cost because of the extra income their contribution enables the fee-earners to generate.

Philip Wood, Allen & Overy's head of banking, and also head of what the firm calls 'knowledge management', explicitly recognised the symbolic value of the firm making up a support lawyer for the first time this year.

He says: 'We regard these lawyers as really crucial for our work.

Making Pauline a partner was a recognition of that.' More colloquially, he says: 'She needed the clout to be able to order people around, and that clout comes with being a partner.'Freshfields was one of the first firms to recognise that the importance of support lawyers would be increasing.

Hugh Crisp, the partner responsible for professional support, says: 'We insist on calling them fee-earners, because although most of their hours are not billed to clients, they earn fees for the firm by the work they do.' The firm now has one support lawyer to each 21 client lawyers in its London office.

Mr Crisp says the number of support lawyers in the New York and continental offices has increased in the past 12 months.

Ms Harrison joined Allen & Overy as a trainee in London in 1985, qualified in 1987 into the banking department, and became head of banking practice development (responsible for the department's precedents and know-how) in 1996.

Her elevation is only a visible sign of a wider pattern developing among law firms, and not only City giants, according to Sarah David, associate director of the recruitment consultancy QD Legal.

Ms David says: 'There is a strong and growing trend towards the use of professional support lawyers.

They can add value to lawyers who don't have time to go out and run and research these things themselves.'One partner in a top-ten firm says, less diplomatically: 'Fee-earners are not always the most efficient people at finding information, and they can become frustrated at their deficiencies.'As experts in finding information, and finding the right information, they achieve the given task faster than even a fee-earner adept and enthusiastic at researching.

'They save the clients' time because they don't have to re-invent the wheel each time they research a subject,' Ms Davies says.Mr Crisp says even some smaller firms now employ a handful of these 'know-how' lawyers.Mr Wood uses an extended Battle of Britain metaphor to try to illustrate exactly how crucial support lawyers are these days.

'We're sending lawyers up in war planes - preparing them so that if they press a button, the bomb drops.

If they press the button and nothing happens, the whole deal goes down.'Lawyers need a very detailed and sophisticated understanding of what happens in markets.

The support lawyers are at the heart and core of the business.

These people make the planes.

They create them and make them work.

What they do is very high risk and very high visibility.' To underline the point, he recites the amounts of money at stake: 'Last year we did 40 deals worth more than 1 billion, including one - Vodafone - worth 35 billion.'Ms David has identified one key reason for the growth of professional support.

'Fee-earning lawyers are extraordinarily busy these days,' she says.Mr Wood agrees that even the growth in numbers of lawyers has not kept pace with the growth in demand to move money around the markets of the world.

'There are more of us, but we are still putting in more hours than we used to,' he says.He identifies two further reasons for the growth of the support lawyer's role and status which have crystallised over the past five years.

The first is the massive expansion of law firms, which has changed the way their internal dynamics work, and the way relationships and communication are carried on within the firm.

One lawyer can no longer simply go up to a colleague and ask for some background or experience.

'You can't just be a club any more,' he says.

'The firm is simply too large to pass information on in that way.

You have to ensure it is transmitted in another way.'The second reason is the globalisation of business in which lawyers are taking part.

'There is a flow of capital across many jurisdictions, and people have to know all the jurisdictions,' Mr Wood adds.As a result, the number of legal references you need to consult has expanded exponentially.

'You need phenomenal technical prowess,' he says.The path to becoming a support lawyer is changing with the enhanced status.

A decade ago, professional support or know-how solicitors' jobs often came about almost by chance, or for partly personal reasons.

Juliet Humphries, an associate at City firm Linklaters and Alliance, who was a client lawyer in corporate finance, became a support lawyer in 1990 when she had children.

Clare Wilson also came out of corporate finance at Herbert Smith, and was asked seven years ago to set up professional support when she came back from a spell in an overseas office.On the whole, each professional support lawyer is a specialist in a particular practice group or department, such as EU competition, corporate, finance or pensions.

There will be one or more support lawyer to each area, part of the department and working closely with the client lawyers.'They are not in some back office working part-time, having an easy life,' Mr Wood says.

'Their jobs are as hard as those of fee-earners.

It is a tough life.

We encourage them to have client contact as well,' he adds.

But there is still some reality to the traditional image.

Mr Crisp says it is possible for support lawyers to work part-time, if they themselves have good support.

'Some lawyers are too good to let go, and we recognise that they want to work part-time.' They are now a marketable talent, and their pay rises this year were comparable to those of client lawyers.Ms David adds: 'The classic stereotype of a lawyer working part-time after starting a family still has some truth.

You have to want to be a professional support lawyer, and you have to be good, but still the only way to keep that experience and ability is as a professional support lawyer, because there is not really a part-time fee- earning structure.'Professional support is for a particular kind of lawyer, as Mr Crisp explains: 'It is interesting and stimulating work.' It suits lawyers who consider that client work takes them away from pure law.

They still need good communication skills, and need to be a good all-rounder.

'They still have demanding clients.

It is just that the clients are the other lawyers in the firm,' Mr Crisp says.So as their status increases, will support lawyers take on a more grandiose title? It has been discussed at several firms, and Mr Wood says he has suggested his firm might want to coin a new name, because 'support' could seem of secondary importance to some.

Apparently the support lawyers themselves are unworried.

They like it to be remembered that they are still lawyers.

'They say they are happy with the title,' Mr Wood insists.Stephen Ward is a freelance journalist