Philip Rodney is Scotland’s only guitar playing, karate chopping law firm chairman. Whether he is kicking ass bashing out ramones songs on his stratocaster or kicking ass at his karate class, his enthusiasm and energy levels are out of the stratosphere. The newly appointed chairman of Burness solicitors takes that same high level of energy and enthusiasm into the office with him every day as Richard Draycott discovers.

Ordinarily there are many words that one would not expect to find in the same sentence as the word lawyer – underpaid, shy and retiring are just a few that spring immediately to mind. But Philip Rodney, the recently installed new Chairman of Edinburgh and Glasgow law firm Burness, has found two other words that you seldom find in any other lawyers’ biographies. Visit the Burness website and you’ll see that in his short biog Rodney is described as “creative” and “quirky”, words more akin to a member of the advertising industry not the business of law.
However, the words do go a long way to painting an accurate portrait of the man tasked with taking over the future strategic development of Burness during its most successful ever trading period.
“It was once said of me by another lawyer that I am creative and quirky and I quite liked the description,” says Rodney. “I hope it shows that we have an honesty here at Burness, that we are actually people and not just highly polished representations of what lawyers should be. I also believe that with quirkiness comes an agility to look at things from a different angle and get to a conclusion in a different way. That is the approach I have always taken and the approach this firm takes.”
Rodney certainly doesn’t fit the stereotypical vision of what a dispute resolution lawyer should look (and act) like, let alone a Chairman. Instead of having his head buried deep inside the pages of a dull legal textbook of an evening you are more likely to hear Rodney bashing out chords to the Ramones’ hits I Wanna Be Sedated and Sheena Is A Punk Rocker on his Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. Alternatively, if not making the ears of his wife and three sons Alan, Jamie and Max bleed, you might also catch up with Rodney at his karate class where he is currently studying to become a lean, mean, fighting machine.
At the age of 51 Rodney certainly defies his years and, in terms of becoming Chairman of the long-established firm of Burness, he also defies tradition by being the first lawyer to hold the position despite not working exclusively for the firm during his career.
Rodney studied law at Strathclyde University and after completing his apprenticeship, at what is now McGrigors, he joined the Glasgow’s Alexander Stone & Co, in 1976. Rodney worked at Stones until it merged with Burness’ Glasgow office in 1998. In 1999 he took over as Head of Litigation at Burness and during the early days of this tenure he reconfigured the litigation team to create the dispute resolution team, making Burness one of the first Scottish law firms to have such a department.
His rapid rise to the top of the firm culminated on 7 December when he took the reigns from former Chairman, John Rafferty, and already he is formulating his plan of attack.
“I am currently reviewing what we have achieved over the last seven years and that is very interesting to look at, particularly the growth we have had in Glasgow,” he said. “I have prepared the first draft of what we have achieved and that document looks at indicators of what has been successful and what has not. Then it tries to project forward, not in isolation of what the firm wants to achieve, but what our current clients want to achieve in terms of services over the next five to ten years. I think that too often law firms embark on vanity projects rather than looking towards what clients really want.
“I anticipate two things will happen here as a result of my review. First, some of the things that I learned from developing and running the dispute resolution team will be brought into the firm at large, and I also expect us not to do what the marketplace expects us to do. I’ll leave you pondering that one.”
It appears that Rodney is indeed full of surprises, but he is also full of energy, something which he says is a vital component for ensuring that the Burness team continues to grow, diversify and its younger members continue to move through the ranks. In fact, in a show of progressiveness, Rodney and his fellow partners have installed 30-year-old David Morgan as his replacement as Head of Dispute Resolution, a move Rodney is more than happy to justify: “David is the youngest person in the dispute resolution team, but he is absolutely the right person for the job. It is great to be able to stand aside and let somebody with a completely new perspective deal with things. It is also good for me to step back and allow some headroom for the other partners in the department. It is refreshing for the firm to have these sorts of changes and very motivating for all our people to know they can progress in this firm.”
Rodney says that he approached the appointment with a combination of humility, excitement and, in the words of his psychotherapist wife, appropriate fear. But his time and success in the DR team, which he grew more than 250 per cent, paved the way for his continued success.
But what of the success of his, and other law firms, in the future? Where do opportunities lie?
He says: “I think it will be interesting to see, on the back of the Clementi Report, whether consolidators will come into the Scottish marketplace and what the impact of the report will be.
“Having recently come back from the US, the buzzword there is reputational risk and I think that will be a big issue for all clients in the coming years. It is about looking beyond Enron and Citibank as to the cascading effects of an unanticipated failure, and I think that the market will become more involved with setting up processes so risks are minimised.
“I think the legal profession as a whole should be much more solution-based. When I look at the McKinseys of the world, I think lawyers should be moving more towards that kind of model rather than reacting in a transactional or pursuing litigation manner. Instead, what law firms should be doing is getting involved with the client at a more strategic stage early on. We have run cases as projects and instead of taking a sequential approach the clients have let us have some strategic input, and I think the profession should work like that.”
Even after almost 30 years in the profession Rodney’s enthusiasm for the law is undiminished and his outlook as optimistic as it was the day he picked up his first legal textbook at Strathclyde University. Something that bodes well for the new wave at Burness. Rodney says: “I once had a partner who said that the major difference between her and me was that she hated her clients and I loved mine. I do love working with people and enjoy having that interaction and solving people’s problems.
“If you are genuinely enthusiastic about the work you do yourself then a lot of that energy and belief rubs off on the people around you. Having a strong team spirit also helps a law firm, and I try and encourage that here by walking the floor, involving people and not buying into a hierarchy that dictates that the most interesting legal work will go to the most senior lawyers. It is about empowering your people not to feel embarrassed by putting forward suggestions. It is about giving your people the courage to come up with something that is more original than what it says in the textbooks.”
As for textbooks, does Rodney have any words of wisdom for those young souls just opening theirs for the first time as they set out on their journey towards legal recognition? Of course he does.
“Learn to think your own way. Be a lawyer in the way you can best be a lawyer. Use your native talents and not just what you learn from the textbooks. A lot of what we do as lawyers is about being able to step out of situations and think creatively. All too often the lawyer that just thinks within the tramlines fails to find the very best solutions for the client.”
As a rather nice aside, and a demonstration of the man, after interviewing Rodney I e-mailed him to enquire about his age. He made me guess. On guessing correctly that he was 51, he offered that he thought he might still pass for 37. Told you he was creative.