HAVING taken over the management of Burness Paull at the start of last month, chairman Peter Lawson and managing partner Tamar Tammes already feel at home in their roles.

Given that they spent a year shadowing their predecessors – Philip Rodney in Mr Lawson’s case and Ian Wattie in Ms Tammes’s – that should come as no surprise. Only this duo intends to do things differently.

While Mr Rodney was very much known as the public face of the law firm – the man about town who forged many of the firm’s relationships – and Mr Wattie was the behind-the-scenes man, Mr Lawson said that for him and Ms Tammes “the core theme of our leadership is team”.

“Philip and Ian had their own dynamic, which worked very well, but Tamar and I have a different dynamic – we’re not just slotting into the same roles,” Mr Lawson said.

Ms Tammes in particular intends to make the managing partner role a much more visible one than it was during Mr Wattie’s tenure, not least because as the firm’s first-ever female leader she feels she has a duty to act as a role model to other women in the profession.

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“Role modelling is important – you can’t be it if you can’t see it – and this proves it is possible,” Ms Tammes said.

“I’ve found that as we’ve gone through the transitional year there’s been so much interest from women in the organisations we work with [who] I am now in contact with.”

The pair have taken over the firm at a time of financial strength, with Burness Paull last month rewarding its staff with a five per cent bonus after profits rose by 8% to £23.8m in the 2017/18 year.

While Mr Lawson noted that the current year could be impacted by the “big challenge” of Brexit, he added that the firm does not expect its financials to suffer.

“Given that Brexit is an unknown at this stage we are absolutely continuing with our growth plan,” he said. “We refuse to stand still.”

As part of that growth plan, the firm has recently added immigration partner Jamie Kerr from Dundee firm Thorntons to give the firm a dedicated immigration practice for the first time.

“As part of our growth strategy we constantly look at areas we might be able to add to and have been working on bringing in an immigration partner for some time,” Ms Tammes said.

With Burness Paull replacing Maclay Murray & Spens as the Scottish member of international law firm network Lex Mundi last year, Mr Lawson said the firm has experienced a 30% increase in the amount of international work it does.

It is expected that having Mr Kerr on board will allow the firm to capture a greater share of the work coming from those international clients.

“The main areas he’ll focus on are Aberdeen, where there are a lot of international businesses and people coming from all over the world, and China,” Mr Lawson said.

“China is a key area because lots of Chinese people are looking to come to Scotland – they want to get their kids into schools and to invest in Scotland.

“We don’t see any slowdown with Brexit, rather we think there will be an increase in immigration-type work.”

While at this stage it remains impossible to tell what the full impact of Brexit will be, Ms Tammes said that the firm should be insulated from the worst of any fallout because “we have some more Brexit-proof parts to the business”.

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“If the worst comes to the worst there are areas where we think we can still achieve growth,” she said.

“The Aberdeen market, for example, which has been getting much better recently, is a fantastic hedge.”

In the meantime, the pair is taking a collaborative approach to getting the best out of Burness Paull’s people so the firm can achieve what Mr Lawson said is the team goal of “becoming the leading independent law firm in Scotland”.

“We’ve got a real drive to make sure that every person in the business maximises their potential and there are no restrictions on where someone can go,” Mr Lawson said.

“We would look for someone in the mail room, for example, to get a job in IT.

"That’s what’s driving our leadership. It’s about making sure everyone has all the tools we can give them to encourage them to excel.”