#88 Leaving big law to build a boutique law firm: Abigail Reynolds on owner dependence

Host: Graham Stephen, CEO and co-founder, bizval

Guest: Abigail Reynolds, Founder, Reynolds Attorneys, Cape Town. LinkedIn. Website: reynoldsattorneys.co.za

[00:00:01] Intro: Welcome to the bizval podcast. At bizval, we are passionate about empowering entrepreneurs the world over to understand and unlock the value in their business. We work with advisers and entrepreneurs to demystify the value creation process when building a business. At bizval, we know how tough it is to grow and run a business, which is exactly why we’ve made valuation simple to understand, accurate and affordable. Our unique blend of tech and touch ensures that you always receive the best service, authentic human engagement and data insights to ensure that you build a business that provides you with freedom and choice. In the bizval podcast, we showcase stories of real entrepreneurs and advisers, sharing lessons and inspiration from their journeys to make your journey just that little bit easier.

[00:00:53] Graham Stephen: Today’s guest has sat in a number of seats. Most people I know only sit in one seat. She’s trained and practiced as a corporate lawyer in big law. She’s crossed the table and spent years inside private banking, working on the legal side of the money that funds acquisitions and buyouts. And then she decided to do the thing that very few senior lawyers do. She left, and she’s built her own practice, with her own name over the door. So, Abigail Reynolds, welcome to the bizval podcast.

[00:01:22] Abigail Reynolds: Thank you, Graham. It’s so lovely to be here. Thank you.

[00:01:29] Graham Stephen: So, rather than reading out your CV, and I’m one of those people who, when I make hires, I skim-read a CV, not put it in the bin, but skim-read it, and then have a conversation. But why don’t you just introduce yourself briefly to our listeners? Who are you, and what does Reynolds Attorneys actually do for the businesses that hire you?

[00:01:52] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. So I’m a corporate and commercial law attorney myself, personally. I wanted very much to be self-employed, and I wanted to have the clients I want and not be pressurized to work for people I didn’t, those sorts of things. I had quite a lot of principles around how I wanted to work. So I started my own law firm, and I run it where all my other attorneys are consultants to it, so that the personnel management is minimal. I can attract and work with very senior boutique law firm attorneys, service clients on the high end like that, but have a lean, mobile ship to run. So I’m a Cape Town girl now, come out of Zimbabwe, but all my training and work experience has been done here.

[00:02:35] Graham Stephen: Yeah, fantastic. So we’re going to dive a little bit deeper, but I think that gives us a nice starting point. And I always like, when we have these conversations, to start at the beginning. You’ve already indicated that you grew up in Zimbabwe, but let’s start there. Talk a bit about growing up in Zimbabwe. And obviously you moved to Cape Town during your growing-up years, but what did the adults around you teach you, deliberately or by accident? And what did you learn in that growing-up experience about work, money and risk, so to speak?

[00:03:08] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah, it’s really interesting for me to look back at that. Starting with my parents, they were really very liberal and wanting to break their own boundaries. My mom didn’t want to only have the option of being a nurse. She became a highly respected anthropologist, with doctorates, five degrees, professorships, all things under her belt. So she modeled that for me. My dad was an economist. My mom and dad both just did really good work, chasing values rather than chasing money. That was interesting, because it taught me a lot about the value of giving back and the value of good work. On the one hand, when I studied law, I actually worried that I wasn’t doing what my parents had done. I wasn’t having a direct, beautiful impact on the world, but I’ve become quite an avid volunteer. So that’s the one lesson from them. On the other hand, you spoke about what was modeled for business and money and things. From their perspective, we had a very, very exciting and international life as children. Things got a little bit more financially difficult when we moved to South Africa, I think, and then I realized I wanted to be more financially secure. So actually their giving-back, academic position in life made me want a little bit more financial security, and probably why I became a professional. That’s also stood me well for where I am now in life and for my future. So that’s all good. I’m both the avid volunteer that they would wish and financially stable.

Otherwise, I was actually born in India. My parents moved around a lot. My dad worked for the World Bank. They were there for a number of years. We moved to Cape Town. We moved back to Zimbabwe when it became independent. We moved to Cape Town when Mandela was released. So we did all kinds of interesting movements as a family, and I think it’s rubbed off on me in various ways. We were four daughters in my family. We weren’t treated as any kind of gender as such. We just were made to do all the things and get along. And so I think I’m quite a strong woman. I’m not afraid of being around men. I think that was a sort of genderless, well, not genderless, but non-prejudicial upbringing that I had, which I think you’ll probably all see. Anyone who knows me will know I’m just me. [laughter]

[00:05:19] Graham Stephen: You know, something you spoke about there is that you moved around quite a bit as a child. Born in India, living in Zimbabwe, and that period of time was both a new dawn in Zimbabwe and in South Africa, and it was an interesting time because, coming from Zimbabwe, a lot of people were leaving the country, a lot of uncertainty. And now obviously you’ve been in Cape Town for the greater part of your life, so very grounded. But what did that teach you? Maybe not even at the time, you probably didn’t think anything of it, but being in an environment that was quite fluid, maybe battling to put down roots and moving around, do you think that left a mark on how you think about life and business today?

