Ten years shaping a successful business
As she approaches a decade as managing partner of Willans LLP, Bridget Redmond reflects on her time so far. And she reveals the secret to running a successful, growing and respected law firm.
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Dear Readers,
Today is a special day. Regular readers of The Raikes Journal (CIC) will know that our second and third edition of each week (which includes Fridays) are often paywalled and for the eyes of members only – their support helping make possible this community interest company sustainable.
But today we leave the main story open because it is with great pleasure that we can reveal another of our Founding Partners, and the main story is a big interview with the woman who has led the firm for what is fast-approaching a decade.
We are talking about Willans LLP solicitors, which we are incredibly proud to say is one of the businesses that has pledged its support to this community interest company as it seeks to establish a journalistically-led digital magazine to support the county’s businesses, charities and education and training sectors.
Today’s big interview was not just a brilliant opportunity to speak to its managing partner, Bridget Redmond, but also to get a glimpse into one of the county’s most respected and successful legal practices.
Having interviewed Redmond back in 2014, at the start of her journey leading the firm, it was both fascinating, and a pleasure to catch up. And we cannot thank Willans more for agreeing to back The Raikes Journal.
Please do continue to bear us in mind for your stories and ideas. The best email currently is andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk. Telephone 07956 926061.
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our partners (we’ve already let you know about QuoLux, Willans LLP and Gloucestershire College, and more partners will be revealed over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support from all of you is invaluable! For commercial opportunities visit our About us page or email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Our chosen charity: Teckels Animal Sanctuary
🎯 Fundraisers come in all shapes and sizes, but sometimes it is the most simple ideas that hit the bullseye. This darts doubles tournament staged by Randall & Payne is one of those. The county accountants is staging the event on April 25 from 6pm to 8.30pm and inviting teams to step up to the ocke and take on all-comers. A £30 entry fee will secure your place in a league format with a guarantee of at least three games. All money raised will go to its charity of the year, the brilliant Teckels Animal Sanctuary, which rescues cares for, rehabilitates and rehomes cats and dogs and prides itself on finding them forever homes. Contact Jo Kline at marketing@randall-payne.co.uk.
Something worth celebrating!
🥇🥇🥇 Three Gloucestershire firms – from Cheltenham, Gloucester and the Forest of Dean – walked away winners at a regional awards staged by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). For Kevin Pope, of BioStart, winning the innovation award was extra special – as he filled out the entry the year before, but had forgotten to press enter! Cheltenham-based Firestarter Business Solutions won the Growth and Innovation category, with the Forest of Dean-headquartered Authentic Bread Company crowned South West Family Business of the Year. Sam Holliday, from the FSB, who sent us the press release (which you can read in full in our PR Wire channel here) said all three companies would now go through to the national awards in Blackpool. “It would be wonderful to think one or more of these brilliant Gloucestershire firms could now add a national title”, said Holliday.
Ten years shaping a successful business
As she approaches a decade as managing partner of Willans LLP, Bridget Redmond reflects on her time so far. And she reveals the secret to running a successful, growing and respected law firm.
By Andrew Merrell.
When I first interviewed Bridget Redmond it was almost 10 years ago. She had just become managing partner of one of Cheltenham’s oldest law firms, following in the footsteps of a hugely respected predecessor and becoming the second woman to lead the business in succession.
Willans’ profile was already enviable, but it also meant any new managing partner would have nowhere to hide - from the eyes of competitors, fellow partners, staff, us in the media, the business community and from the worst enemy of many bosses - their own self-critical eye.
It was for all of these reasons and more I found myself sat in front of Redmond’s desk at Willans’ Imperial Square offices back then, the deep sash windows allowing views out over one of the town’s most eye-catching green spaces, Imperial Gardens.
As a business journalist, it was an incredible opportunity to meet someone about to start possibly the most exciting journey of their career, and to get a glimpse under the bonnet of a firm that more than held its own against some much bigger competitors. How on earth was it managing that?
For Redmond, then in her very early forties, it was not quite ‘in at the deep end’ - and her unusual transition into the new role is a good place to begin our story, and to help us understand what makes Willans the firm it is.
Her appointment initially made her ‘joint’ managing partner and saw her working alongside the outgoing, Margaret Austen. That a firm had not one female managing partner (unusual in itself at the time), but two drew attention, but it was to prove astute – and it sent out a strong message of continuity to its all-important clients.
In 2014 there were only an estimated 71 women at board level across Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire in the Top 100 biggest firms or as equity partners in the region’s biggest legal and accountancy partnerships.
“Margaret was a very successful managing partner. She did an awful lot for the business. Naturally, stepping into that person’s shoes takes time. This way gave me time,” said Redmond.
“I was allowed to work out that I did not have to do the job in the same way that Margaret did. But it took a little while to find that confidence.”
When we meet this time around we are sat in one of the firm’s meeting rooms. Redmond looks relaxed, and thoroughly at home. But I ask her how she recalls those early days, as she began her journey leading Willans.
“You are not entitled to people’s trust. You have to build that. You have to win the trust, from your equity partners and from everyone else.
“I have a different skill set to Margaret. I have different ideas – and times are different too. But I had to work out what this role is and I had to get to know Willans again to do that,” she said.
Stand-out dates of the last decade for Willans are not insignificant. They include the 75th anniversary celebrations in 2022, but Redmond picks another period - one many business leaders and staff no doubt relate to - the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I think we dealt with lockdown incredibly well,” said Redmond, recalling what it was like in those dark days, when everyone suddenly looked to leaders - who looked for a road map for how to navigate a pandemic and found there wasn’t one.
