Chris Sherliker (@London_Law_Firm) likes to shake things up. He and his partners at Silverman Sherliker are famous for disrupting the status quo in ways that would make Professor Richard Susskind proud. This is the man who took a leap of faith in the 1980s, leaving a prestigious establishment legal career (an MA in Law from Cambridge University, roles at Herbert Smith, the European Commission and Cameron McKenna) to join an ambitious and forward-looking but sole practitioner, Jonathan Silverman. Risky for sure. But a phenomenally successful move, the autonomy that comes with working in a small, entrepreneurial team giving him the opportunity to show off his flair for innovation and make a name for himself. Quite literally: the firm changed its name to Silverman Sherliker soon after he joined.
Swapping stories about our journeys in law, I tell him mine began in 1988 assisting the first ever in-house marketing professional hired after a Law Society rule first changed allowing solicitors to advertise. "My firm went on the telly the very next day!" he astounds me. Talk about not wasting time! But his track record of innovation goes beyond wizzy new ways to do legal business and includes setting new case law precedents. In the early 1980s he took on a competition case (thanks to his Brussels credentials) challenging the monopoly of the opticians profession over the market for reading glasses. In those days, by law only registered opticians could dispense them, even though no prescription is involved - they only magnify. His case was successful and the stranglehold broken, so next time you buy a pair of stylish, cheap reading glasses over the counter at Boots or at Waterstones, you know who to thank! I was particularly impressed by this because a number of legal futurists I know will say that the removal of the opticians monopoly is a much better parallel for what's happening in the legal market post-Legal-Services-Act than the supermarket analogy that the "Tesco Law" tag suggests. I'm thinking in particular of DLA Piper's Head of Proposition Development and Creative Services Stephen Allen (love the job title btw), but there are significant others too.
Chris was one of the first lawyers to take to Twitter in the early "glory" days, as @London_Law_Firm. (How did he manage to snaffle such an enviable Twitter ID? First Mover Advantage, that's how!) I'm always interested in gleaning an insight into "where next" from these legal pioneers.
When
we met up for lunch, he had just that morning hosted a live discussion branded
#coffeebreaklaw, structured as a timed event on Twitter, "Smoothest
Moves: Legal Tips On Buying A Property". He told me he was overwhelmed at
the level of interest it generated and the quality of names getting involved,
bringing new contacts to the firm. Zoopla to name one. Fantastic way to make
new connections in areas in which you're serious about doing business!
Being
such an early adopter of social media, can he point to any examples where he's
won business directly? "Most definitely. But I have to say, how we have
done it at Silverman Sherliker is not necessarily a model larger firms can
follow. Our best examples of success are where we've been sufficiently fleet of
foot to respond to a market change, eg setting up a portal for affected people
to come together and explore options/solutions. Larger firms often struggle to
move quickly enough to make the most of these opportunities. For example, when
the News of The World folded, the very next day we set up a News of The World Employee Action Group, tweeting a link to a page on our website inviting the
paper's former workers to join the Group, and offering help and advice. Future
career opportunities for these innocent workers were blighted because of management's
alleged wrongdoing. Many felt they were effectively being scape-goated and
punished when they had done no wrong. They themselves were not responsible for
the circumstances giving rise to the closure of the paper, yet they were
suffering a detriment. So we thought they may be entitled to claim Stigma
Damages. In fact the marketing initiative opened the door to all manner of
other types of employment claims on behalf of these people, aside from the
Stigma issue. So a marketing success story. But for large law firms, by the
time large firms have cleared all the internal approvals necessary for an
initiative like this, the window of opportunity has often closed! I have to say
it's one of the reasons I so enjoy being in a small firm."
But there are plenty of small firms that don't move as smartly in the marketplace as Silverman Sherliker, I point out. In many cases, other firms’ “where next”, especially when it comes to smart use of social media, is a matter of catching up with Sherliker et al. Thanks for showing us how it’s done Chris!
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If this is a subject close to your heart, you might like to take a closer look at a short film by Changing Faces that screened in 750 cinemas in the UK a while ago and challenged the "scarred baddie" stereotype.
Donations are still being accepted on the Serle Court JustGiving page. You can click here.
"Would you wear denim custom ripped by lions and tigers?" Prize for standout headine this week has to go to The Guardian for its lead into this astonishing story about Japanese brand Zoo Jeans, "the only jeans on earth designed by dangerous animals." Unbelievably, lions, bears and tigers are involved in a process where denim is thrown into their compounds at a Hitachi zoo until the material is ripped and torn. Of course The Guardian didn't miss the obvious Zoolander references. If it had been a plotline in that very silly comedy masterpiece it wouldn't be any harder to believe. Fact really is stranger than fiction.
