Stephanie Harris talks revamping office setups and having client synergy
Last week, Auckland firms Glaister Ennor and Keegan Alexander announced that they would be merging before the year ends. NZ Lawyer chatted with Glaister Ennor joint managing partner Stephanie Harris, who tells us how the merger came to be, office moves, and the vision for the upcoming merged entity.
How did the merger with Keegan Alexander come about?
Keegan Alexander and Glaister Ennor are very aligned in our principles, our culture and in fact our history as well. Keegan's actually came to us and talked about the alignment in where they wanted to go with their practice and the commitment they wanted for their clients. They wanted to get some scale, strength and size in. So we started talking a number of months ago, and got to this point where we thought, “actually we can see that this is really going to strengthen and enhance what we're both trying to do in our businesses, as well as provide that really strong support for both of our client bases.
Could you tell us more about what each firm brings to the table?
Both our firms have a really strong history, and both firms are properly focused – we consider ourselves here at Glaister Ennor a full service [firm] in that we have a strong wills and estates and trust team. We have a family law team, for example, that Keegan Alexander don't have,
But it’s really the overlap and the synergy of clients that just makes [the merger] make sense in terms of providing a stronger and bigger offering to both of our clients.
What can you tell us about how the transition process is going to go over the next few months?
Well, there seems to be a lot of moving parts – we've got a committee set up that's composed of people from both firms. Everybody is moving to the Glaister Ennor building and premises – we're not changing premises, they are coming to us. So, we've got someone working on obvious things like, who's going to sit where, and our IT team are doing massive work to make sure that all of our systems are aligned. It's a true integration – we don't want to be running two systems. There's a massive amount of those logistics that need to happen between now and 1st December,
Once the merger comes into effect, will there be a new merged entity?
It is a new merged entity – name's a bit of a work in progress. We've got a big branding workshop coming up where we still have to sort out some of those things.
We're pretty aligned and focused on what we all want; I know some people will think that we should have the name to announce now. But actually, we both wanted to tell our full teams here; it's really important to us that we bring our staff with us, that they're on the inside of the knowledge. And so we just chose to tell each of our staff earlier in the process rather than later.
While things like name is still a bit of a work in progress, watch this space, and we'll have something by 1 December.
Can you tell us what your specific role in this merger has been, and what Andrew's role has been?
So Andrew and I have done lots of work together over years, and I guess it just kind of segued out of that professional relationship. He started talking to me about [the merger], and it's really just grown from there. He and I tossed it around for a bit before we took it wider, and the really great thing about this whole process is that it's just gone from strength to strength.
We feel like at every turn, we find that our cultures are aligned. We take the same view on principles. We’re using very similar systems, so even the logistics are sort of nicely aligned for us. So it's been a process arising out of that professional relationship between me and Andrew over a long period of time.
What's your vision for that combined entity? What are you looking to be, and what's on the horizon for you in 2025?
What we are wanting to do is really just strengthen and grow our existing offering. We both have some really strong, fabulous clients, and we're both pretty committed to how we service them with integrity and confidence. And we like to do that at a senior level, so what we're hoping to see in 2025 is that we can really capitalize on that united strength – the sum is greater than the individual parts – and really drive that forward for our clients.
