Charlie: Welcome to Rainmakers, the podcast where legal leaders share their winning strategies for law firm growth. Rainmakers is brought to you by Passle the creators of CrossPitch AI which makes cross-selling happen. Switch it on, and try it today by visiting passle.net. In Episode 2, Passle co-founder Tom Elgar sits down with Rohan Massey, Managing Partner at Ropes & Gray to discuss the role of thought leadership on his path to managing partner. Let's jump in.

Tom: Becoming a managing partner not only requires exceptional legal expertise but also the ability to generate revenue and drive the growth of the firm. Thought leadership plays a crucial role in this by building profile and credibility, creating a value chain that can be linked directly to revenue. I'm Tom Elgar, co-founder of Passle and I'm delighted to be joined by Rohan Massey, Managing Partner of Ropes & Gray in London. Rohan leads the firm's data privacy and cybersecurity practice and is almost a year into his role as a managing partner and has built a strong reputation as a thought leader, harnessing the power of insight-driven content. So the perfect guest for us at Passle. In today's conversation, we will explore how thought leadership has become a key part of Rohan's success, its impact on his career progression and how he's professionalised this approach at Ropes & Gray. Welcome to you, Rohan.

Rohan: Hi, Tom. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. 

Tom: Excellent. Excellent. First off, congratulations on your new role, an amazing achievement. It's been nearly a year since you became a managing partner. Looking back, when did thought leadership first become a really key part of your strategy for success, would you say?

Rohan: Well, I've always been encouraged to write as a trainee way back in the sort of dot-com years. I was lucky enough to work with a fantastic team of lawyers who were focused on providing content for these senior partners. And in fact, we established a monthly client alert. I think it was called e.comment, which was very catchy at the time. And we wrote that and published it. And the traction that got immediately, externally, was really, really visible. And I think that sowed the seed for me then throughout my career, looking at comments, looking at case law, and being in data privacy and cybersecurity, it's been an evolutionary kind of practice to be in over the last 20 years. So dynamic with lots of changes so keeping up on that and keeping clients abreast of that has really been part of my DNA basically.

Tom: You mentioned the first time when we were talking about this before about how it was very helpful in keeping yourself up to date with stuff the the process of thought leadership actually made you frankly better at your job as well is that is that you know is that true of everyone or is that particularly for you would you say?

Rohan: Yeah, hopefully it's true of everybody I mean I think that writing and that thought leadership really shouldn't be an obligation. It should be an educational experience. So the creative output at the end of it is what you have learned, right? So when I'm thinking about writing, especially for the practice, there's likely to have been a development somewhere in the world. It could be regulatory, it could be statutory, it could be case law. And I'm thinking about why is that important? What do I need to learn about that? So I'll read it, I'll think about it, I'll think of the application possibly to clients or more generally, and then I'll try and sort of consolidate all of that learning into a thought leadership piece. So I have my understanding of it clearly set out and sort of round that off with what I think the thoughts are. Is this a trend that we're seeing? Will this lead to more legislation or change or evolution? Is it the end of the road? Is it just a mile point? And give that input so that those that are reading what I'm thinking about may agree, may disagree, but hopefully they'll have learned something from what I've learned as well. 

Tom: And when you approach creating thought leadership, I guess, written or on stage or whatever the setting is. How do you go through that process? Are you thinking about clients? Are you thinking about the change in the industry first? Or how do you go about doing that? 

Rohan: So it goes different ways. I think that the writing process is more thinking about, if I've found something, where am I going to place it? Is it a long form commentary in a journal? Is it a short form to the LinkedIn, or Passle piece? What am I trying to convey and to whom? So who will the audience be? And I think that's really important. Again, the audience will always be important to say if I'm doing sort of spoken presentations. But once I've got that understanding and I've got that, I've got a gem of an idea because of something I've read or something that I've learned, I'll then try and work it through and think, well, actually, is this specific to a certain client? And sometimes I will write directly to that client and say, look, I think this is just for you. And other times I'll tailor it so it's far more general that I can leverage, team members can leverage, other partners can leverage. And again, it will also depend on how we're going to position this, whether we're going to be sending it out directly by email to clients, whether we're going to be publishing it in a journal or publishing it online. And there are lots of different channels these days. I think we have to find the right tone and audience because of  that. Certainly when I'm looking at how I write, that's where I'm coming from. 

