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IN PRACTICE Follow us and talk to us on Twitter @<strong>LPM</strong>mag APRIL 2016 BOOK REVIEW PUNK UP YOUR FIRM If I am brutally honest, this book needs to come with a health warning. I say this because after reading the first two pages you may come to the conclusion that the writer is a buffoon. James Watt is clearly a very interesting character. It would appear that he started life intending to go into the law (sounds promising), then changed his mind and became a captain of a deep sea trawler (sounds frightening) and then started up his own brewing business with a friend (sounds boozy and dangerous). The book is written in a very unusual style. The title should give you some indication of the kind of language that is used. One of the early chapters is 'Be a selfish bastard and ignore advice'. This had me thinking that the man is a fool. I have come across many lawyers who appear to have ignored advice and have ended up with businesses that aren’t terribly attractive. However, this isn’t the essence of the book. Other chapters include 'Be part of a pack'. The philosophy being: get some partners. I did wonder whether this conflicted with the reference of 'Advice is for freaks and clowns' and 'Be a selfish bastard'. Difficult to be part of a pack and have good partners if you are going to ignore what they are saying and be a selfish bastard. Having said that, as a 54-year-old solicitor who has grown a business, necessarily from scratch, it does make one look at some of the lessons that perhaps I didn’t learn. The proposed philosophy 'everything you do is sales and all of your employees are selling all of the time' is something that I am sure many of us have read on many occasions. The question is, how many of us implement it? One interesting chapter is 'Get people to hate you'. While I think many solicitors have that covered by virtue of the profession, that is not quite what James is getting at. Basically, we should be motivated to act in such a way that it puts our competition on edge. The 'finance section' in Section B is very interesting. James indicates that "you need to learn finance, you need to be fluent in it." Leaving aside the fact that you should ignore advice, James goes on to say that he went on numerous courses on finance and was absorbing knowledge from the Business for punks: Break all the rules – the Brewdog way by James Watt Reviewer: Shaun Jardine, CEO, Brethertons Publisher: Portfolio Penguin Publication date: Nov 2015 Price: £14.99 best financial experts he could find. In my professional life I have attended quite a few financial training sessions and have paid for financial trainers to come into my business to train my staff. However, the key advice by James is "cash is motherfucking king." I think I may make Section B of the book part of the induction training at Brethertons. Later on, James comments about the way that his staff are inducted into the business, in a chapter on interview techniques and value/mission statements. One of the areas that I'm looking at in my business is induction materials, and James takes the view that induction material should be authored by the business and written in the businesses style and vision, or in his words: "If you present your company through the eyes of some lowlife monkey-sucking lawyer then it's time to load the howitzer and kiss your and the new recruit's arse goodbye." As a lowlife, monkey-sucking lawyer, I must confess I found the book a really good read and very thought-provoking. I came to the conclusion that, despite everything that he does, James still has a hankering for the legal profession – in what other book would you actually drop in a bit of Latin, such as 'res ipsa loquitur'? Which does, in fact, speak for itself. I got my copy of the book free as I agreed to review the book. I then purchased another 20 on Amazon. I even stopped off at Sainsburys and bought a bottle of the IPA beer ... and that was good, too. <strong>LPM</strong> 9 LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
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