Kindleworth’s Blueprint for Building Law Firms

John Quinn (0:03)

This is John Quinn, and this is Law, Disrupted. And today we're talking with James Hacking of a firm called Kindleworth. Did I get that right, James?

James Hacking (0:12)

Correct, indeed.

John Quinn (0:13)

Kindleworth.

Kindleworth has a very interesting, and for me at least, unique business model. They help people who want to start law firms, start the law firms, give them all the back office support, and then continue to work with them, providing the various back office services that law firms need to run to support the lawyers. I mean, is that kind of a basic summary of what Kindleworth does, James?

James Hacking (0:43)

Yes, perfect, John. Absolutely. That's exactly what we do. We've been doing that for about 14, 15 years now. We came into the market initially on a more consultancy basis, doing work for existing law firms in the UK in particular. But we rapidly started to see there was part of the market where there were smaller firms, typically specialist firms, firms that, for example, are single service like litigation firms, or maybe that was single sector focus, such as a sports practice might be.

They needed a greater level of infrastructure and support and advice than perhaps they could achieve on their own. So we started focusing our efforts on that particular part of the market. As you say, we've become well-versed in and have been behind some really exciting new law firms have come into the market, typically those that can achieve quite leading positions in their chosen areas.

John Quinn (1:33)

Can you give us some examples of firms that you've helped set up and then provide ongoing back office support?

James Hacking (1:40)

Indeed. Maybe one or two that you'll be familiar with, some like Panas, Natasha Harris, and Spinout of course, and Food Crowns is an international arbitration powerhouse today. We helped them launch in 2014 and we were there back office support for the first five years of their evolution and growth.

We recently helped Wordstone, which is another international arbitration specialist, opened up in Washington, DC. They were founded in Paris.

But there's also some non-litigation among our international arbitration firms. In the mix, I mentioned sports as a sector. We are behind a firm called Morphledge in London, which is quite interesting for a number of reasons, partly because they've just recently taken on some third-party investment and a good example of what businesses in the UK are beginning to do around third-party funding today. So, yeah, a range of firms on the transactional and indeed on the litigation and arbitration side.

John Quinn (2:38)

How does your engagement with a nascent law firm usually begin? Is there a lawyer that's already ensconced in some larger firm and somehow you get connected with them and they want to start a firm and they need some support to do that? I mean, how does it usually begin?

James Hacking (2:54)

Exactly like that. Almost everybody we meet is in their large firm, typically in US firms or the Magic Circle firm, some of the global elite maybe.

They have some thoughts as to either a series of frustrations in where they are and whether or not they're in the right home, but probably also some views about how they might want to do something, how to deliver services better, price differently or reward their team or build a culture.

Often it's a multitude of all of these different features that are in their minds. But what they perhaps don't know is how on earth do they actually get from where they are into that new organization? How do they do that? There's as little an interruption to their business as possible, to their clients. How do they manage that workload given they're already incredibly busy people? So they're full of questions and sort of meet us in a very early stage of that thinking. And we spend a lot of time in those early weeks and months helping people before any design really takes place, just exploring that. What would it mean? What could I achieve? What would it take? These are all kind of questions we help people think through.

All the ones you'll be familiar with John. Sometimes people don't want to proceed. They've done that exploration. They've understood it further. And sometimes they park it and come back a few years later. And over occasions they satisfy the curiosity and conclude perhaps where they are or a lateral move is indeed the better solution for them. And we love that. That's a wonderful set of conversations to be had obviously very quietly and confidentially, but it's a great joy to be able to help people through and answer some of those bigger questions at the earlier stages.