Tom: Yeah, the medium is the message, as they used to say back in advertising. 

Rohan: Yeah, yeah.

Tom: And so how much of it would you say is just direct business development? And how much of it is more sort of general marketing kind of stuff, would you say? 

Rohan: I think everything is business development. Somebody said to me the other day, you know, it's that business development. Every conversation I have is business development, right? Because you never know where the next instruction is coming from. You know even yesterday, one of my juniors came in with a matter that we needed some. International counsel on and the counsel I went to was somebody I was at law school with nearly 30 years ago yeah and said can you handle this because I can't but I'll sit on it and when he sent the email forward to his colleague say please assist Rohan and the London team I was at college with him in law or law school with him and that's how we know it's all it's all business development everything can lead to something it may not lead to an immediate instructional revenue generation but I think it's really important that nothing is wasted everything you're doing whether it's the learning of the subject matter that you're going to write about or speak about whether it's actually doing it in front of a room full of people yeah whether it's a one-on-one or whether it's you know and it could be you've had a very good meeting and it's when you're walking to the elevators at the end of the meeting something suddenly drops in I've had that happen many times and that leads to something all of it is business development yeah I think marketing is just a subset of that really.

Tom: Yeah yeah interesting. So as a managing partner you've had to build it you've got an internal profile and an external profile how important do you think is the internal profile in your career progression?

Rohan: In my career progression internal profile has been critical now I've always been in private practice I've always worked in partnerships my career arc with you know from trainee was to want to become a partner and that where I've ended up but the the idea of an internal client network is as important as an external one and possibly the one that you start developing more earlier in your career or you should be developing more you know when I talk to my team now we're back in the office in sort of post-covid work from home a position we're now back in four days a week i ask them to go and speak to every single member of another team that they're doing a deal with or working with rather than rely on email or instant message. I think it's so important to have that personal contact. People work with people they trust. So if people know you, they'll trust you more. And if you're in a partnership looking for promotion, yeah, if people know you're in a work meeting, you'll be busy. You'll get the work. People will then support you when you get up to that sort of promotion consideration piece. So I do think it's really important. And I always think back to trainees, especially in the UK where trainees usually sit in four different seats within a firm for six months each they have a unique position at the end of that within that business that they have sat with four groups of people and got to know them personally for six months. You will never get that. If you lateral into another firm, you will go into one group and stay in that group. It's much harder to make a network. So trainees often don't understand at the very outset of their career, how lucky they are to be generating a good network or have been in a position to generate a good network. And I think that's where you should start building it internally.

Tom: And externally, thought leadership is much more of a business development role, more sort of traditional, I guess. Is that fair?

Rohan: It is. And thought leadership sort of changes. So historically, when I was leading a practice, my thought leadership was much more focused on the practice, on elements of the practice, legal change and development. I think now in my role as a managing partner, there's a far more in this sort of broader community outlook of where we are and what our culture is and how we communicate that because it's a really important part of our business development. People will instruct us because of what our values are as much as our expertise. And making sure that people understand what our values are and how they're communicated is critical. I mean, last year I got called at the last minute to go to a meeting because in fact two of our partners were sick. And in fact, they're two of our diverse partners. And when we turned up to this meeting with a potential new client, it was a very white male and pale group of people that turned up. And I felt really taken aback by that because that's not who we are. And in fact, the end of this meeting, I raised and said, by the way, we're sitting there and there's a very diverse group on the other side. I said, yeah, this isn't what we're usually like. I'm actually not supposed to be here. I've joined rather late and it would have been far better reflection of who we are. And I can tell you about our statistics. We're the most gender balanced partnership in the UK. We've been voted out for the last three years. We really strive to improve diversity, equality, inclusion all the time. And we have lots of thought leadership on it. And I was able to produce that afterwards and send it to them to show that we do actually live to the ideals that we want to. And occasionally we won't when I had to turn up to the meeting. But that was a really important part. And in fact, after that, they came back and we did win the instruction. And they said that was one of the critical elements of it.

