It is not unusual to plan for the future, or to ask questions about how key changes might affect a business’s prospects. But few, if any, law firms do so as publicly as the £1.9bn-turnover global elite firm Allen & Overy. The results of the firm’s collective reflections – on its position, the future of the legal market, and the implications of globalisation for the firm and clients – are prominently placed on its website and in its 2012 annual review.

Senior partner David Morley and managing partner Wim Dejonghe talk about the pressure the highly leveraged team model is under, and contemplate changes to the firm’s ratio of 3.5 associates per partner. The firm’s scenario-planning exercises consider the prospect of the firm employing fewer staff in 2020, while being present in more countries. And like many other international firms, A&O is looking at instructions relating to fast-growth economies in South America and the east, and opportunities in Africa.

As Morley explains: ‘In the past, maybe it’s been enough to assume that what’s happened before will continue – to carry on "feeding where the honey is". But we think that world is coming to an end... We need to think deeply about how we position ourselves for that future.’ All this points to an approach to serving clients that is individually and geographically more flexible; providing advice across a range of jurisdictions which, for clients chasing growth, have become ever more widespread and esoteric.

Securing that level of coverage is where the firm’s Frankfurt-based ‘global markets partner’ Stephen Denyer comes in. A senior and highly experienced executive who has set up offices for the firm in Italy and Germany, Denyer’s main role is to develop and strengthen a network of independent law firms that are able to deliver advice in the 100-plus countries where A&O either has no office in its own right, or where its lawyers face a regulatory bar on some areas of practice.

Whether he has influenced, or simply concurs with, Morley and Dejonghe’s public pronouncements on profession-wide issues, Denyer’s starting point closely matches their ‘official’ mindset. ‘We have sought as a firm to be very engaged in discourse on the future of the profession – how law firms can adapt to a changing market and changing client demands,’ he says.

Engaging in these big debates, he notes, ‘matters to a firm like ours’, because that engagement affects ‘the way we are viewed by society, by businesses, by government bodies, regulators and by universities’. How a firm interacts with universities, Denyer adds, has an importance that goes much wider than the role higher education has as a source of recruits for a law firm (of which more below).

Whereas many international firms have focused their efforts on opening, promoting and building international offices in target jurisdictions, Denyer’s role signals the start of a new phase in A&O’s designs on the global market. Networks and associations were once viewed as the near-desperate attempts of firms who lacked the resources to pull off an office opening in a target market. Denyer’s status, remit and methods make that attitude seem rather dated. ‘The fact that we have a senior person in this role is really a reflection of the importance we attach to building very deep relationships with the other firms that make up the network,’ he argues.

Clearly he regards the network as being as important as international mergers and exclusive agreements. And the network’s investment in ‘collaboration’ represents a shift of emphasis. The relationship firms work with A&O on a non-exclusive basis – both A&O and the firms are able to work with other law firms internationally or within the relationship jurisdiction.

Denyer cannot recall how many countries his current role has taken him to since he assumed it five years ago (‘a lot’), but he stresses that its effectiveness is heavily reliant on a series of regional and international ‘desks’. He has identified one or two partners for each desk and a business development professional who – by dint of their nationality, contacts, cultural links, language or market knowledge – has some ‘instant credibility’ with lawyers in the jurisdiction where the firm is either identifying, or building a relationship with, a law firm.

The partners and business development professionals allocated to a country or region are allowed and expected to devote significant time to the relationship network. Closeness to those firms is built by a series of worldwide events that are exclusively for relationship firms. These include ‘high-level and workshop-level’ discussions to identify what the relationship firm can learn from A&O’s business practices (‘and what we can learn from them’, stresses Denyer). Also, part of the offering for lawyers in the relationship firm is ‘the equivalent of the training events that we would be giving new or future A&O partners’.

