Our transaction teams are about half the size of those fielded by Magic Circle firms.
Our smaller teams work more effectively than large teams of junior and mid-level lawyers supervised by a partner. We provide sustained partner-level focus that is all but impossible to replicate in large firms.
This also holds true for due diligence exercises. For example, we completed due diligence on 83 PFI deals in record time by reducing our planned team of five lawyers to three senior lawyers. Experience and good communication made possible what we could not have accomplished in that time frame with a larger team. (This is a variation of Brooks’s Law, “Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.")
We adjust our teams for optimal size and composition. For example, we completed a US $250 mn global tender offer using two very senior lawyers. A large firm would have used five lawyers. We had started with three but pared the team down to two for efficiency. (Any change to the size or composition of that deal team would have made it sub-optimal: this is Pareto optimalilty.)
Finally, we punch well above our weight (see Bench Strength). That is because we were leaders in our former firms, part of the 'results-generating’ minority that contributed more to our firms’ successes. (We illustrate Price’s Law: 50% of any given result is generated by the square root of the number of those who contribute to it.)