Mills & Reeve’s head of international, Tom Pickthorn, discusses relationship firms, secondments and how trainees can gain international experience
“Bearing in mind that we don’t have any overseas offices, someone once asked if being head of international at Mills & Reeve is like being an admiral in the Swiss Navy,” says Tom Pickthorn, laughing. The reality, he tells Legal Cheek Careers, is “much more rewarding than that”. “Somewhere between 30% and 40%, and growing, of our turnover comes from matters with an international element.”
His job is to coordinate the firm’s cross-border relationships, both referring work out and receiving it from law firms abroad.
Pickthorn’s own route into the role was far from a straight line. He completed his training contract at a Magic Circle firm and stayed for about six years after qualifying, “thinking it would give me a passport to see the world”. The result? “The furthest I got was Middlesbrough, which was great, but not quite the bohemian experience I had envisioned.”
He later moved to Mills & Reeve as an M&A lawyer focused on corporate law and found that “many of my deals happened to have an international component by chance”. “I think that’s true for most careers; they take unexpected turns,” he reflects. “I didn’t expect to join Mills & Reeve and end up travelling as much as I do, but here we are.”
The firm’s international strategy rests on a choice that sets it apart from others in its band. “We made a very conscious decision, unlike other firms in our band, not to open overseas offices,” Pickthorn explains. The first reason is scope. “If you open a Paris office for corporate and banking, you soon need tax, employment and share scheme specialists. Before long, you need 40 specialists in that single office.” The second is geography. “Once you open in Paris, you inevitably need to expand offices in Brussels, Luxembourg, Amsterdam and beyond.”
Instead, Mills & Reeve works with independent firms abroad. Pickthorn believes this is better for clients, who get “real local firms that have full services and are deep-rooted in their local business communities”.
“Coming from a Magic Circle law firm, where some overseas offices were great and others less so, I realised that tapping into independent firms similar to us across the globe creates a much more rewarding experience for us, delivers better outcomes for our UK clients and opens doors to win work from foreign clients operating in the UK.”
In practice, the firm typically maintains two or three “relationship firms” in each jurisdiction. Its closest ties are in the Netherlands, Germany and France, where it holds affiliations or rights of first refusal. Elsewhere, Pickthorn prefers to give clients a choice, or “horses for courses”, between two or three top local options.
“Incidentally, we are by some margin the largest English law firm without any offices outside England, he says. “That massively increases referral work from firms abroad because we aren’t competing with them on their home turf.”
He sees no clash with the firm’s UK footprint. “There’s no conflict at all. It makes the firm very easy to sell overseas because our UK scale allows us to cover virtually everything an international client or law firm requires.”
The best of these relationships go well beyond a handshake between partners. Pickthorn describes groups across different seniority levels and practice areas working together and says: “Some of our relationships with partners in foreign firms are as close as, if not closer than, those with our internal partners. It operates like a true collaborative partnership where one plus one equals three, allowing us to win work together that neither firm could secure alone.”
The partner firms share three traits, he says: outstanding client service whatever the size of the deal, a commitment to treating people with care and respect, and a willingness to invest in the relationship.
For juniors, a key route in secondments. “Building friendships and connections across all career levels” is key, says Pickthorn, and “secondments are central to this”. During his time at the firm, it has organised two-way associate secondments with firms in Australia, the US, India, the UAE, China, France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
These range from two-week exchanges, where an associate spends time with a German firm, attends meetings and builds contacts, to three-month placements in Australia, split between Melbourne and Sydney, where they actively work on matters. “It is a fantastic experience for associates and ensures the next generation of leaders build early relationships.”
Looking ahead, Pickthorn wants “over 40%” of the firm’s work to have an international dimension. That means assembling top local firms for UK businesses in jurisdictions such as France, Germany and Spain, which he says is “a much easier sell to a client than offering a small branch presence in a jurisdiction”, as well as winning more work directly from overseas clients. Having evolved from a regional firm into a national firm over the last 20 years, Mills & Reeve is now targeting global clients “without incurring the massive overhead of international real estate”.
Growing the firm, he argues, means teaching everyone how to build business. “Law schools don’t teach lawyers how to sell,” while at his first firm, “we did no selling. At Mills & Reeve, everyone from trainees upward gets involved in business development early on.”
But what does all of this mean for trainees and junior lawyers?
Pickthorn says it is very common to work alongside international lawyers or clients on UK-based matters, such as working alongside lawyers in Boston or sub-contracting for a French firm.
He points to one current partner who, as a junior lawyer, spoke a European language to a near-native standard. Pickthorn encouraged him to travel to that country, “where his language fluency stood out exceptionally well with clients”. His promotion to partner was “largely driven by the client base he built in that jurisdiction”.
Language skills are “very helpful”, Pickthorn says. “An open-minded, approachable nature, adaptability and the confidence to communicate across different cultures are equally vital.”
His advice for new joiners is simple. “Put your hand up for transactions with international components. While we won’t post you to Japan for two years, trainees at Mills & Reeve get significantly more direct responsibility early on than they would at traditional international firms. If you push yourself forward, the opportunities are there.”
And in five years’ time? “I want clients to choose us because our independent international network delivers a superior service by giving them access to established local firms in each jurisdiction,” says Pickthorn. “For trainees and associates, I want them to choose Mills & Reeve because they’ll gain more hands-on international experience and responsibility here than anywhere else.”
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