In June this year, now-partner Tony Macvean stepped down from his role as managing partner, with Graydon Dowd elected as the firm’s chief executive partner from 1 July 2024. Speaking on a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, Macvean reflected on challenges he faced as managing partner and where the firm is headed moving forward following its recent leadership change.

After working at the national firm for almost all of his professional career, Macvean became the managing partner in 2007, after starting at Hall & Wilcox as a graduate lawyer in the ’90s.

“I’m not sure if anyone really knows where they will end up going when they start in a law firm. I certainly didn’t. I was really pleased to get a role. I did have a couple of other options, but decided to go to Hall & Wilcox. It was a great decision. I was very well-supported. Once or twice I looked around and thought about doing other things, but in the end, I continued to be engaged by the role. Opportunities kept opening up. I was challenged and I stayed at the firm,” he said.

“I was in the managing partner role for 17 years until June 2024. And that was an amazing journey. We grew from when I started around about 20 partners, maybe $20 million in revenue, 100 and something people, to when I finished close to 150 partners, about 1,200 people north of $250 million of revenue. We grew from one office to offices all around the country now, and it was just a great experience and lots of fun and really a privilege.”

While Macvean said that the positives of the role and the “great stories” outweigh any negatives along the way, he did still face specific challenges as its managing partner.

“I reflect on when I started, and I certainly realise now that I was really inexperienced, and the partners at the time were really patient with me, and they let me develop in the role. So, I suppose, in the early years that was a challenge. I really had to find my feet as a leader and as a manager and learn on the job. We’ve been fortunate and not faced too many existential challenges in that time, but there were a couple of big client challenges, client conflict type challenges that we had to face and deal with.

“They’re really tricky because when you’re talking about client conflicts, you’re talking about people’s practices and careers as well sometimes. Likewise, we haven’t had too many big partner issues in my time, but we’re dealing with people and partners. And inevitably there were some partner issues over that period that were challenging, you know, once or twice there were some tricky financial type issues that we had to work through. But again, I was very well-supported in my role and none of those were insurmountable,” he explained.

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“COVID, when it all happened, felt like a big challenge, but in the end, I think we turned that into an opportunity. Certainly it was a challenge for some of our people and still continues to be. However, we felt that we responded really well to COVID, and that’s been a good thing for our firm and our people, in the main, so overwhelmingly, lots and lots of positive reflections, lots of highlights, lots of milestones, you know, some challenges on the way, but we managed to work our way through all of those.”

For a managing partner of a big national firm, day-to-day responsibilities mirror those of a CEO, rather than strictly legal responsibilities. In fact, Macvean’s successor is now a chief executive partner, even though the role hasn’t strictly changed “all that much”.

“The managing partner, chief executive partner role, is a business leadership role. When I started, I was 50 per cent practising, 50 per cent leading the firm, and I enjoyed that. I loved practice and I loved combining that with leading the firm. However, as the firm grew and the business became more complex and we became a national firm, it really became apparent that it wasn’t practical for me to do both and I wasn’t able to do either job well. Over time, I transitioned into a full-time managing partner role and while I tried to stay close to clients and involved in one or two projects each year, really, that was my full-time job,” he added.

“I really invested heavily in my development as a business leader. I had attended business school programs, I read widely, I had coaches. Fortunately, I have a commerce and accounting degree, so I understand business. I think for me and in our firm, it helped that I am a lawyer, it helped that I had managed a large practice. I understood what it’s like to service clients, I understood what it’s like to be a lawyer or a partner in a large law firm. But nevertheless, I saw my role as a business leader rather than as a lawyer.”

Now, after a short break, Macvean is working as a partner in special projects and said that the firm is currently still in a transition period.

“We’re still in a transition period where I am working with Graydon to support him as he commences in the role and while at the same time trying to stay out of the way as best I can. Also, we’re finishing our FY24 partner review process and partner compensation, so there are some things that relate to my period as managing partner that we’re still doing. But I will be transitioning completely out of that leadership role into a role where I’m responsible for leading a whole bunch of special projects.

“In particular, I’ll be responsible for leading and driving our markets and client strategy. So, we’re really keen to be more market- and client-focused in how we think about our business. We think there’s a great opportunity for us to build on our growth and all of the great things that we’ve done to really elevate our brand in the market. And it’s something that I didn’t get to do as much of as I would have liked when I was managing partner,” he added.

“Inevitably, however much we want to spend time with clients and in the market, we get caught up on the internal issues and responsibilities. And I’m really excited about spending more time with clients in the market, driving our strategy and supporting partners with that. I’m also exploring other things, which is a separate conversation. But for now, I’m really, really keen to contribute value in this role as a Hall & Wilcox partner, while at the same time letting Graydon run the firm as my successor.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Tony Macvean, click below: