The two leaders discuss how they collaborated on the process of refreshing the firm's strategy
Earlier this week, outgoing DLA Piper Australia country managing partner Amber Matthews told Australasian Lawyer how she helped select Shane Bilardi to take over after she steps down from the role next year. In the second part of this interview, Matthews details one project she tackled at the firm that meant a lot to her, and Bilardi shares his role in that project – and how he intends to bring it into the future.
Amber, what initiative or project you were involved in [as country managing partner] did you feel was the most meaningful to you?
Amber Matthews: I've had wonderful opportunities and experiences in this role because you do so many things. That's the beauty of this role – it's a very broad role. I think the thing that I did that I've probably enjoyed the most and impacts everything that I'm doing is when we refreshed our Australian strategy.
I came into the role in in 2019, and then COVID occurred only about nine months later. So
COVID was that period where I just had to keep the business going. We performed very well throughout COVID, but it probably put some of the strategic change that we wanted to make off a little bit because we needed to ensure stability and really respond well to our clients during that period.
So we then moved to refresh the Australian strategy at the end of 2022. That has involved the whole firm – we set some really clear objectives around where we want to be known as a firm, where we want to really invest our time and our money: to be a very sector-focused firm, really internationalising our client base, embedding our clients more across the firm, and leveraging and lifting our brand.
The key part of that strategy was also a project that we worked on to really try and better understand what our clients trust us for, and how we can project that into the market. That involved doing workshops across the whole firm: going to all the different offices, engaging with everybody across the firm around the work that we do, how we feel about working for DLA Piper, and how we want to project ourselves in the market and with our clients. And that was a really rewarding project to work on because it involved the whole business. It brought everybody together to really know and understand what we do and the impact that we have in the market, and it brought a lot of confidence to also to our people to be really proud of the work that we do and being able to articulate to our clients and to the market where we can really where we can really help and assist our clients.
And you're seeing it now in the way that we're presenting ourselves to the market – it comes through a lot in our branding and the way that we talk with our clients.
Shane, as Amber mentioned, you were part of the leadership team during this time, so what was your role in developing the new strategy?
Shane Bilardi: The corporate team was a core part of that strategy, so I had a significant level of input. And I had a role to play in helping Amber in executing the strategy over the last couple of years.
While there's change in the leadership role, there's also continuity because that strategy continues on. I'm fully supportive of the strategy that Amber put in place, and it continues to be the right one for the firm. Given where we're at, we're just going to continue to push on and execute that strategy. It's been really successful for us in how we've been positioned in the market and where we want to go.
It runs through to the end of 2025, and at that stage – or well before then, probably in the course of next year – we’ll have another look at it to see what sort of adjustments we need to make to it as it reaches its end. But overall, it remains fit for the nature of the firm – where we want to be and where we want to take ourselves.
So even as we go through that review process, I'm not imagining a significant change to what comes out of that. It's more likely to be an adaptation of what we've done rather than a complete rewrite –I'm very happy with the strategy that we've developed so far.
Shane, what part of being country managing partner are you most excited about?
Shane Bilardi: A key reason for me joining the firm was the culture of the firm and the people I found here. They're just our sort of people – they were enthusiastic about the firm, they were wanting to be successful and do great work, but in a way which was still friendly. We knew we could do it and still not sacrifice everything to the job to be good at what we wanted to do – we could enjoy ourselves as well.
I think Amber's done a great job in that when we started that strategy in 2022, we had to lift our brand. I feel like we're starting to get that recognition in the market, so that's great. So it's not going to be about big directional changes – it's just going to be taking it to that next step and that next level and that's the bit that excites me because I know we've got the team and the platform and the opportunity to do that.
Next week, Bilardi and Matthews talk about the leadership transition process and well-deserved breaks.