[00:06:14] Abigail Reynolds: I think it left a mark, probably in a risk-averse way, which is probably why I run a law practice and I’m not highly entrepreneurial. I have a sister who I’m very close to, but it is quite different, [unclear], who became incredibly entrepreneurial and just sold a beautiful business that she built. But yeah, on the business side, what I took from my parents, and from seeing the moves, was more the difficulty of it. On the human side, I saw things like coming to South Africa and having the first Black or non-white person in the school here, whereas in Zimbabwe we’d grown up with all of them around, all those other sorts of things. So on the political, diverse side, there was a lot that I picked up even at that age, not just looking back. There was obviously a lot of importance on intellectualism in my family, on being academic. So I went to Westerford, which is a great high school, and prized academia. There are a lot of those kinds of influences, and I see them come through in the work I do. It’s about being bright, quick, clever, containing knowledge, and then also it’s a risk-averse type of business. So I can just see my personality reflected in my law. [laughter]

[00:07:31] Graham Stephen: But I guess also having been in different countries and different cultures, you learn to appreciate the value of that diversity and other people’s perspectives of things, which sometimes is hard to articulate. We’ve also had a few engagements, and it comes through in the way that you engage with people. And I guess as a lawyer, being able to see different sides of the coin is a bit of a superpower which you don’t even realize that you have, right?

[00:07:55] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. [laughter] Maybe. Maybe. I did some fun things to open my eyes, as all youngsters must. I did the [unclear] race, the first high school team ever, and went on a Rotary Exchange to Argentina, deep into a foreign-language country. All those good things ground us and teach us those soft skills.

[00:08:16] Graham Stephen: Absolutely. So let’s go on to your early career, your articles, maybe some of the mentors that shaped you. You studied at UCT, and you came out, I guess, with the law degree and the law qualifications, and let’s talk about those early years, doing your law articles and going into corporate law in Cape Town. Talk a bit about those years. You’re the first lawyer in the family, I guess, so you didn’t have a blueprint in terms of what to expect, but talk a little bit about those first few years.

[00:08:49] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. No, I mean, I was lucky, those things were sort of easy for me. University was just wonderful, easy, did well. I had the opportunity to work under some beautiful people like Judge Dennis Davis and do research under him, to assist with how the new Companies Act was being drafted, so I had a lot of great experiences there. I took a few years off along the way to earn some money and travel through modeling, I feel ashamed to say, but one shouldn’t. I bought my first flat. It was just exciting times. So I qualified as a slightly older attorney, but I just did better and better. I mean, to go to university, every year you mature, and it actually just streamlines what you’re learning, what you want to do.

Then I got great articles at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr in Cape Town, and that was a great experience too. As you say, Joe was a mentor for me there, and I learned from him things like you can be a gentle leader, you must earn loyalty and trust. He was just wonderful like that, he really was. There was no aggression or anger or chauvinism. He was beautiful to work under. I did my articles there, and then I went on. That was quite interesting. I made the choice to leave a very big firm for a smaller firm called Bernadt Vukic Potash & Getz, for the reason of working with a very brilliant corporate law attorney called Keith Getz. So that was my first decision, to just follow the brains. He was amazing. I was like a deer in the headlights. Wonderful. If I could wish anything, probably I’d have worked longer with him, but I still see him, and we still work together in a collaborative manner. So that was my articles. I bumped into things like, if you play with the rugby ball past five o’clock in the office, people think you stayed late. Interesting games to learn. [laughter] I saw that [unclear] too. So there’s an interesting way about how women work and men work and what’s actually seen and noted.

[00:10:54] Graham Stephen: A few things there, I think. You obviously had that life experience, and maybe weren’t the youngest. A lot of people, whether it’s accounting or law, go straight after school, they study, they get out of the way, do articles at 21, but at that stage what do you actually know about the world? So I guess you came in with a slightly different, maybe more worldly perspective, and I think that’s often something that gets, not ignored, but undervalued in some ways. I want to draw a little on what then happened. You did articles at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, which is obviously, let’s call it, a big law firm, some great mentors there in Joe, and then you also went to the smaller law firm, and I want to explore that a little bit. I think people have the impression of the US law firms, whether it’s Suits or, giving away my age, LA Law, one of those shows on TV. But in your mind, what is the difference between, let’s call it, a big law firm, and what do they genuinely do well, versus a smaller law firm, or boutique or niche firm? What are the pros and cons, or strengths and weaknesses, of each of those two opposite sides of the spectrum, so to speak?

[00:12:20] Abigail Reynolds: Oh yeah. So look, the big law firm has an enormous place, definitely, especially if you’re working in an area of specialty that is super unique. They have the space and the training and the money to put behind such a person, and you’ll find specialists there like nowhere else. There are many areas of law where you can’t find a specialist outside of a big firm. You just can’t, or areas of law that require big teams. So there’s definitely that. Then there’s also their name, their reputation, which some people want to take into the heavyweight fight, and that’s also fine. There’s their international transactional experience and also their reach, with offices elsewhere. So they have a big place to play there. They can call on the phone and bring in specialists from all kinds of areas in other countries. They might have larger professional indemnity cheques to pay out.

But if we start to talk about the kind of… okay, sorry, I just want to say one thing on listed company work. They all have loads of specialists. I don’t do any listed company work. I do non-listed private company work. If you start to talk about the kind of deals in the area that I play in, which is lovely, I’m very happy with the kind of chunky private company work I do, I can’t see much of a benefit to going to a big firm, as long as someone like me and the other boutique lawyers really do quality work and know their stuff back to front. I just can’t see that the big firm can beat us on all the other deliverables. So there’s a place for them, but they’ll be much more expensive. They’re likely to be quite a lot slower, just in turnaround times. It might just be because of how much work they have to manage. But part of our major sales pitch for a firm like me is to be super, super quick on turnaround time, super on the ball, super available to you. And in the big firm, you’ll have juniors or mid-tier attorneys on your matter no matter what. You won’t necessarily know who’s doing part of the work. It’ll possibly elevate the bill, and also maybe there’ll be some cracks where the lower-quality work comes through in the documents.

[00:14:39] Graham Stephen: Yeah. I guess it’s not as black and white as this, but often it’s about risk and risk transfer, right? If you are a listed company, often the reason you work with the big law firm is because of the name, because they’ve got the multi-million dollar public liability, and you’re working with them because you want the sticker. Ultimately management is still responsible for a lot of things, but there’s a different risk dynamic. Smaller law firms are obviously a lot more geared towards private businesses, private business owners. And if you think about it, that’s the heartbeat of the economies in terms of numbers and volume and whatever. I think it’s not necessarily a difference of better or worse quality of the law being practiced, but often if you’re a small business owner or mid-tier business owner and you get a big law firm, you’re often paying for stuff that you don’t need. You want professionalism, you want the right expertise, and just having that big sticker on the bill is often not necessary. We see the same thing in the work that we do. There’s a time and a place, and there’s a risk appetite that we as a boutique firm can’t get involved in and won’t get involved with, let’s call it listed companies. But for the vast majority of private businesses, we work with those firms often, because a lot of the big law, big accounting firms will say, hey, this is not work that’s really suited to us, work with boutique firms. I’m not sure if you find the same in the law practice. You’ve got those good relationships in place, and it works the other way around as well, where you pass on work to people in the big firms. So are you seeing a similar thing in the law space?

[00:16:35] Abigail Reynolds: Well, I do not see big firms passing work down. They’ve got plenty of… [laughter] [unclear]. But yeah, definitely, what I would only say is, if you’re in this private business space, and the kind of deals we speak about, mergers and acquisitions and BEE transactions and that, I just don’t take a boutique attorney who’s a generalist. That’s it. Just find one who’s a specialist, and you’re good to go.

[00:17:04] Graham Stephen: So let’s talk a little bit about, as you moved on in your career, you’ve done your articles, you’ve worked in big law, you’ve worked in smaller law, you haven’t yet started your own practice. But you did something unusual. You stepped out and you went to work inside a bank. So you joined Investec Private Bank in the growth and acquisition finance team. So let’s talk about that period of time. One, why did you step out of, let’s call it, the profession, so to speak, to go to the other side of the table? And what did you find interesting about being in that sort of environment?

[00:17:42] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. Well, for one thing, Investec was and is a great brand. I’ve always respected it. So I was excited to have the opportunity to work there. I wanted to leave practice for a while and see what happened on the financing and lending side of the transactions that I was now starting to get to real grips with through my law training. They have an exciting banking team, an exciting finance and lending team in the Cape Town office. I didn’t know at the time that I’d come back to practicing law, though. I thought at the time that I was probably leaving practice. Anyway, it was great. So I went to the growth and acquisition team in the Cape Town Investec office, and because they do some of the bigger deals that the bank does, outside of probably property, we got to work really closely with the senior people in the credit committee and in-house legal. I wasn’t in-house legal, I was in the growth and acquisition team directly there as an attorney. We were often mentored by and worked closely with the MD. If any legal documents were outsourced, we were working with seniors at the big firms. So it was just a nice place to be, to learn an enormous amount and see how the bank managed these kinds of transactions. I saw what the clients asked for, how they felt, what they could offer, where they buckled. It was a really great experience. I enjoyed that very much, and I think it really helped me when I did decide to come back to practicing law, to add an enormous amount of value which I couldn’t have as quickly picked up or seen in practice.

[00:19:18] Graham Stephen: Yeah. Let’s talk about that for a second. For these four years you’re sitting on the lender side of the table, rather than the client side. What did you see about business owners from the inside of the bank that perhaps you hadn’t seen when you were on the other side of the table? And there’s a second part to that question. We often talk about investment readiness and raising funding, whether it’s for a deal and all of that sort of stuff, but maybe what were some of the things that you saw from that side of the table, when the bank has to sit and make a credit decision, that make them lose confidence in the business or say no to a lending or funding decision? Let’s talk a bit about that, Abby.

[00:20:01] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. I mean, notwithstanding that the clients coming to Investec for funding were already going to be quite high net worth and successful, nonetheless, if they weren’t investor-ready, you just saw the deals taking forever, and the bankers, the growth and acquisition dealmakers, just fighting and fussing over things like financials and records. And then you just saw credit throwing arms up and kicking things out. So we did see business owners getting deeply frustrated, but also having an enormous learning curve themselves. They came unprepared for any kind of investment. I mean, you’re just not going to take steps forward at all if you aren’t investor-ready. At the time it was quite exciting, early days of BEE transactions. So it was quite interesting, structuring BEE financing, and there was a lot going on there. But we saw some deals just stumble and fall if the people weren’t able to produce the kind of verifiable, trustworthy documents that they needed to put in front of credit.

[00:21:05] Graham Stephen: Yeah. I mean, that’s super interesting. We often deal with business owners getting ready for a sale or trying to raise money, and there’s always a build-up. Often they think, I need the money, I want to go now. But there’s a build-up. It’s a year, often two years, before you do that. And I guess the point you’re making, from the other side of the table, is if you don’t have that stuff ready, the bank, the credit committee, loses confidence, because they think, well, if you don’t have that ready, what else don’t you have ready? So it’s better to do the heavy lifting before you approach a bank for financing. You might not have everything that you need, but if you’ve got 90%… delays kill deals. We hear that all the time. And it’s not because of the delay itself, but because people slowly start to lose confidence in the management and what sits beneath the surface, right?

[00:21:54] Abigail Reynolds: Yes. And what’s interesting about that is that now I’m back working for a client in a transaction, a seller or buyer, I see that in the due diligence process. Those are the people that have scrambled. The due diligence can be very heavy and hectic, the bigger the deals, but there are the people who have to struggle to pull together the documents that need to be put together and presented, versus the ones that are ready with just beautiful records and information. It also harms their business if they’re a seller and they need to spend many months paying attention to building a due diligence pack that they otherwise should have ready. So yeah, it’s interesting to see that still, on the buy side.

[00:22:32] Graham Stephen: Yeah. So Abby, I want to move a little bit further on your journey now. You spent this time at Investec, sitting on that side of the table, as you said. You never intended to go back into the profession, so to speak, but you did. First and foremost, you’ve had your own practice now what, 15, 16 years almost. What made you decide to do that? You had the CV, the credentials, you could probably walk into any partnership, but you decided to put your name on the door. So one, why did you decide to go back into practice? And then secondly, once you decided to do that, what did you want to do differently with your own firm compared to what you had seen in other firms you had worked with before?

[00:23:24] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. So I wanted to go back into practice because I wanted badly to be self-employed. I’m very diligent and hardworking, pretty Type A. I didn’t want to be clock-watched. I just wanted to do the work. I wanted to build direct client relationships. And I love practicing law. So I was excited about that. So I came out to practice on my own. Then I wanted a lighter structure, because I didn’t want to manage people. I didn’t want to manage a lot of people. That’s still how I feel today. So I started with the consultancy structure right off the bat, as it was just never going to be an employment structure for me. And I wanted to be free from administrative tasks, to practice this corporate law that I love. So it was quite a clear decision to me. What I did find strange, because I hadn’t come from a sales or entrepreneurial family and I hadn’t had that experience up until then, was that just by picking up the phone and going to meet people, I covered my salary and some within three months. What I found interesting about that was I thought, well, surely every businessman’s got their attorney, they knew them at school or they found them, so will there be space for me? But I was lucky, my CV was good in relation to my age at the time, the firms I’d been at, the mentors I’d had, the Investec bank experience. It was amazing. I found that sort of pick-up of business really easy, and that surprised me and was another learning curve, about confidence in sales and your career path being important, what you put into your CV and your experience.

[00:25:12] Graham Stephen: Yeah. I think that’s an important part in the business that we operate in. It’s the business of relationships and trust. Yes, you’ve got the competency in law or business valuations or whatever that might be, but it’s still largely relational. And people often think of sales. I remember growing up, my dad was a sales rep for a period. And when you go around the class and ask what your parents did and you say, “He’s a sales rep,” it was almost a dirty word, because he wasn’t a lawyer or a doctor or one of those things. But now that I have the maturity and, I guess, maybe a little bit more wisdom and gray hairs, you actually realize sales is about relationships first and foremost. And it’s the quality of those relationships in a professional firm that allows you to grow. It allows you to take on the work that you want to do rather than the work that you have to do to pay the bills, right? So what you say resonates a lot with me. But let’s go back to those first two or three years. You obviously had the strength of your CV, some good relationships, but still, in those first few years, there must have been some things that you got horribly wrong. Thinking back, and maybe it’s a long way, maybe you were the A-type overachiever who got everything right, but for anyone else sitting there thinking, oh, I want to go and do my own law firm, what are the things they need to be thinking about? What are the lessons learned that they can, hopefully, make some mistakes but not make the big ones?

[00:26:49] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah, it’s just such a tricky question, because it’s such an easy business to run, such a light business to run, especially the way I do, without giant offices and numerous employees, on purpose. There’s not a lot of mistakes on that side. There’s not a lot of cash flow mistakes that you can make, all that kind of thing. So, yeah. It’s a very easy business to run. It was perfect. No, kidding.

[00:27:16] Graham Stephen: [laughter] Did you write a book? How do you build the perfect law business? [laughter]

[00:27:22] Abigail Reynolds: It wasn’t that difficult. No. I mean, it really is a light business to run. It really is. And that’s fine. This is what I wanted. I think I’ll just lean on the things I know better now. It is easy. You can acquire whatever clients. Don’t be shy, just go for it, and the deal flow, the deal size, increases. I just tell everyone they can do it, really. I meet with people all the time to encourage them if they want to do it. There’s space out there. Not a lot of bad lessons. Easy business to run.

[00:27:52] Graham Stephen: But let’s just talk hypothetically about some things. One of the things we’ve learned in business is payment terms, right? Simple things like taking payment before you start the job versus [unclear]. When you’re doing things yourself, you don’t have a whole team of accountants and debt collectors and what have you. Contracts, for instance, keeping those things simple. Just talk a bit about how you thought about those things. Obviously you had thought about them and it was easy, but let’s flip the question around: what are the things you did well that did make it easy to run? You didn’t have to go and buy massive equipment and that, but let’s explore that a bit.

[00:28:40] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. Well, you remind me of one thing I did silly and wrong, so I’ll tell you now. But I chose all along, from the very beginning, not to take deposits for my work and just to go on trust. I didn’t want to do the admin, and not just for the admin’s sake, of opening a trust account, taking in the client’s fees up front. So I’ve worked on trust all along, still do, and it’s worked for me, other than this one story which I’ll tell you now. That’s an admin-light approach. It wasn’t done to be admin-light, it’s just done because you don’t always pay for services up front. Why should you? So, other than that, I don’t do litigation. My litigation consultant specialists would practice that under their own law firm, and they will want to take deposits, and fair enough, off they go. Fair enough. The same for conveyancing or divorce. But yeah, that’s also been, not a moral decision, but a trust-based, relational decision, as you say. With a new client, you put yourself out there, but then from then on out… But if I can now, my story where I did get it wrong. [laughter] That one time. I’ve forgotten.

I worked for a client for quite a long time, quite intensely. So there were a lot of hours over a number of months, and along the way they had said, no, I can get shares, which I don’t ever normally do, but I can get shares in the business instead of having fees paid. And I liked them so much, we worked closely, and on we went. Next thing you know, and this is long ago, so I was much younger, there was a million rand owing and I hadn’t collected, and they left the country and they disappeared. That was a knock. And I just was like, I am so naive. You just can’t be. But I’ll never do that again. And not that I haven’t swung the other way to be cynical about it, but…

[00:30:35] Graham Stephen: Yeah. You wouldn’t leave that so insecure in the future. Absolutely.