In between events, there are numerous secondments between relationship firms and A&O, though the balance is weighted towards secondments to A&O. And he has put together a group of six retired A&O partners ‘who are available to go around the world delivering bespoke training to firms – arriving, say, in Costa Rica or Belgrade to deliver a two-day training programme’. The firm’s ‘business of law’ seminars – run in London twice a year, addressing issues of broad interest in a roundtable format – are a more public example of the style of debate encouraged with the relationship network, Denyer says. They present big topics for open debate with a hugely varied panel and audience.

All of which sounds eminently sensible. But as already noted, these are non-exclusive relationships, and subject to each bar’s professional rules on conflicts, A&O and a relationship firm are free to work for others.

Biog

BORN 27 December 1955

UNIVERSITY Durham, BA Law

JOBS Global markets partner, Allen & Overy

KNOWN FOR Former international development partner now charged with an extensive role relating to the global evolution of A&O; regional managing partner for Europe and head of the Italian, Frankfurt and Warsaw offices

It is, then, only the attention paid to the relationship by A&O and the independent firms that ties the network together. Five years in, Denyer says this approach is ‘bearing fruit’. He adds: ‘In a global panel pitch, clients are interested in the network,’ and the ‘deep and broad’ relationships that make up the network are ones he and colleagues talk about with confidence.

Not that this approach is understood by all and nor do relationships always go to plan. In September, A&O and its relationship firm in India, Trilegal, announced the end of a five-year link. Parting ways, both firms had praise for each other. A&O’s India head Jonathan Brayne said: ‘We have the highest opinion of Trilegal and we look forward to continuing to work with the firm when the opportunity presents itself.’

The firms’ reason for ending the relationship – ‘the lack of progress towards legal sector liberalisation in India’ – adds prominence and urgency to another part of Denyer’s role as the firm’s global representative with regulatory and professional bodies. That role, he says, ‘reflects our desire to develop a more constructive relationship between the firm and national bars’. He is frank in admitting: ‘There had been a lack of engagement on both sides, meaning that the big firms were not engaging with the bars and societies.’ Worldwide, 30 A&O partners now have roles with local or international bar associations – a historic high.

One result of that former lack of engagement has been sets of professional rules that, viewed from a cross-border perspective, are ‘very, very fragmented’. Similarly, at government level, policymakers and officials ‘frequently don’t realise the impact of decisions on the legal market because we don’t take the time to tell them’. Time spent engaging directly with government, or through bars and societies as representative bodies, is the only way to avoid ‘unintended consequences’ of public policy decisions, Denyer argues.

Among relevant government activities, the promotion of trade liberalisation is of central interest since changes in international agreements can have far-reaching effects on the openness (or otherwise) of the market for legal services in emerging economies. The domestic and foreign agendas lead Denyer to look not just at contacts with justice ministries, but also, in the UK, the Foreign Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. And, of course, the European Commission.

A final set of collaborative relationships Denyer is keen to talk about is his firm’s support for universities. The benefit of contributing to postgraduate course design, and providing partners who assist in teaching, is not, he says, about universities as recruiting grounds. Instead, work with universities plugs the firm into ‘fantastic pools of knowledge’. Collaboration with the University of Oxford has included the development of a postgraduate course in law and finance.

And work with Bucerius Law School in Hamburg has included assistance in explaining the crossover between the practice and theory of the law. Despite his global remit, Denyer is not, he says, a linguist. But perhaps because of the length of his international career, he notes: ‘I speak English as a foreigner does. That helps me.’

As Denyer describes the work he is involved in (dependent as it is on collaboration, a broad view on big topics, and the care and attention different parties invest in these projects) the image that comes to mind is a simple dynamo-driven light on a bicycle. Stop moving and the illumination fails – but keep pedaling and the lights stay on.

That may be a model that lacks the reassurance of more visible bricks, mortar, glass, steel and a world of fixed binary relationships. But given the demands and uncertainties that come with globalisation, it could also be one of few templates for success as an international legal business.

Eduardo Reyes is Gazette features editor