WORKING LIFE: A&L Goodbody managing partner Paul Carroll tells Ella Shanahan lawyers have nothing to fear from the Competition Authority investigation of professional services.
Paul Carroll took over as managing partner of the Dublin law firm A&L Goodbody in May 2001, in the middle of leading the legal team in the €3.8 billion Valentia takeover of Eircom. He was working 100-hour weeks.
"For the first six months from May to November, I was doing nothing else but that transaction. You can't turn around to crown jewel clients and say these hands don't touch paper anymore. They would soon be ex-clients," he says.
But most of his time since then has been managing the firm which employs 500 people, 200 of them solicitors, of whom 54 are partners. "Really, 100-hour weeks are the exception, because you couldn't sustain that for 25 years - you'd be for the funny farm."
At 44, Mr Carroll is a dynamic, charismatic man, recently nominated as "best business lawyer" in the State by top Irish companies.Meeting him in Goodbody's new headquarters in the IFSC - a light, airy complex built around a verdant indoor courtyard with great leafy plants and a water feature - he talks proudly about the firm ("it's not a company") and his profession.
He jokes that John Grisham (The Firm) has done for the legal profession what Marathon Man did to dentists. And he's hot on the "company" issue.
"I wish we could be a company. It has unlimited personal liability for each of its partners. Not only do we lose our shirt, we lose our house." Which gets us neatly to what he wants to say about the Competition Authority's investigation of professional services, including the legal profession and its own role in its regulation. "This investigation is no threat to us at all, in fact, it's a very good thing. There is a perception all lawyers are too well-paid, that they are greedy and it's riddled with bad apples, which is far from the case. A couple of things need to be said about the legal profession: how many other professions had, for example, 472 new people join it last year?
"How many other professions have what our clients have got, who are able to avail of personal liability, a compensation fund that every solicitor in this country contributes to, a system not of self-regulation but of co-regulation, whereby the High Court, in conjunction with the Law Society, will strike off errant solicitors? That has been happening as often as necessary and, regularly, when lawyers cock up, the rest of the profession coughs up. So it annoys me - you have to gently deal with the bad press that lawyers get out of uninformed public opinion. So, bring on the investigation.
"It's interesting, and I'm somewhat amused at the amount of debate that something as simple and straightforward and unthreatening as a Competition Authority investigation causes because we have a clean sheet on that account. Compare us with the medical profession: I could become a conveyancer with appropriate training. If I were an anaesthetist, could I become a plastic surgeon in the same way? I would think the investigation into the medical profession would be much more interesting."
But he concedes that the profession has an image problem. There are just three other firms that operate on a large scale like Goodbody's. Only 16 law firms have more than 20 lawyers and 90 per cent have fewer than five. But he insists the old image of linoleum-covered solicitors' office floors, festooned with bundles of parchment, tied in pink ribbon, is definitely a thing of the past.
Goodbody's, now more than 100 years old, has offices in London, Brussels, New York and Boston and has a one-to-one ratio of fee-earners to support staff in the firm. Growth started in the late 1970s and took off with EU membership.
"We have reacted to the market, to client demands, to competition ourselves, without the need for rules being imposed on us to see we perform to the highest level. Solicitors compete, as things stand, with accountants, other tax advisers, foreign lawyers, barristers - a whole range of alternative service providers.
"Quite some years ago, we made a decision to be a big broad-ranged practice with an international and domestic focus and we were going to gear up and invest in the large number of lawyers it takes to provide services we do at that level. This is a reflection of a very sophisticated market.
"We do a huge range of commercial litigation on product liability, professional indemnity, medical insurance... these transactions require multi-disciplinary expertise - pensions, tax, expertise in share options, employment law."
While large transactions like Valentia give a firm profile and demonstrate an ability to do this work, he values his smaller customers just as much. "Small transactions, and the ability to do a deal where an individual can come in and have his will done, or a piece of domestic litigation or a small business matter dealt with comfortably and cost-effectively - that is just as important. I would rather be taking £1 from 10 people than £10 from one person or £5 from two people. It's a far better way of managing a business, not putting all your eggs in one niche or basket. The mix is very important."
Mr Carroll says there are three core aspects to a solicitor's business - the clients, the lawyers and support staff and their knowledge. "What we are doing very simply is distinguishing ourselves by the way we manage those three core aspects. I have spent a lot of the management time in the first year and I am continuing to make a significant investment in our infrastructure, our technology systems. That is very important because our business is about knowledge and the way we interact and manage our relations with our clients, the way we manage documents, produce documents, the way we bill and communicate. At the end of this year, we will have the most advanced technology base for knowledge management, document production and customer relations management.
"Where the real change will come, while knowledge is the most important thing a lawyer has to sell, the consistent feedback - and our experience - is that knowledge is the greatest impediment a lot of lawyers have in doing their job well. A lot of the way documents are produced, a client would be forgiven for believing it was to confuse and obfuscate... far too many business people end up seeing the law and the legal process becoming the deterrent issue and getting in the way of the deal, because a lot of lawyers don't understand that the law and the legal process is only one aspect of the deal and needs to be controlled."
Focusing on the client's needs has to be the priority. "If people don't get what they get in New York or London, if they don't get the right answer, they will be very direct and clear: there's nothing to stop them going to London or New York and saying, you go to Dublin and do the work for us. Law is increasingly going to provide its service to its customers in the way other business does. Clients nowadays won't pay unless they get the service."
Pressed on the cost that comes with the service he provides, he says a big firm such as his does not necessarily cost more than a smaller one, but costs can rise if his firm, with its experience and expertise, has to do the work of the other party's firm, which may not be so experienced.
Paul Carroll joined Goodbody's 23 years ago, with a law degree from Trinity College and spent four years in the London office before returning to Dublin. He recalls "an untypical upbringing". The son of an oil engineer, he lived in Indonesia until, at six-and-a-half, he was evacuated by the RAF during the Suharto revolution.
He later lived in Brazil and Ghana, before being sent home to Willow Park as a boarder at the age of 10 "because I was going bush, going native. In Rio at the age of eight, I couldn't understand the BBC World Service commentary on the 1966 World Cup final between England and Germany because my English was worse than my Portuguese. I had to listen to it on the local Portuguese radio station."
He progressed to Blackrock, where he was "an awful rugby player" and where he sends his sons, Richard (14), Patrick (10) and Michael (8). Megan, the youngest is just six. His wife Fiona is "a very busy housewife and working very hard on reducing her golf handicap".
When not working , he tends his "suite" of BMW motor bikes - one of which he keeps in Spain - and a Bultaco dirt bike. Golfing, sailing, music and art are other interests and reading is strictly for holidays.
