The vertiginous, panoramic view from the sixth floor of South Bank House in Dublin’s docklands tells its own story, offering a visible portrait of the changing, evolving nature of the city – from its economic evolution to its architectural advancements. 

Look to one side and there is a pristine view into the new home of Google, currently racing up from the ground of the historic Boland’s Mill site, the iconic property seized by rebels in the 1916 Rising.

In the distance, there is the glimmering home of Facebook, designed by “starchitect” Daniel Libeskind and kitted out by Frank Gehry who, according to Vanity Fair, is “the most important architect of our age”.

Then, there is the water of the Grand Canal Dock and the rows of small terraced houses in Ringsend, conceived long before the multinationals and the zeitgeist companies moved in.

This is Dublin – both old and new. And sitting at the crossroads is South Bank House, home to the Irish law firm Mason Hayes & Curran (MHC).

The blue-chip Irish law firm turns 50 next month, and has been in its stylish, modern headquarters since 2006 – housing its 90 partners and 500 staff.

MHC’s managing partner Declan Black, a lean fifty-two-year-old, confesses to having enjoyed watching Google’s massive new campus being built near the law firm he leads.

“It’s like a little boy’s dream watching it spring up – a giant construction set!” he laughs. “Now, what do you want to ask me about?”

*****

Declan Black with Suave Tan by Mick O’Dea in the background.

We have just returned from a walk around MHC’s top floor, after finding a suitable artwork to take Black’s photograph in front of.

Black talks fluently about the various artworks which adorn his firms’ walls.

Eventually, we stopped at a mixed media painting by artist Mick O’Dea entitled ‘Suave Tan.’

It is a striking work which is one of a series created by O’Dea inspired by the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve (aka the Black and Tans) from Ireland’s War of Independence.

Black tells me that MHC moves its artworks regularly around the building to allow staff and clients enjoy them.

At one stage, he said, a selection of military-inspired artworks including Suave Tan – inadvertently ended up in a meeting room used by his firm for peace talks between two litigants. It was, he now laughs, a little disconcerting.

“It was not exactly conducive to the settlement talks which were going on in there,” Black recalls. “I have thought since about whether maybe we should commission a picture of Neville Chamberlain!” 

Three times a charm

Declan Black is just a few months into his third term as managing partner of Mason Hayes & Curran when we meet. He took over the role in 2014, having previously run its litigation and insolvency practice.

Black took over from Emer Gilvarry, a Mayo-born solicitor who steered her firm skilfully through the economic crash.

MHC had, relative to its peers, little exposure to Ireland’s property bubble when the crash came.

It had a speciality however in litigation; as Ireland moved from boom to bust, this proved useful.

Its partners took a decision not to lay off staff, but instead to knuckle down and use its skillset to work on restructuring the debris of the crash, while simultaneously trying to grow other divisions of its business.

Black was at the coalface of this work, marking him as a leader in the firm.

He is intelligent and calm under pressure, according to colleagues who have worked with him.

Black cites Gilvarry and Declan Moylan, another previous managing partner, as important mentors in his own progression to partner, and eventually managing partner.

“Declan was a great teacher in terms of his ability to articulate. He was a great draftsman with a wonderful way with words both in writing and orally,” Black said. 

“Emer Gilvarry has a beautiful calm assurance about her. She would never get over-excited, nor would she be under-excited. She also had an ability to build consensus. She had a much harder job than me. I was lucky when I took over. She did the job from 2008 for six years. She did the crisis and the firm prospered every year.”

“Revenue has only fallen once, and that was under my watch,” Black admits.

“It wasn’t major, but you don’t waste that internally. You say: ‘What are we going to do about it?’”

Unlike most law firms, MCH comes clean about its revenues. It is still complying its final revenue number for 2019, but Black is confident it will be more than the €82 million achieved in 2018.

Black is modest about his own success but since he took over, revenues have roughly doubled and MHC now employs more than 500 people. 

Tom Lyons (TL): Would you ever publish your profits?

Declan Black (DB): Maybe if other people started publishing revenue!

TL: In Britain, there are league tables for law firms detailing their financial performance. Should Ireland go the same way?

