LPM

IN PRACTICE
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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. LPM
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LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT