New Chambers Boss Outlines Vision

An interview with the new chief executive of Chambers & Partners, Mark Wyatt, after the company was recently acquired by a private equity firm.

(this is a transcript of a face-to-face question-and-answer in London)

LP
Mark, can you introduce yourself. Some people reading this will not know who you are. Tell us a bit about your background in the legal world.

MW
I started maybe 30 years ago on The Lawyer. There we launched the first awards for law firms, the first business-to-business paper for the legal sector, and some of the big forums such as a general counsel forum, and lots of research projects such as the top 100 law firms, as well as the first legal website, the first legal recruitment website. Then I left The Lawyer for Legal Week, and launched a new business magazine, and some big events such as the private client forum. Then we did the Legal IT forum and we also did a magazine, which we eventually sold to Incisive Media. Among other projects, I worked on European Lawyer and grew that successfully.

LP
Inflexion, Chambers & Partners new owners. Who are they, how did you put the deal together, and what will their role be with respect to running Chambers?

MW
Inflexion is a mid-market private equity house. Over the years I’ve got to know and met lots of private equity firms, but Inflexion is a rare beast – they understand the marketplace as well as the commercial stuff. They’re human, not just about spreadsheets, but long-term investment. And when you have a brand like Chambers with a collection of very bright people in a dominant position in the market, having somebody who’s prepared to invest over a six, seven-year investment cycle is the exciting part.
What they will be able to do is to put into motion the plan that we’re currently crafting with the intellectual side of the business with the researchers. And most importantly, with the people who use our services, our clients and our users, the general counsel.

LP
Tell us about the team. You’ve come in as the chief executive. What about the existing staff – are the key people still there? Are there any significant changes?

MW
We’ve just hired a chief operating officer from KPMG. His first job will be to move our offices, which is not insignificant. But we have some great people. Rieta Ghosh, the managing editor, is key to where we’re going and there isn’t anybody in the world who has this deep understanding of the legal marketplace. I mean she has been doing this for 20 years, one of the most experienced people in this game, and she’ll be spearheading our product portfolio and the new ideas and our digital platform going forward. She’s critical for us.

LP
When the deal was announced, you talked about investment in technology. What does that look like in practical terms?

MW
We will be investing heavily in our digital footprint, and providing new tools, new products, new access. In terms of the team we have brought in an interim chief technology officer from Merger Market. One of the things that people have asked is, what is the plan in terms of research, and our plan is to grow it and add more analysis, more understanding of the marketplace. So we plan to invest in the research side, we want to make greater use of the information we have, add value to the law firms, and enhance our reputational analytics, which is what we do. To research a legal market and reach into people’s minds and find out what they think, machines are not as intuitive as humans at the moment.
I could see us with more researchers, not less. People are wrong if they think technology will come along and displace those people. But technology is important, and can facilitate and enhance the human side of the research process.
We only print five to seven percent of the information that we hold, so we would like to add a lot more value to everybody in terms of the digital footprint. The people that use our products want more information and we will give it to them. At the moment only a tiny amount of the information contained within the submission makes its way into the final directories.

LP
So you’re looking to monetize the submissions?

MW
No, that’s not the plan. Our purpose is to identify the people who are the best at what they do. Are we going to go in and change stuff that ain’t broken? No. We will not fundamentally change the submission process in the short term to make things more difficult for law firms. Are we looking at ways of trying to make it easier for firms? Yes. Over time we hope to make the information gathering process easier, more intuitive and more logical.

LP
The Chambers way has always been to be deliberately selective, unashamedly elitist. How do you square that with a desire to be more expansive and accommodating with respect to more firms?

MW
We won’t dilute the quality of what we do. Are we going to go and rank a ton more people and promote everybody? Create 12 bands to squeeze in all the firms. No. Obviously, our appeal is that we isolate who is the top of their field for whatever a client or general counsel is looking for. But I’d like to see a more analytical approach to what we’re doing. Building on the undoubted strength of what we do. I mean, we’ve got 200 researchers. I think I’m right in saying Legal 500 has got around 30. So if you can imagine that the level of penetration in terms of understanding what is happening in the legal market resides with us overwhelmingly, we’d like to build on that.

LP
A lot of people reading this work inside law firms in marketing, communications, and business development roles. They prepare directory submissions and engage with publications like yours. Will they see any changes to the process over the next year or so?

MW
We’re in the middle of reviewing everything. As the new CEO, I’m listening and working with Rieta Ghosh (the managing editor) and the editors and the market (law firms, clients) and it’s a good chance to have a look at the way we do things. Do we want to radically change things? Obviously not. The aim is to make it easier for firms to give us the information we need to identify the people who are good now, and the people who are rising.

LP
We spoke just before we went live about the office move. Can you give readers an update?

MW
Having been at Parker Street for several years, we’ve essentially outgrown it and we’ll be taking a two-step approach to moving. Shortly we will be moving the whole team – the company has 320 people – to the WeWork facility in the Prudential Building, and we’ll stay there for approximately two years and then look to take our own space going forward. It’s a fantastic office space. The facilities and tech support are good and it’s a good location for our non-UK-based folks. It’s not far from our current site near Holborn Circus, around eight minutes’ walk, about half way between the West End and the financial district.

LP
If people look at your resume, they’ll see that you’ve been involved in legal publishing all your career. But one thing you’ve always done is not just the media publications, you’ve done a lot of conferences and events. To what extent, in your vision, will Chambers still be principally a legal directory with a few products around it, or will it transition into something broader of which the directory component is just one piece?

MW
Our fundamental business is to understand and rank the best lawyers and law firms globally – across 200 countries. That is the principle cornerstone of our business and that is not going to change. And that is essentially what everything else is built upon going forward. We’re not going to be doing magazines or anything like that. But we’re going to provide deeper, more thoughtful, more bespoke access to our research – that is the fundamental goal. We will grow events to allow a place for highly ranked lawyers and law firms to interact with the marketplace. You will see a lot more face to face interaction, but we will concentrate our resources on drilling deeper down, providing a better, stronger, deeper understanding of who’s doing well and who’s going to do well in the future globally. So you will see more investment there. We’re not going to dilute the Chambers brand by short term money grabbing, but we will invest in the core of the business.