It has been three months since the Irish commercial law firm Leman merged with the international law firm Ogier, and its bright offices have been rebranded to reflect the deal.

The headquarters of what is now Ogier Leman overlook the Barge Horse, a bronze sculpture by the Derry-born artist Maurice Harron located on the Grand Canal in Dublin 2. 

John Hogan, the co-founder of Leman who leads Ogier Leman in Ireland, greets me warmly as I arrive. It is 14 years since he co-founded the mid-sized law firm with Larry Fenelon, an old school friend from Blackrock College.

Hogan gives me a tour of the office. Like most companies these days, it is operating a hybrid model, some of his team are at their desks while others are working from home. 

In a corner of the ground floor there is an open plan area kitted out with desks that are not yet occupied. This is where Ogier Leman is going to locate its new hires as the business expands into new service areas – over the next two years it hopes to bring its headcount from 55 to about 100 people. As we stop in his firm’s swish canteen, Hogan laughs: “It wasn’t always this nice.”

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When he co-founded the firm in 2007 with Fenelon, the original office was in an alley near the Pepper Canister Church, a 100-metre stroll from their current location. It was previously the location for the official Colin Farrell fan club, so during their first year in business Hogan recalls regularly receiving mail for the film star who had recently made the crime thriller Miami Vice.

In the beginning, it was just Hogan and Fenelon. They called their firm Leman Solicitors after Fr Père Jules Leman, a French priest who founded Blackrock College in 1860. 

“We had a school in common so we thought it might be a subtle calling card to other alumni from the school,” Hogan said. “To be honest that didn’t really materialise but it was a good name and it gave us something to talk about when we met clients for the first time.”

Having a brand also avoided the common scenario in growing law firms when partners add their names to the title, something that can lead to cumbersome and ever changing titles.

The two young solicitors decided to Google the name Leman just to check there was nothing similar anywhere else. A search turned up Lehman Brothers, then a Wall Street titan with a market capitalisation of $60 billion.

At the time Lehman Brothers was far from a household name in Ireland so it didn’t put the two young lawyers off. “We thought that’s an interesting name that doesn’t mean that much to anybody here,” Hogan recalled. “And then along came September 2008 (when Lehman Brothers collapsed dramatically)!”  

When they set up the firm, Hogan was 31 and Fenelon 30. It was the same year they both got engaged to and married their partners so there was a lot going on as Ireland’s Celtic Tiger entered its final phase. Back then the talk was of a slowdown in Irish property prices, with only a few naysayers predicting anything worse than that.

It was still a brave decision for Hogan and Fenelon to quit their careers in established firms to set up on their own. They both came from business backgrounds, so they had an entrepreneurial itch.

John Hogan’s father ran a scrap metal recycling company while Fenelon’s father had a chain of butchers. “It was fairly unglamourous,” Hogan said. “But business was in our DNA.”

“We had both had fantastic training in other firms, but we knew we would like to do something for ourselves.”

Hogan had a speciality in property law, while Fenelon’s background was in dispute resolution. These skill sets complemented each other during the boom and would also prove vital to the firm’s survival during the bust that quickly followed within two years.

In its early years Leman’s client base was largely owner-managers of small-to-medium sized enterprises. “They were like ourselves,” Hogan said. “We were in the trenches with our clients very deeply during the years of the crash.

“It was quite a deep emotional engagement with clients who were struggling or trying to build businesses at a time when it was really difficult.

“We were trying to reshape businesses so they could survive. It was a lot of strategic advice about recovering businesses and trying to save people from personal liability and all that kind of stuff.

“We were lucky, some of our clients like ourselves, kicked off their businesses right into the teeth of the gale. It was about being strategic and nimble. There was no fat allowed in any business if they wanted to survive back then.”

The firm stuck with its clients, and this in turn fostered loyalty as slowly Ireland’s economy began to stabilise, and then recover. 

Problems and solutions

Paddy McKillen Jr and Matt Ryan were early clients of John Hogan and Larry Fenelon back in 2007. McKillen Jr, the son of one Ireland’s most successful developers, was only 25 at the time, while Ryan was 24. When Leman started working with them, they had just opened a 200-seat Captain America’s restaurant in Tallaght.

But then the crash came impacting every business in Ireland but especially the hospitality sector. “It was a real rollercoaster for them and for us during those first few years,” Hogan said. “I really admired how they came through it.” 

McKillen Jr and Ryan had the vision to set up the Press Up Hospitality Group and expand it in Dublin during the bleak years of the crisis. Today it has over 65 businesses in the group including restaurants, hotels, cinemas, and gyms. 

