Biglaw is big business. The strategy for the past twenty years? Get bigger. Firms have relied on increasing scale and reach to continue their growth.
Major corporate clients: tick.
Full-service capability: tick.
Global footprint: tick.
For many partners, Biglaw provides very well. But for some, the Biglaw machine is starting to feel less like home and more like a constraint. For entrepreneurial partners who have built leading practices over decades, the one-way direction of travel within Biglaw is a sign that it’s time to rewrite the old rules and found their own firm.
What follows are the five most common factors that drive a partner to become a founder.
1. Your clients love you
The single most critical factor in successfully launching a new firm is whether your clients will follow you. And right now, the market has never been more favourable: clients increasingly back individuals over institutions.
At the same time, mounting complexity and regulatory scrutiny are driving demand for hyper-specialised counsel – a trend that will only accelerate. When clients need best-of-breed expertise, the full-service model begins to buckle under the weight of trying to be excellent at everything.
The frustrations aren’t limited to lawyers themselves. Clients are also aware that their Biglaw partners often can’t serve them optimally because of the one-size-fits-all constraints their firms impose on them. Yes, they will want assurances about a new firm’s capability, stability and capacity – but these concerns are predictable and manageable.
What’s more interesting? Clients are genuinely excited about what they stand to gain: faster response times, sharper work product, more partner attention, bespoke pricing and a firm that’s entirely focused on their success.
2. Conflicts and vanishing autonomy
The economics can be brutal: Biglaw firms are doubling down on high-margin PE and M&A work, and practice groups that can’t match those numbers are being frozen out – seat at the table or not.
Worse, for some practices, Biglaw today means almost as many conflicts as new matters.
Andrew Savage, a senior disputes partner, put it bluntly when explaining his recent move from McDermott to disputes only firm, Quinn to Non-Billable: “Having built a diverse, complex international disputes practice, it has become increasingly apparent to me that the conflicts presented by large transactional firms seriously inhibit case strategy and constrain business development generally. These effects are only growing more intense.”
For highly ranked partners with proven client relationships and reputations, being treated like a second-class citizen with limited autonomy over their clients and work eventually reaches boiling point.
3. Building something that matters
Legacy comes up a lot in our conversations with founder teams. So does the desire to create an environment where the next generation of talent can actually thrive. For those with a vision and the ability to inspire, the freedom to set their own agenda is magnetic.
As Natasha Harrison, founder of Pallas Partners, summed it up when she launched the firm in February 2022, “Pallas represents an opportunity to ‘rip up the rule book’ with a new approach which is unencumbered by existing protocols and historic processes to create a truly different offering in the market.”
Most new launches have razor-sharp focus on a specific practice area or client segment. Starting with a blank canvas means every decision – how you hire, develop talent, structure incentives, define culture – can be intentional. That degree of control is both liberating and exciting.
4. The creeping question: “What (or who) am I working for?”
Biglaw means bloated equity structures, ballooning salaried partner ranks, spiralling overheads, and glacial decision-making when it comes to evolving or adjusting services and how they’re delivered. Bureaucracy in Biglaw also continues to tire out longstanding partners.
And as Jonathan Watmough, former RPC Managing Partner and founder of HelpingLawyersTHRIVE noted in his recently published ten-year, inflation-adjusted analysis of the UK100: “The heat is being turned up. Bigger does not mean better. The word ‘growth’ is a comfortable untruth. Many firms are defending not thriving – and far too many are retreating. It’s tough out there.”
Layer on increasingly opaque compensation models, and a realisation sets in; partners aren’t capturing the full value of what they’ve built. Why should your expertise, network and reputation sit on someone else’s balance sheet?
Newly set-up specialist law firms don’t carry unprofitable practice areas or underperforming teams. Nimbleness to adopt alternative delivery models, dynamic pricing, cloud infrastructure, AI, reduced office footprint, on-demand support – all of this can drive significantly higher margins from day one, enabling founders to keep more of what they earn.
5. The infrastructure to make it real
Most founders love doing the work – not sitting in internal meetings. Spending more time on the tools is one of the biggest draws of launching a firm.
Potential founders are also emboldened by the trailblazers who’ve already done it. Pallas Partners recently debuted as the highest ranked new entrant in the UK200, placing 116th with revenue of £36.3m just three years after opening its doors. Other firms like Signature Litigation, Three Crowns and Northridge are all examples of firms that haven’t just survived, but thrived.
The ecosystem has matured, too. Expert service providers, like Kindleworth, with unique experience at helping founders turn their vision into a reality, can handle the operational heavy lifting that’s required to both launch and then run a firm, helping founder teams to focus their energies on clients and growth. Accessible financing from firms like Burford Capital removes another barrier. And post-Covid, clients are more open than ever to new models of support.
Suddenly, what keeps jabbing away as an escapist fantasy, starts to feel more solid and tangible.
This is a time for the boldest to forge their own path. If these five drivers resonate, it’s worth us talking – not because you need to decide today, but because in our experience, clarity often comes from a “what if” conversation. That’s where Kindleworth comes in.
You can get in touch with Sam Nicholls to explore those questions in total confidence – or fill in our contact form.
