Nick Brown: 'Legal advice is just one of several inputs to high-quality decision making'

For Nick Brown, working with non-lawyers has helped him to grasp the role of legal advice in good decision making.

The current Kain Lawyers director got his start with PwC, and he’s come to discover a factor that helps deal-related legal advice to be more nuanced and sophisticated. In this July interview, Brown shares the top three things he’ll bring to Kain Lawyers from his time at PwC, and what the legal profession can learn from professional sports organisations.

What made you choose a career in law, and what's your favourite part of the job?

I knew early on that I was heading towards a commercial role – I just found myself intrigued by business and corporate life. When it came time to choose a graduate role, I felt like a legal role at PwC was a smart hedge. I figured there might be internal opportunities in other disciplines if corporate law didn’t light my fire. Once I started focusing on M&A, I’d found what I really wanted to do.

Favourite part of the job – that one is easy – every day, we get to meet really smart people that are building or have built great businesses. Being given the trust to work alongside them on transformative transactions is a privilege that I don’t take for granted.

What drew you to Kain Lawyers?

Two things - the ‘whole of firm’ focus on transactions and the national practice aspiration. You don’t get many opportunities in your career to help establish a practice so aligned to your own in a great market like Melbourne. The fact that I really like the people and the collaborative culture and the firm already has a deep bench of excellent transactional lawyers to call on as we build out the Melbourne team clinched it for me.

You led PwC Australia’s legal business as national head – what are the top 3 things you think you’ll bring from your experience in that role to your new position as Kain Lawyers director?

First, standing shoulder to shoulder alongside so many outstanding non-legal professionals helped me to appreciate that legal advice is just one of several inputs to high quality decision making by clients. Personally, I feel that deal-related legal advice can be so much more nuanced and sophisticated when the lawyers involved are genuinely engaged with the other disciplines and points of view.

Secondly, the breadth of touchpoints that a firm like PwC has allows for a very current view on what is important to its clients. The bottom line is the discipline of regular contact allows you to be relevant and front of mind when complex issues arise.

Finally, I learned about the challenges of rapid growth – professional services is a people business and great professionals need time to settle on a platform to really achieve their potential. Going forward, I will really try to be intentional about getting the balance right between ‘settled’ and ‘settling’ team members.  

What’s the biggest lesson you learned in your career and what advice can you give fellow lawyers about it?

Seek out mentors who want to stretch you every day. I’m talking about mentors that provide guidance but are not directive, that are uncompromising on standards but also supportive when things don’t go right. It’s such a fine line and I’ve been lucky on this front several times in my career – Andrew Wheeler in Sydney, Rob Day and Tim Wright from my London days – very different, hugely capable lawyers all of them and, of course, great people. I’ve obviously tried to incorporate much of their thinking in my own practice.

What should the profession focus more on?

I think we should be upfront with young people entering the profession that, like many other client service professions, there are periods of intensity and pressure in our working lives. Often our clients turn to us in their most significant moments, so it really is inherent in what we do.

However, I think most lawyers would say that the intense periods are often when they experience their highest levels of professional growth and intellectual stimulation. Let’s respectfully and openly acknowledge the two sides of the same coin and, in the same way that professional sporting organisations do, get really sophisticated in managing workloads around these intense periods.

What are the challenges you expect in your practice, and in the business of law in general, going forward? What challenges are particularly pressing in the country’s legal industry?

The growing role of legal tech is undeniable, but I can’t see it unduly disrupting high quality bespoke M&A advice (legal or otherwise). So often we are working through complex issues that are a mix of legal, commercial and interpersonal issues. Working towards a good outcome for clients is often judgement based (not algorithmic) work. I can however see a future where clients bifurcate legal work on a M&A deal between a law firm for the certain high value advice and drafting and a legal tech provider for the remainder. Clearly, the legal industry (and legal tech!) needs to keep demonstrating the value it adds.

What are you looking forward to the most in the coming year?

Finding outstanding talent that shares in the vision of building the leading national transaction specialist law firm in Australia.

If you weren’t in law, what do you think you’d be doing as a career?

I’ve always loved architecture and design. The most impactful structures or products often seem so simple and effortless. It takes a lot of thought to look effortless! I think I would have had a crack at something in those fields.