It brought home to her a personal realisation too.
“I realised a strength I had was a desire to look after people really well. There is a lot of talk about how looking after your staff and becoming a more people-focused business is good for business, and then there are businesses actually doing that,” she said.
And while taking a more considered approach emerges as the Willans’ way, she does not gloss over how emotional and challenging the roller coaster ride was through the pandemic.
“It was a very difficult time to begin with. But as soon as the Government brought in the furlough scheme I knew it would be fine and we would be able to hold onto our staff.”
She goes back even further than her ascent to managing partner for the roots of how she approached the period and continues to see her role.
“One of the things that shaped my approach happened in 2007/08 - when the property market plummeted.
“I was a new partner at the time on the property side. I was the one they should have let go. I would have been the most expensive,” said Redmond.
“But they found some things to add to my role so I was occupied, productive and contributing to the business.
“Had they not done that I would not be with the firm now. It taught me the value of taking a longer-term view.”
She believes that perspective, the emphasis on valuing individuals within the firm, is at the core of what makes it a success and she sees it as simple as employing good people who are good at what they do, with a passion for their area of expertise, and keeping them happy.
“People buy people. Our clients come to us because they like the individuals they instruct. And we have to continually evolve and adapt - and we like doing that.
“The business has grown a lot in 10 years. To some extent the firm has its own personality, but mostly it is a composite of everyone that is in it.
“I am very fortunate that I have partners that are on board with what we want to achieve. Our ratings in the legal guides are incredible. We have really clever people working here.”
Any areas of particular growth that stand out?
You can see her finding it difficult to choose one area of the firm as more deserving than another for praise, but she opts for its wills, trusts and probate team, by way of an example.
Under partner Simon Cook (pictured below), said Redmond, the team has “flourished”.
Contentious probate, handled by the firm’s litigation and dispute resolution team, led by Paul Gordon, is another area of growth.
Cook and Gordon are two experts from Willans featured and commended in the two foremost respected guides to the best UK lawyers and firms - Chambers & Partners (in which the firm has 53 recommendations alone) and the Legal 500 ( in which it has 37 recommendations made up of 27 individual lawyers).
“The firm as a whole has simply grown because people like the way we work,” she said.
When she became managing partner in 2014 Willans had 65 staff. Today that number is 109 staff, 17 of whom are partners.
“We are fortunate to be based in part of the country where businesses seem to be thriving. The demographic is of people really doing quite well for themselves.
“So, for us to be part of that we just need to do a really good job. That is how I see it. My ambition for us as a firm is being the best version of who we can be.
“My job is to make sure the lawyers have what they need in order to do the job to the best of their ability - so they can look after their clients to the very best of their ability and have a good life balance. And to look after the financial side properly,” she said, pausing to single out a number of people she has not been afraid to ask for help from and who have supported her along the way.
“There has always been a slightly macho belief (in our sector) that unless you are at work until late in the evening you are not putting in the effort, I do not agree with that. We put a lot of emphasis on the work-life balance.”
It is a balance the firm helps its lawyers achieve by recruiting support staff to enable them to focus their energies on doing the very best for their clients. And getting that right is something of a virtuous circle.
“We get a lot of work referred to us by word of mouth. Then we find we have too much and have to hire another person. It really is not a complicated business model,” said Redmond, downplaying the effort that no doubt goes into making the business model so ‘simple’.
There is another element that has been part of the culture of Willans a long time, one Margaret Austen was also keen to encourage during her era as managing partner. That is, as Austen herself put it, the belief that “lawyers from a firm like Willans should be involved in and part of their community”.
Although retired, the former solicitor continues to practice just that to this day, as a deputy lieutenant of Gloucestershire, a patron of the Friends of The Wilson (the Cheltenham art gallery), and she has only recently stepped down as chairman of the Friends of Gloucester Cathedral.
A place within the latter, an independent membership charity supporting the cathedral, has now been taken up by Matthew Clayton, a partner and head of the employment law and business immigration team at Willans - another of those from the firm singled out in the aforementioned Legal 500 and Chambers guides to the legal profession.
On a micro level, Willans has also recently appointed in-house champions for all kinds of issues – including mental health, gender equality, ethnic minority, diversity and inclusion, parenting and care-giving, menopause and LGBTQ+ - and empowered them to keep the firm’s working environment and culture moving forward, vibrant and modern.
“I think this kind of thing is so important on a human level from a skills point of view – and on a business and cultural level too. There are a lot of reasons these things are very positive,” said Redmond.
All of which makes you think back to that initial decision by Margaret Austen to appoint her successor. Did she really did make the call some bosses find so hard to make - that for the firm they love to continue to thrive they need to appoint a successor brave and courageous enough to allow it to change?
Too curious to be left wondering, we reached out to Austen to ask her personally.
“Settling on someone to be the next managing partner comes about by a process of evolution.
“Bridget was a very capable lawyer. She was a very effective head of department. And she was very good at working collaboratively - and that is incredibly important.
“We could see the future for our sector would be more electronic, and her IT skills were very good too.
“The point is, you need to look to the future and see where the business needs to go, and you need to accept that different people are needed for different times if you want to continue to achieve success,” said Austen.
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our Founding Partners (we’ve already let you know about QuoLux, Gloucestershire College and Willans LLP and more will be revealed over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support of all of you is invaluable!
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