DB: I think professional firms in Ireland prefer to be private. Most of our clients have to publish numbers, so we do too. It is very powerful internally to have to publish your revenue. Turnover is just one data point. The point about data is not to overly glory over it or recriminate over it. It is about using it as a signpost to ensure better future actions.

A salesman and a referee

“I think understanding and having a background in sales is helpful in terms of being a lawyer. It is also helpful in terms of business origination and not being shy.”

Declan Black’s father was a lawyer and he is married to a solicitor. He has only worked for one firm in his thirty-year career. He is unflashy, but well-spoken as one would expect from someone who uses words as tools. He readily admits to being embedded in the law.

“I am a classic lifer,” he says, adding: “I did have other jobs before becoming a lawyer, which were very helpful.”

At various points, Black was a travelling bookseller, a soccer referee, a worker in an ice-cream factory and a busboy in a bar in the United States.

“The best two jobs that helped prepare me for the law were soccer referee and salesman,” he said. “Soccer referee for perspective as there is nothing like being shouted at by 22 people to improve your perception of where other people are coming from,” he said.

Black was paid £12 a match for refereeing games in UCD, teaching him how to deal with the tempers, egos, and passions that are part of university football.

I ask him if being a former referee was useful when dealing with fellow partners? “Partners are much more responsible than student footballers,” he says.

Black’s time as a bookseller was another learning experience. It made him learn how to sell and how to move on from rejection. This has changed how he hires.

“One of the great things about sales is you get so many no’s you develop resilience around no, so you can then ask the next person.”

“I do look for sales backgrounds in CVs. What are you doing as a lawyer? You are articulating your client’s position in the best way you can, whether it is in a transactional negotiation or a dispute,” Black explains.

“In disputes, for example, there are facts you want to emphasise and facts you want to de-emphasise. There is an interpretation of the law you want to sell to the court. I think understanding and having a background in sales is helpful in terms of being a lawyer. It is also helpful in terms of business origination and not being shy.

“One of the great things about sales is you get so many no’s you develop resilience around no, so you can then ask the next person.”

“We are not having Afghanistan”

Declan Black’s career with MHC began in 1990 in its debt collection division. He acted for small businesses chasing bills. He vividly recalls acting for a small carpenter, done out of money after installing a set of doors in a private home.

It was all-in-all an unglamorous entry to the law, but Black enjoyed it.

“Debt collection was fantastic as you got to see how the system worked when people were trying to recover obligations that were due to them. And how the system didn’t work too,” he said. “You learned about how to decide between the ‘can’t pays’ and the ‘won’t pays,’ and how do you tailor your approach to each.”

From this training ground, Black moved into litigation, which has always been one of the firm’s strongest fields of expertise.

“Litigation is incredibly satisfying because it is real,” Black said. “It is not perfect but as a process you uncover a lot of truth and you learn an awful lot about character.”

“In litigation, you get the juxtaposition of the public statement of ‘Oh yes we should settle this amicably’ while in the private arena you realise that the other person does not want to settle the case amicably, they want to grind the face of their opposition into the dust.”

This duality, he said, helped make litigation one of the most interesting areas of the law. 

“What is satisfying about litigation is the vindication of a position in public,” he explained.

“It is immensely professionally satisfying for a lawyer who facilitates that and personally satisfying for the vindicated. But you have got to have a hard stomach. It is absolutely the correct strategic decision to settle cases most of the time. But not always.”

I ask him what advice he would give a client who is thinking of suing somebody. “The key thing at the start of litigation is to define your strategic objectives. What I often say to people is: we are not having Afghanistan. We are not beginning a fight without understanding what our objectives are and how we get out of it if we don’t like how it is going,” he says.

Black said if a dispute is financial in nature it is important to carry out an economic analysis of the upside and downside of winning or losing. This analysis, he said, helped form the basis of deciding when to fight and when to settle.

If the issue is principle related, however – like, say, access to education or health information – he said settlements were less likely.

“The client doesn’t need a cheerleader. The client needs a lawyer who gives advice.”

As a litigator, Black said that one of the cases he learnt most from was acting for the majority shareholder in Lough Neagh Exploration Ltd, a border mining company in the mid-1990s.

“It was a really, really bitter battle with a minority shareholder who, as often happens personal litigants, became consumed by the litigation,” Black recalled. “The litigation ran to the Supreme Court in Ireland and the House of Lords in England.”

“I learned so much from that case in terms of the art of fact acquisition which isn’t taught in law schools but is crucial to disputes,” he said.

He said obtaining all the relevant facts was essential, prior to going to court.

“The client doesn’t need a cheerleader. The client needs a lawyer who gives advice,” he said.

TL: What do you need to do to get the facts from a client?

DB: If you are looking for facts from someone it is much better to ask open questions of someone… Nudge them… Don’t channel them down ways that will make their case better. If you only do that, then when you get to trial, a whole avenue that you didn’t explore could explode. That is not a good feeling.

TL: Did you win in the end the Lough Neagh litigation?

DB: We won in the end without actually a hearing on the case’s merits. That is the other thing you learn – the procedural craft of litigation, which is important in terms of setting up a favourable climate for negotiation. I had a very nice client, who took time to build a relationship with her advisors. I remember watching people perform for her and go the extra mile. It has always stayed with me – make sure you have a decent rapport with anyone you are doing business with.

TL: Do lawyers ever push clients into litigation in order to generate fees?

DB: No. I am a big believer in the contribution of professional services firms – lawyers and accountants – to business ethics. The rule of law and ethical business practices are a cornerstone of the functioning of an economy.

*****

Black said MHC trains its junior lawyers about the importance of reputation and ethics. He gives some of these lectures and believes that honesty is essential to the long-term success of any law firm.

“You have one reputation as a lawyer. Once you compromise yourself for a client you are bought. If you compromise yourself for a client that is the end of your reputation. You simply must never believe that one immediate matter is worth sacrificing your reputation for because it isn’t. The people who lack ethics end up working with people who lack ethics.”

Learning from failure

“I don’t think you become a savant in relation to business success by learning about failure. You learn about egregious errors and culture.”

Mason Hayes & Curran was formed in 1970 by the merger of two practices: Walker Mason & Curran and Michael Hayes & Co. The firm is fifty years old this February. It is a young firm relative to some of its peers like Arthur Cox, which was founded in 1920, or A&L Goodbody, which was founded in 1901. William Fry dates back to 1847, and Matheson to 1825. MHC is established, but it still has the dynamism of a firm that wants to grow, and the spirit of a business used to being the underdog.

For many years, MHC was based in 6 and 7 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2, a prestigious address, but with the rambling floor plans of old Georgian Dublin. Black joined MHC in 1990 when it was still based on the square, and employed about 70 people. It was a decent size, but back then not close to the big four.

Black was a partner when MHC took the decision to move to a modern office block on Barrow Street in 2006. Within two years, Ireland’s economy crashed, but MHC found itself in Dublin’s Silicon Docks, an area dominated by global multinational giants, who were immune to Ireland’s woes. Over the years, MHC has added further offices in London, New York and San Francisco.

Its international footprint allowed it serve multinationals based in Dublin across time zones, and it helped ambitious indigenous firms looking beyond a small island. Black as a partner was working in litigation when the crash came.

He had already gained some experience in insolvency, which was set to become a booming area. Black’s first big insolvency job came around 2001 when KPMG’s Ray Jackson appointed him to work on the liquidation of travel booking group USIT. The firm had collapsed with liabilities of around €100 million. Working on USIT gave Black an insight into the innards of a complex collapse. He also got to know Jackson, one of the grandfathers of Irish corporate insolvency. Jackson mentored people like Kieran Wallace, a partner in KPMG who worked on many of the biggest restructurings of the bust, including liquidating the former Anglo Irish Bank.

“Insolvency is interesting because you get to see how businesses fail,” Black said. “They can fail when markets or technology move… Or they can fail because of management hubris or errors of judgement.”

“People make mistakes all the time and they are held to high account. Yet you also have egregious business failures with fraud at their heart and you don’t see prosecution.”

TL: What did you learn from working in insolvency?

DB: I don’t think you become a savant in relation to business success by learning about failure. You learn about egregious errors and culture. I think that a functioning insolvency system is a cornerstone of a capitalist economy. If we don’t have a functioning corporate insolvency system we don’t have the containment of liabilities in legal entities which then allows the people who are employed by these entities to go on and do other things. You have to have equitable treatment of all creditors. It also permits the recycling of productive assets into other debt-free entities. If we want a system that promotes entrepreneurship you are going to have to have failures too.