[00:30:40] Abigail Reynolds: I was in my sort of mid-30s at the time.

[00:30:43] Graham Stephen: Yeah. No, it’s interesting, because a lot of people say, especially in private businesses, getting paid in shares sounds great often, and in many instances it can work.

[00:30:55] Abigail Reynolds: But yeah, I never even got the shares in this instance, so it wasn’t…

[00:31:00] Graham Stephen: But in many cases, actually, you’ve got to be careful. Even those shares, they may not have had the liquidity to actually pay you. If it was a listed company, what do you do? You sell the shares on the stock exchange, whereas with a private company, sometimes it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, right? So let’s talk about your firm. You’ve spoken about this a lot. Your structure is unusual in the sense that you don’t carry a full bench of employed attorneys, so you don’t have to worry about making payroll if no work comes in this month. But you have handpicked specialists across tax, IP, data privacy, conveyancing, whatever it is. So you essentially run a virtual office. You’re almost like the conductor of the orchestra. Talk me through that ecosystem, and what it gives you and your clients, an edge over perhaps going to a bigger firm with a whole payroll of juniors and a Foreshore office and all of those things. Why do you think it works so well?

[00:32:06] Abigail Reynolds: I think it works well because they’re working with such high-level specialists already, at lower rates than big firms, because that’s where we pitch ourselves.

[00:32:15] Graham Stephen: Okay. So price is a factor. You don’t have to factor in your office, which comes with a cost, right? [laughter] Yeah. Good coffee.

[00:32:22] Abigail Reynolds: What they have is maybe better coffee, but [laughter] that’s all right. I mean, our specialists are just so niche and very, very specialist and excellent, and they left big law for no bad reasons, only for personal aspirations. And I don’t have to work with them if I am irritated with how I see anything, or how they aren’t quick enough for the client. I stay in CC a lot, on all things like long litigations or anything, because I like to keep a sort of watching eye, because I care for my clients so much. It’s not micromanagement of my consultants, but yeah, they’re not on my payroll, so if they aren’t wonderful, I don’t need to continue the relationship with them. Luckily, they’ve almost all been absolutely wonderful, and the relationship is as old as my law firm. The clients get to know them really well, too. So they are the same permanent specialists that I would recommend to [unclear].

[00:33:12] Graham Stephen: And I guess there’s a different power dynamic as well. You’re engaging each other as fellow professionals, as opposed to boss and junior, in a way. So if there’s something that needs to be challenged… I’m talking about a completely different topic, but in Air Crash Investigations, I think it was in South Korea many years ago, there was a series of air crashes, and the junior pilots, because of the way the society was structured, even though the warning light was beeping on the plane, they wouldn’t tell the senior captain, because he was an older gentleman, so to speak, and their society didn’t enforce that. The same thing happens in big firms as well, where sometimes the juniors don’t speak up. But now, in law, you want people to speak up, you want them to debate. So I suppose that structure also facilitates that kind of engagement and discussion.

[00:34:06] Abigail Reynolds: Absolutely, absolutely. And just out of interest, some consultants are listed on my website, but many aren’t, because if they’re looser, or I won’t bring that area of law matter to them often, or if they feel a little bit awkward about being named on another website. In any event, my goal is to find, for a client that comes to me, a boutique specialist attorney that can help them, because if they’re asking me, they don’t want a referral to the big firm, for fee or turnaround time reasons. So I try to keep a really good network of who’s out there, who’s left big law, who’s really niche, and have them on my panel. I’ll spend quite a lot of time charging around trying to find you the right person if you come to me and ask for it.

[00:34:47] Graham Stephen: Yeah. I think that ecosystem is so powerful if you get it right. If you’ve got your little Rolodex, so to speak, with the right person for the job, and people respect and appreciate that it’s not one-size-fits-all. I’m talking from a client perspective as well. I think that’s part of the appeal, right?

[00:35:10] Abigail Reynolds: Absolutely. And I just thought I’d tell you also where I found some of my specialist attorneys, and what has also been probably valuable: I don’t have an empty corridor, or no corridor, that I can’t walk down to bounce ideas off with attorneys. Actually, it’s such great timing, from the year that I left Investec to start my own law firm, we’ve had a collaboration amongst various boutique law firm attorneys, a very loose one, that has just become 15 years old now. We just call it Think Tank. We meet to go through new legislation that comes out, to pick it apart together. We call each other on WhatsApp or on email. We meet ad hoc, just to bounce things off each other and challenge each other in that manner, like a corridor of lawyers would. And that’s been, I think, probably valuable. A number of my consultant attorneys I found in that space, because we are all in some way commercial attorneys but come with different specialties, like tech or data privacy.