Tom: Interesting. 

Rohan: We noticed it, spoke about it, and then showed that it wasn't actually what we always do. Really, really important.

Tom: Yeah. Actually, I mean, you mentioned when we talked earlier about finding your voice and I guess it's kind of part of that same pattern. How do you try and do that internally? How do you get people to not, just parrot what others say, if you know what I mean. Just be authentic.

Rohan: Yes, you have to be authentic. I've obviously read lots of first drafts of all sorts of thought leadership over the years. With juniors who are trying to establish themselves, it's quite clear some of them really do just mimic the seniors who they think do it really well. Unfortunately, in doing that, they try and use constructions or use phrases that just aren't them. It jumps out when you read it and it's really you know sitting down and saying look you have to say what you're thinking and how you're thinking because it will come across more and if you don't have that go back and do the learning piece again because this should be learning not lifting right when you're writing it should almost be coming from the heart as an extension of you or the brain as an extension of you right yeah and that will come through but it will only come through if you're confident in what in the subject matter so some of it is actually go away and read again and read again and then write. And in other ways, we're lawyers. We are fantastic at drafting contracts and litigation documents, and we can use a million defined terms in a one-page document. I can't stand that. I would love most of my lawyers or all of my lawyers to be writing in what I call a newsprint. People can read and engage with it. And that's how you've got to move away from thinking, I'm in drafting mode to I'm in writing mode. I'm going to sell something and educate somebody with this piece of writing? Nobody reads a newspaper with definitions in it. Why would you read an article with definitions in it? You should be able to find a voice that conveys meaning in a really open and transparent way. And I think that's a really important part of this as well. So we do that. I encourage it. I encourage writing coaching that we have here to try and get those messages across in different styles because it's really important. We're trained as lawyers to be very focused and very accurate using certain words and specific. And that doesn't always tie nicely into when you're trying to write a thought leadership piece.

Tom: Right. So we're just talking about the professionalization of thought leadership at Ropes and Gray. I guess what you're just saying about actually getting writing coaches to come in and say, you know, to, I guess, give it a more flexible approach to how you're using the language and, you know, a bit more, well, more fun effectively. So is that one of the things you've done? Because you've done a series of things to try and, you know, professionalize it, haven't you? Yeah. I mean, the thought, so that is one of it. You know, we also look at different tones we'll use you know talking about sort of the message in the medium yeah we will use sort of frivolity and levity where I think it's warranted it can be funny to get people engaged on on various subjects but we'll also use tones with serious gravitas behind them when that's needed as well and often it is needed and striking that balance is challenging it's we don't always get it right sometimes we've had to tone articles down essentially let's make this more serious because actually there is a funny point here and I can see it and it looks, it's catchy, but actually there's a really serious issue for our clients that we need to convey with far greater gravity. And so making that balance has become good. But also, I mean, as we try and get thought leadership out, I tasked my team two years ago with writing on a sort of cyclical basis that we would all write something in rotation. And gradually we've sort of shortened the rotation. So at the beginning of this year, we set our goal of everybody writing at least one thought leadership piece every month. Now, that could be a full 2,000-word journal article. It could be a Passle post, much shorter. It could be a client alert, but finding something to write about. And all of this is good training and good behavior. And yeah, again, I stress to them, it's learning, not lifting. They shouldn't say, oh, I'm obligated to write another piece. It's like, I've just learned something. I should be able to consolidate and distill that and publish it and share that knowledge and i think having that messaging has been really helpful for the teams.

