Our current Managing Partner Alasdair Cummings joined Lindsays in 1986 as a trainee solicitor. On his first day, a partner who needed help with a task summoned him up to his office by loudly calling “Cummings, my office” down the stairwell. Partners were addressed as “Mr” or “Mrs” whilst one or two were routinely called “Sir”.
Other colleagues also remember the more formal office environment of the 1970s and 1980s. As a young solicitor, our Chairman David Reith was reprimanded for using the “wrong” door to a partner’s office – the one reserved for clients and partners. And partner Callum Kennedy recalls, “When I became a partner, one of the older partners said to me ‘Now you’re a partner, you may call me by my first name. Do you know what it is?’”
The traditional, ‘closed-door’ culture was typical in Edinburgh law firms at the time, and it was exacerbated by the physical limitations of having offices in Georgian townhouses. Lindsays’ introduction of a more modern culture was helped by the move to open-plan offices at Caledonian Exchange in 2006.
One important aspect of the Lindsays culture today is transparency. “When I was a young lawyer, you knew nothing about what was going on – the partners had all the information and you were maybe told once a year how the firm was getting on,” explains Alasdair Cummings.
“We’re far more open now. We’re very transparent about our performance and what our goals are. Our recent three year strategic review paper, once approved by the partners, has been presented by Ian Beattie, our COO, and me to all of our staff across our offices - with follow-up update meetings every six months or so. "I take the view that we’re genuinely all in this together and everybody is part of the team. I’d rather all staff know what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re going to get there. Communication to me is absolutely key in our business – with our people as well as our clients.”
This culture is reinforced through our personal approach to providing client service and the value we place on loyalty, to and from clients and our people.
Some of the old-school lawyers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries perhaps would have disapproved of this openness. But we like to think that others would approve: good lawyers and law firms move with the times.