[00:36:05] Graham Stephen: Absolutely. So let’s be honest now. I just want to go back to the big law firm. When a business is sitting with your quote on the one hand and a large firm’s quote or engagement letter on the other hand, what is, in your perspective, the real reason they pick you? And in what circumstances would you actually say to them, hey, listen, I think you’re better off going with one of the big four or the big five or however many there are in that space?

[00:36:31] Abigail Reynolds: So the only thing I think is tricky, if they’ve got the two quotes in hand, is if they don’t know me or my service attention, because I think that’s a huge aspect of why I succeed. If they don’t know me, they will always have been recommended to me in one way or another. If my quote is in their hand, then it’s just price, and I also worry it’s just price. They’ll come to me, hopefully, over price. But if they don’t know me and they’re unsure, they may say, yes, I’ll just stay at the big firm. What you never know, which is so frustrating, is what the scope of work is that’s included in other quotes. It really annoys me that you never get to see it and you can’t ever say, you know, they might be falling on their face by taking that other quote, because it could be for a third of the scope of work and four times as high. But you don’t get the opportunity to see what the other quote is. I want, for the client and for me, to be detail-oriented, let the scope be clear. There it is. But I sometimes wonder if other people’s quotes are vague, or comparing apples with pears.

[00:37:34] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. You don’t know, but then maybe they come back.

[00:37:39] Graham Stephen: So, Abby, before we bring it to a close, you’re running your own business, you’re a lawyer, and I want to put a question to you that I often put to founders on the show. In a law firm, it’s often harder than most other businesses. The business has got your surname. Your consultants are handpicked by you. Your clients come to you because of your personal reputation. And one of the things, when we talk about creating value, the single biggest thing is often what is the level of owner dependence. So what happens if you take a three-week vacation? In business value terms, it’s often the biggest destroyer of value in owner-managed businesses. So I want to understand how you think about that. What happens if you decide to go to Mauritius for two weeks next week? Have you ever thought about building this into something that you could step away from and merge or sell, or has it always just been for you? I understand that you’re a practitioner, and as such you may never be able to sell the business, but you will build your personal wealth plan, whatever that looks like, independent of that. I just want to get into your mind as to how you thought about that process.

[00:38:57] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. So the thinking has only been of late, as opposed to initially. But yes, it’s funny, because my clients are probably the same kind of clients you have. I work for clients to help them build their exit from a legal perspective. We walk through all the years with them, help them exit, see them out the other side, as frustrated entrepreneurs now tied in to work their three years out with the listed company. But no, I am not building at the moment, stupidly or not, I’m not building a practice that I can sell. It’s very much about me. I do have the workflow that I take to my consultant attorneys. So I do have that, and I have attorneys that can carry through the matters while I’m on leave very comfortably, but I’m not building a business to sell. It’s just tricky in the professional environment, I’m sure. And I don’t want to have the big number of employees that one might need, or partners that one might need, to try to reach that goal, because even still it would be quite tricky as a law firm. So I’m not sure that… you see the growth and that outcome and the drive with all my clients, and it’s interesting, and I support them all there. But no, I don’t have a business I’ll sell one day myself.

[00:40:20] Graham Stephen: Yeah. And I think the point I want to bring out, though, is there’s no right or wrong answer. Often, if you read the media and you read all of that, it’s like if you’re running a business and you can’t sell it, you’re doing something wrong. And I guess this applies to a bunch of professions, doctors, whatever, where you’re actually doing the work and you enjoy it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s going into it and understanding that intentionally. So if that is a path you’re going on, if you do want to retire, we’re all going to get older, our health might change, all of those things, what are the things that you need to put in place to make sure that you can do that? Treat this like you would if you were employed. Put some money aside every month towards a holiday fund, so that when you can’t work, when you take your leave, you can do that. I think those are the critical things we need to talk about. Not everybody has to be chasing something of massive value that they can exit and go and retire at 45. So I think that’s the point I really wanted to bring out. But then how do you maintain that discipline? Because when times are good, do you consciously say, hey, listen, I actually need to put some stuff aside for a rainy day? Do you think it forces you to be more disciplined because you’re building a business in that way?

[00:41:44] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah, I mean, I’d hope so, but that’s where the desire for financial stability that I took away from my parents, more almost like nonprofit-style work, came from. So that hasn’t been a problem for me, because that’s kind of front of mind for me. And that discipline side. And then maybe if you’re a lawyer, you’re pretty disciplined to start with, so we’re not going to struggle with that side of it. But no, the wealth creation has been very conscious too, alongside the understanding of what my practice is.

