The Spirit of Enterprise 25 years of Watson, Farley & Williams

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Chapter 3: Creating the WFW network
on some advanced communications technology
to its distinct advantage: a fax machine, which,
astonishingly, no other law firm in Greece then
possessed, and an electronic link to the firm’s
computer database in London, an almost
unheard-of, and very expensive, thing in
the 1980s.
The success of the office in Greece gave
the firm confidence to open elsewhere. Peter
Cull was sent out to open an office in Oslo,
in September 1986, making Watson, Farley &
Williams the first foreign law firm to open in
Norway. The decision was taken purely to
practise English law, and not to take on
Norwegian qualified lawyers – so as not to
upset the many Norwegian law firms from
whom the firm received referrals – which was
later to prove a disadvantage. But the move
was certainly vindicated. As in Greece, the
business flowed in and, as with the Piraeus
office, the timing of the move was propitious.
Norwegian ship owners started to register
their vessels with ‘flags of convenience’ in
Liberia, Panama and other tax-friendly
jurisdictions. At the same time as Nigel
Thomas took over from Peter Cull in 1988,
the Norwegian government introduced socalled
‘KS’ schemes, which permitted limited
partnership ownership of vessels. WFW’s
practice flourished; the firm had originally
anticipated that Oslo might serve as a base for
Swedish business, but it turned out to be a big
enough market in its own right.
At the same time the London office was
developing fast, and diversifying. As well as
litigation, the firm built its company and
corporate work (recruiting William Fossick
from Norton Rose, much to the relief of those
who had been advising on PLC matters before
his arrival) and general banking and finance
(taking on Geoffrey Wynne and Neil Cuthbert,
both from the Royal Bank of Canada). Geoffrey
Williams expanded his practice to start doing
film finance (“Geoffrey was our leasing guru,”
says Alastair Farley). Specialists were recruited
to meet the demands from clients for a broader
range of services – Maria Llewellyn to develop
a property practice, Richard Whish to provide
competition law expertise and later Liz Buchan
on employment and immigration, “We never
had ‘departments’, and in fact Alastair forbade
us from using the term,” remembers Frank
Dunne. The focus of the firm’s energy was
entirely on servicing existing clients in a
booming market and winning new business.
No unnecessary time was spent on management.
“We had a very simple philosophy, that no feeearner
should spend more than 10 per cent of
his time on management,” jokes Alastair Farley.
Even when William Fossick became the firm’s
first managing partner in 1987, that was on the
basis that he would not spend more than a
quarter of his time on management.
A simple philosophy, and a very successful
one. Fee income rose to more than £2 million at
the end of the second year, £3.5 million at the
end of the third and £4.6 million at the end of
the fourth. By the end of the decade, fee
income would exceed £10 million. After the
first couple of years, more were brought into
equity partnership (another seven by 1985 and
a further 10 by the end of the decade). There
were five times as many fee earners in 1990 as
there had been in 1983. To accommodate all
these extra people, the firm moved from its
Navigation House offices to Minories House,
in January 1988. To begin with one floor (out of