TL: Is Ireland too hard or too easy on business failure?

DB: I think we still need to make progress regarding individual accountability. Our progress is a little erratic around that. There are efforts to hold people accountable for honest mistakes or errors of judgement which I think is wrong and then… You see fraudulent behaviour and people are not held accountable. Sometimes there is a temptation for politicians and regulators to say, let’s hold all these people to account. People make mistakes all the time and they are held to high account. Yet you also have egregious business failures with fraud at their heart and you don’t see prosecution.

Unpicking the wreckage of the crash

During Ireland’s financial crash, Declan Black worked on one of the biggest insolvencies in Irish business when Liam Carroll’s multibillion property empire collapsed. It was a tricky task, he tells me, as the developer’s problems involved multiple banks and multiple law firms.

MHC, Black said, did an “enormous amount of work” restructuring everything from giant players like Carroll to small companies owning 20 buy-to-lets.

“The wheels have to turn to get those assets back productive. The hotel sector is a good example,” Black said.

 “Hotels were crippled by debt by, say, adding in a spa at the wrong time. They had to go through a process where ownership was transferred to an entity no longer hamstrung by debt so that the asset can then be deployed for the benefit of the economy to generate more employment and economic activity.

“You don’t want moribund assets. Creditors need clarity quickly around what they are going to recover. Management in corporate insolvencies can move on pretty quickly,” he added.

“Yes, their conduct will be scrutinised, and yes, if they are dishonest or reckless, they need to be held to account. That can take time. But what you have got to do is get productive assets back producing for the economy.”

TL: Did dealing with the crash change you?

DB: I don’t think it changes you as a human being. You see a whole spectrum of behaviour and outcomes. It is hugely interesting. Your understanding of how nations wrestle with big problems like we had is really interesting. But you also learn that individual judgement remains important. You watched the people who adopted fight strategies and the people who adopted engagement strategies, and you learned from watching different outcomes.

TL: Who tends to do better? The fighters or the peacemakers?

DB: I don’t have the data on that, so I couldn’t be sure definitively.

Moving into management

“I would be a sceptical optimist. The external factors are the external factors. You have to concentrate on what is within your sphere of influence.”

Declan Black became managing director of MHC on 1 April, 2014. It had taken him seven years to be made a senior associate in the firm before becoming a partner in its commercial litigation department in 1998. Revenue at Black’s appointment as managing partner stood at €48 million with staff numbers at 340 people.

The year before his appointment, MHC had acted in some fascinating cases from working with Liberty Mutual on its acquisition of IBRC’s 50 per cent stake in the former Quinn Insurance company to working on a €600 million claim against HSBC in relation to the Bernie Madoff fraud. The cases MHC was dealing with were complex and fascinating. It cannot have been easy for Black to leave day-to-day legal work behind.

“The analogy I like best is that top-class law firms are like high-end restaurants. They do two things. They give you legal product, which is food on the plate, and they deliver it to you and that is the service.”

TL: Was it hard to adjust to being managing partner?

DB: I wanted to do it. It is a different type of satisfaction. You get a satisfaction out of settling or winning a case finishing an examinership but that is a very defined satisfaction. In management, nothing is ever finished and you are constantly trying to improve. It is never over. Your satisfaction is really when you take a look back and see three years ago it was like this and now there has been a transformational change.

The other key satisfaction is watching talent develop. Law firms are incredibly simple businesses, but they are difficult to execute. There are only two things that are important… clients and people. There is a huge satisfaction [as managing partner] for example from watching people develop and become talented lawyers.

TL: What makes a successful law firm?

DB: The analogy I like best is that top-class law firms are like high-end restaurants. They do two things. They give you legal product which is food on the plate, and they deliver it to you and that is the service. For a top-end law firm, there are maybe 2,500 or 3,000 client interfaces a day. The calibre of your legal advice must be first-class but equally the service of your delivery must be perfect for the client. Really good lawyers translate a complex legal situation into clear actionable advice that is comprehensible by 12-year-olds. The other thing you need is judgement. You need to do that fairly and usually collaboratively with the client.

TL: What is the toughest thing about being managing partner?

DB: It is difficult to discipline yourself to follow certain imperatives. You can overinvest in thinking about this or that decision, when in fact inculcating the correct approach to our clients and our people remains the cornerstone of success for all professional service firms. That is difficult. And then there is the difficult conversations part. Nobody likes that part, but you must have the self-discipline to have them.

TL: Would you do a fourth term as managing partner? You are only 52…

DB: I am just starting my third term so you shouldn’t ask me that. It is not a question for me. It is a question for our partners. I wouldn’t have gone again if I didn’t believe in this firm.

TL: How do you convince graduates to stay with your law firm? When there can be opportunities in industry or with rival firms.

DB: I said to a group of our younger lawyers recently that you are all millennials, so I want to understand what your values are. I was struck by how similar their aspirations were. Like everyone, they want meaningful work. It doesn’t mean you are saving lives. It is meaningful to assist in the transfer of ownership of an office block from enterprise A to enterprise B. But you need to have a sense that what you do has a purpose.

TL: Are there more opportunities now for young lawyers?

DB: Yes, there is. The in-house sector has exploded since I started out. Does that mean that there will be more mobility? Probably, because there is more opportunity. I don’t think, however, that millennials are radically different. I think they are in a time of more opportunity and good for them. It is always a challenge for professional service organisations to hold onto good people. You have to create the conditions for people to want to work for your organisation.

TL: What advice would you give to a lawyer starting out who wants to become a partner?

DB: You must have technical competence. Be honest with yourself about your technical ability and if you have deficits address them. Be sure that you can serve people happily. You need to go the extra mile and have a reputation for being consistently reliable.

TL: MHC have been leaders in the areas of data and privacy. It has acted for Facebook in its battle with Austrian privacy lawyer Max Schrems – a case that has global implications for the social media giant. How do you win a client like Facebook?

DC: Facebook is no different to a small Irish company. Clients will use firms who perform for them consistently. Then when the big things come along, they will work with you as they have had a good experience, value your judgement and know you will perform.

TL: What is the next new area of the law you expect to be big?

DB: I think environmental regulation is going to be big as developed economies change with climate change. There is going to be a huge amount of economic activity which will require extensive lawyering starting with energy. Then into planning, construction, the use of data from smart cities. This is an area that will inevitably grow over the next 20 years.

Ultimately law is a facilitative profession. You respond to events usually… Sometimes a court case can drive a structural change but nearly always you are responding to economic activity. You try and look for things that are coming and be alive to it. For example the regulation of driverless vehicles. We are looking at that at the moment and thinking about the regulatory approach here and what the EU regulatory approach is likely to be, so that we are ready for that.

TL: There are many new British firms setting up in Dublin in advance of Brexit. Are you concerned about Brexit in general and the arrival of these firms in particular?

DB: I regard Brexit as a political tragedy. I am a committed supporter of liberal democratic globalist values. The European project has kept the peace for 75 years. I am not an economist, but all the economic indicators and commentary conclude that it is a poorer outcome for the UK and Ireland. Ireland has definitely had a bounce from it in the short term but that is because we haven’t had to pay the price of it yet. We don’t know has the economy generated enough escape velocity to avoid being dragged back into a recession. We took a bet on being an open international economy 50 years ago and in the long run that bet has worked.

TL: And the arrival of so many British law firms…

DB: I am delighted. Why? Because I believe in clustering effects. There are loads of high-end restaurants in the Basque country for example because they have developed a reputation for wonderful high-end restaurants. The law is no different. Clustering tends to create more demand. Yes, it creates more competition for talent. Yes, there will be market share lost, but overall it should create more demand and more crucially it should drive up performance for clients. Clients are the people who ultimately decide the success or failure of law firms. Not new entrants.

TL: Are you cautious about 2020? Given Brexit…

DB: I would be a sceptical optimist. The external factors are the external factors. You have to concentrate on what is within your sphere of influence and nearly all of that is how you behave and serve clients. If you don’t have a service ethic you shouldn’t be a lawyer. Go into business instead. The second thing is how do you allow your internal talent develop. People must believe that you are committed to their development. That’s easy to say, hard to do.