[00:42:16] Graham Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. And we’re going to wrap up this part of the discussion. I think it’s a really useful discussion, and I hope a lot of our listeners, this resonates with them. Before we wrap up, we always do what we call a rapid-fire section. So it’s literally five or six questions just to get to know you a little bit more. Don’t overthink them. You’re up in the witness box now and you’ve got 30 seconds to answer. But let’s go through that, and then I’m going to give you an opportunity just to share your details if anyone wants to get hold of you. We’ll make that available. So let’s go through the rapid fire. Having done both big firm and your own business, which was harder?

[00:43:08] Abigail Reynolds: Big firm.

[00:43:09] Graham Stephen: Why?

[00:43:11] Abigail Reynolds: Okay, we’re giving the wise [unclear]. [laughter] Lack of independence, being clock-watched and not trusted as much.

[00:43:21] Graham Stephen: Yeah. Having to account for the billing on every single email, right?

[00:43:26] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. If you’re doing it anyway, then trust me, I’ll… [unclear]. Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:30] Graham Stephen: Fixed fee or hourly rate?

[00:43:33] Abigail Reynolds: That’s a tricky one to answer. I’d say fixed fee with a set scope. It’s lovely to offer.

[00:43:39] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I think we do the same. We’re quite precious around the scope up front. I guess in the legal world, litigation becomes difficult, because how long is a piece of string? But if you’re setting up a shareholder agreement or doing an SPA or something along those lines, it’s obviously a lot easier to do that. So set the scope when you can and give certainty to clients. And then the time that you have to discuss it, well, you’re not going to bill that by the second, right?

[00:44:06] Abigail Reynolds: I know. I know.

[00:44:11] Graham Stephen: What in your experience is the clause that most business owners get wrong most often, or a legal principle or something that you’ve dealt with?

[00:44:23] Abigail Reynolds: Well, the agreement that endures is going to be your shareholders’ agreement and your MOI, if you’re not a sole business owner. So then I think you’ve got to look carefully at your deemed offer or forced sale clauses. You’ve got to know [unclear] who can vary, and it can be very cleverly, or calmly, drafted, what action will cause who to have to sell their shares, and then for what price, and how does it play out. I think that is really important.

[00:44:50] Graham Stephen: I’d just echo that, and it’s not generic, by the way, where we sit on our side of the table. Fortunately, people, I should say this, they often get it wrong and then they come to us, because they think by having a clause that says, “Hey, if one of us wants to exit, we will give five times EBITDA,” they’ve protected it. Well, what happens if that exit is on bad terms? What happens if it’s a good sale? What happens if EBITDA has been manipulated? So spend the time and energy on getting that right up front. You’re never going to have every eventuality, but a good lawyer will help you make sure you’ve got the key terms in there. Three more questions. What’s the best advice you were ever given, in one line?

[00:45:40] Abigail Reynolds: Just to be myself. There’s no…

[00:45:43] Graham Stephen: Yeah, just to be yourself. Love that. Okay. We don’t talk about this in the chat, but I know you’ve got a passion for giving back to communities and the environment and all of that sort of stuff. So this is a really tough question. Mediating at the children’s court or clearing alien vegetation at Silvermine Dam. [laughter] Which one resets you faster?

[00:46:05] Abigail Reynolds: Yeah. So, just to explain to the listeners, shame, it’s because I’ve done both on a volunteer basis. [laughter] Definitely clearing alien vegetation at Silvermine Nature Reserve. It’s such a strong passion. I’m happily nerdy like that. [laughter]

[00:46:19] Graham Stephen: Okay. Finish this sentence. A boutique firm beats a big firm when…

[00:46:25] Abigail Reynolds: You need something quickly, at an affordable price, without sacrificing quality.

[00:46:36] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. Abby, it’s been such a pleasure to have you on the show. I appreciate your time and your honesty. And if there’s anybody listening into this, whether they’re a business owner, or a junior lawyer wanting some career advice, and I know you also have a passion for supporting and mentoring other lawyers, how do they get hold of you? What’s the best place to reach out and connect?

[00:47:03] Abigail Reynolds: Thanks, Graham. So I think the best place is my website. I’ll pick up any emails that you send coming off that. So that’s reynoldsattorneys.co.za. Or you can find me on LinkedIn, Abigail Reynolds. I’d love to connect with anyone. Thanks, Graham.

[00:47:22] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. Well, listen, if you’ve been listening into the show, I really hope you enjoyed this conversation. We hope to see you soon, and join us on the next episode of the bizval podcast. Thanks, everyone.

[00:47:33] Abigail Reynolds: Bye-bye.