BLACKADDERS managing partner Johnston Clark knew the firm’s expansion strategy had been a success when he started receiving calls from lawyers looking for a position at the firm.

Having gained an Edinburgh presence in the years following the financial crash via the takeover of local firm McKay Norwell, the Dundee firm has since taken a similar path in Aberdeen, Perth and Glasgow, merging with Adam Cochran, Condies and Boyle Shaughnessy respectively. It has also added to its Edinburgh presence with the addition of single-partner practice Colin Blaikie & Co.

Yet it was not until the Glasgow deal, which closed last year, that Mr Clark felt like Blackadders had become “a destination firm”.

“Seven or eight years ago we could see a trend for consolidation and knew that after the recession we wanted to get bigger,” he said.

“We had good people and wanted to attract more good people and decided that the first step would be to get into the capital. The first indeyref was going on then and we thought that whatever happened with that being in the capital would be a good idea.

“When we merged with McKay Norwell we realised that the technology worked so we should be able to scale the operation further so we looked north to Aberdeen.

“We had focused on the east coast because that’s what we know but we were introduced to Boyle Shaughnessy, which was a good firm but the partners were looking at succession.

“[Doing that deal] was a great breakthrough for us because people started approaching us to ask if there was a position for them – that was the first time we’d had that. It felt like we were a destination firm.”

With Blackadders growing quickly in a relatively short space of time - it now has 25 partners among a total headcount of 260 – it has encountered some issues along the way.

Like Boyle Shaughnessy, all the firms it has taken over were facing succession issues, with a senior partner looking to retire but having no clear strategy for who to hand the reins on to.

“These firms had joined us with succession issues and we had to fill in those gaps,” Mr Clark said. “Step one was to maintain the existing clientele, step two was to offer more services to them and then put our own people in around that so that when those people retired we would be able to continue to offer those services.

“We’ve either sent our own people, which is what we’ve done in Perth, or we’ve had lateral hires join from other firms with good habits when it comes to things like business development.”

The other problems firms face when they grow by acquisition, Mr Clark said, relate to “property, technology and debt”.

Technology is something Blackadders has had to take responsibility for ironing out while it has dealt with property on a case by case basis. Debt, though, is something the firm has not been willing to take on, which is not surprising given that it had bank loans of its own totally almost £1 million at the end of the 2015-16 financial year.

“We’ve always bought the assets but not taken on the liabilities - the firm that is joining takes run-off insurance and deals with any problems,” Mr Clark said.

“We bought the property in Aberdeen. Lots of firms say you shouldn’t own property but the cost of money is very cheap at the moment – it frequently costs as much to buy as to rent and if you own the asset at the end of the 15 years you own your office.

“Aberdeen is the only one we’ve bought, with the others we just took over the leases.”

Not that such issues have put the firm off continuing to pursue its mission of becoming a national firm, with Inverness and Stirling obvious gaps in its coverage.

“We want growth to be manageable but we haven’t put any limit on it,” Mr Clark said. “We want to get bigger because of the benefits from economies but also to develop more practice lines.”

Currently half of the firm’s £12m turnover comes from private client work, with Mr Clark noting that the firm does “500 executaries every year, 300-odd trusts, more powers of attorney than any other firm in Scotland” and has “20,000 wills” in its safe.

The remainder of the work relates to property, agriculture and SMEs, with a small proportion focusing on business services such as employment and dispute resolution.

“We want to get a better balance as we grow,” Mr Clark said. “We want to see more business services.”

Whether it will be Mr Clark leading this next phase of growth remains to be seen, though, with his current term as managing partner due to come to an end this summer. Having led the firm for 17 years, he is still weighing up whether to seek another term at the helm or whether to pass the mantle on to someone else.

“I’ve been reselected on five occasions and [will continue] as long as I’m continuing to deliver value for the partners or until someone else comes along and thinks they could do a better job,” he said.