Tony Angel has been voted the winner of the MPF Members' award for Lifetime Achievement 2007.
He stands down as managing partner of London-headquartered law firm Linklaters on 31 December having turned an English law practice into one of world's top professional services firms. In 1998, when he was elected for the first of his two terms, over 80 per cent of Linklaters lawyers were based in London; it had a few branch offices outside England but mainly stuck to English law. Now over 63 per cent of lawyers are based outside the UK and the firm has 30 offices in 23 countries.
When Angel (then a corporate tax specialist) was elected, a new strategy was
defined to focus mainly on the world's globalising corporations and
financial institutions, to align the firm around these clients and to
undertake their most challenging work.
Angel divides his time as MP into three different stages creating and
working within an international federation of independent firms (1998 to
2001); creating a global organisation through merger, organic growth and
integration (2001 to 2004); and finally seeking market leadership (2004 to
date). This sounds deceptively simple but Angel highlights just one of the
challenges in practice: 'We were building a global firm to serve these major
clients at exactly the same time that the world was going through a
difficult period, post 9/11. Global growth had slowed and there was pressure
to change course, but we stuck to our plan.'
Basically, the plan and its implementation worked. Linklaters is recognised
as one of the top few global professional services firms.
Angel defines the work of a MP as performing three different tasks producing
'a very clear vision and strategy' and getting partner buy-in for it;
'ensuring that the firm is aligned in every way towards achieving' that
strategy; and 'providing the infrastructure and support that enables the
firm to achieve its goals'. Leadership is key.
He says he doesn't 'yet have an answer' to the question of what exactly he
will be doing from 1 January 2008, after his MP role ends. But, he maintains
a strong interest in leadership and management issues; he has written a
chapter in Oxford University Press's 2007 book 'Managing the modern law
firm', and worked with Harvard Business School in developing courses on
leadership in professional service firms for his partners.”
MPF members were given the opportunity to comment as part of the voting
process. Here is what was said about Tony:
"I worked along side Tony Angel for the period from 1999 to 2004 and can say
from first hand experience he is a leader with genuinely inspirational
qualities (one example were his presentations at partners' retreats which
would visibly swing opinion in the firm behind the strategy). He also has a
phenomenal work ethic and is an outstanding intellect - tax lawyers are
numerate as well as literate which definitely helps in management! The
results at Linklaters demonstrate clearly how the firm is now, as had been
targeted, in the top rank of global professional service firms - easy to
forget that this was something that was very much open to doubt in the
mid-90s when performance was down and it was losing share to even its UK
competitors. Tony will leave the firm transformed."
"An inspirational leader and an outstanding role model for all managing
partners in any discipline of professional services."
"Tony has driven a major law firm through a period of sustained change. He
has moved the business from being a UK law firm into a very substantial
global player, whilst at the same time driving forward the firm's
profitability and profile locally in the UK."