Tom: Yeah so doing that monthly process is that do you see that as a sort of, I mean, obviously you're building the knowledge in the team, which is very helpful, but also do you see there's a revenue sort of value chain going on there that you do the work, you build up your credibility, there's a profile, that whole... Is that how you see it?

Rohan: Yeah, I do. We know the sort of readership data that we get on how many people read and how many interact with our thought leadership pieces. We know that they work. Sometimes we'll send them out one-on-one, but we know we get people coming back saying, I've just read this. We see the comments that we get on social media that come back to us as well. And they will be followed up. So we are seeing direct revenue and engagement. Now, some of that may be with current and existing clients. Sometimes, and it's not all that frequent, but it happens, it's with some news. I've read this and I hadn't read it anywhere else. Can we have a discussion about this? Because that applies to me for X, Y, and Z reasons. And so it's really important. And we do see that coming out of it, which is why, I mean, that's one of the reasons for promoting it. You know, there's a great learning experience. But of course, we are a business at the end of the day, and it's about generating revenue. If we weren't generating revenue, we wouldn't do it. 

Tom: Straightforward. I guess so. If you had one kind of to wrap up a little bit, if you had one habit or practice had the greatest impact on your success with thought leadership, what would that be? And maybe how can other people emulate that? 

Rohan: Yeah, I think it is. For me, it's the sort of... I'm very goal-driven. So it's setting the goal and saying right we will do or I will do 12 pieces this year over the course of the year and then keeping myself accountable to it now it won't always happen it will slip last year for me thought leadership slipped a little bit just because there were so many other things with changing role so it's back heavily on the agenda for this year there's a big focus on it and there's a big focus on personal accountability in order to do that I've also asked the team to keep me accountable much in the same way I will then I think it's always good to doing sort of 360 here. But if you fall off track, you've just got to get back on track. It's the same as any behavior or habit. And you can listen to numerous podcasts on building great habits, whether it's work, whether it's at home. And this is one of those. The more that you get into doing it, the greater you are. I mean, we've got some really talented writers within the team who produced huge amounts of content and juggle that with really, really packed schedules, to very busy professional lives, but they still find the time to do it because they see the value in it. And so some of it is just engaging with that behavior, focusing on that behavior and keeping yourself accountable to it.

Tom: That's interesting. When we spoke before, there was this idea, sometimes when people think about thought leadership, they're sort of, I'm a lawyer, and so I'm technically excellent. And then my sort of business development is a sort of separate thing that I do as a separate part of, it's just, you know, it's a different, you know, it's a different me. Whereas the way you were talking about it was sort of, it's all a continuum, you know, your thought leadership and profile building is all part of the same, same idea. It's a really interesting concept.

Rohan: Yeah, and I think that's right. And look, as I say, in the role that I'm in now, thought leadership isn't just limited to my practice, right? It's far broader. It's thinking about the profession. It's thinking about the office. It's thinking about how big law in London fits together. What do we think about diversity, equality and inclusion? How can we impact the greater environment and economy around us, right? They're really, really important elements of where I see my role and my potential for giving some thought leadership and giving my perspective or the firm's perspective on those things. It's really important because these days, you know, it's not just clients looking for an advisor who is a lawyer who can provide on the law. They're looking for a trusted advisor who agrees with their, you know, concepts, principles. And, you know, we have to be able to evidence that. and it is all about being able to walk the walk. Clients will go to trusted advisors. Trust is established by integrity. And if you find your voice with clear integrity and actually stand for the principles and live to those principles, that's always going to help. 

Tom: Very, very interesting. I think that's probably all we have time for, Rohan. That's absolutely brilliant. Thank you for that. And thank you for coming on our podcast. It's very kind of you indeed.

Rohan: It's been a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Tom.

Charlie: The CMO Series Rainmakers Podcast is brought to you by Passle. Passle makes thought leadership simple scalable and effective so professional services firms can stay front of mind with their clients and prospects. Find out more and request a demo at passle.net. You can follow the CMO Series podcast on your preferred platform, thanks for listening.