Leman has been with them on that journey as legal advisors. In retrospect, Hogan said his firm was lucky to still be small when the crash came as it could react quickly to a tough environment and the needs of its clients. 

“A number of the larger firms had to retrench,” he said. “But as a challenger firm there was an opportunity. We were able to hire really talented people. I don’t know if we could have done that if it had been a booming economy.”

“We found ourselves oftentimes in the first few years in David versus Goliath situations.”

Leman was too small to be selected by Nama or the banks to pursue borrowers; however the firm was not sure it wanted to work for them either.

After the initial shock of the crash the smarter law firms were reorienting to dismantle or restructure businesses. A debt enforcement industry grew also, with some business people going into bankruptcy, while others went back to square one.

In 2010/2011 Leman was told it should go this route too. “Philosophically we decided not to do that,” Hogan said. “It was like family law for companies. There were no good stories. It was all negative.” 

Instead, the firm found itself on the other side of the table, protecting business people facing immense pressure. “We found ourselves oftentimes in the first few years in David versus Goliath situations,” Hogan said. 

“Our client base were people who were trying to pull themselves through difficulties against much bigger opposition. Most of them recovered and are doing really well. It was about constructive engagement with funders and trying to find a solution.”

Hogan said a core value of the firm was a focus on solutions. “If there is a problem, we want to find a solution efficiently rather than labouring the problem,” he said.   

He gave the example of a client with substantial borrowings owed to the state’s bad bank Nama. Leman helped this client bring in new overseas investors to get them out of Nama at par, regaining control of the business two years later by refinancing their debt with established banks.

“We helped people weather the storm,” Hogan said. “It was energising. We spent weekends and late nights working together as a team to help people. It was some of the best energy I have had during my career trying to help people through the crisis.” 

He gave the example of Champion Sports, which Leman advised during the crisis. The business was then led by John Quinn, but it had borrowed from Anglo Irish Bank during the boom and signed up to leases that were too high for a recession. 

“Champion had challenges,” Hogan recalled. “There were upward only leases and so on that all had to be navigated. We helped management engineer a restructuring that kept all the jobs and helped keep the business afloat.

“They were a fantastic client throughout that time, and eventually they engineered an exit,” he said. The sale of Champion to JD Sports repaid its bankers and protected its 600 jobs.

“If we had gone the insolvency route, we would have been picking over the carcasses of businesses,” Hogan said. “I don’t think we would have had the same energy if we had done that, and I don’t think we would have attracted the same people.”

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As Ireland recovered, the firm moved away from firefighting and began to focus instead on its core areas of corporate and employment law. “We felt these areas reflected our DNA which was about the future and trying to find solutions and not be in the pit of despair,” Hogan said. “This meant we became part of the recovery story for people.”

As businesses started to do more deals and hire more people Leman started to gain ground. 

In 2014 Ronan McGoldrick became a new partner in the firm. Dominic Conlon followed the following year. Today it has nine partners, and a team of 55 people. 

Hogan said he was fascinated by entrepreneurs. “Understanding what makes them tick and the impact that good advice can have on them is what I enjoy,” he said.

“These days everyone talks about the need for a sense of purpose and that’s critically important to people for their careers. People need to know that what they are doing has a meaning.

“A letting agreement for a unit might sound a little bit dry but in time there will be 50 people working there and over the next five years, there could be 150.

“Being part of that by spotting risks or opportunities…helping businesspeople navigate so that their business can be successful. It is really, really powerful for people.

“Clients go to their legal advisers because they want someone who understands their problems and can emotionally engage with them and help them with a strategy. The drafting of the documents, the technicalities, it is a given that you should be able to do that but the strategic advice you can give to a client is invaluable.” 

Origins of a merger

At the start of 2021 Leman’s partners sat down to carry out a strategic review, a process that would eventually lead to the merger with Ogier. “We were at an inflection point,” Hogan said. “Option one was we could run very hard to stand still and remain competitive.”

The partners in Leman had seen how this had impacted other firms in the 1990s and 2000s which had stagnated because they couldn’t offer enough opportunities to younger staff who then left.

Option two was a domestic merger, something that fitted in with a growing trend in the market.

In Ireland accountancy firm EY has set up a law division that plans to employ 50 people by 2025. There are rumours that other accountancy firms are trying to poach senior lawyers or even buy mid-sized law firms. Domestic firms are also looking to merge with other smaller firms.

Was Leman ever a target? “I can say yes, we definitely have had approaches,” Hogan said. “I would expect that we’ll see a bit more happening in that area over the next two years.  There are regulatory issues…but also there are issues about the cultural alignment of lawyers with other professional services and the conflicts that can arise. It’s not easy to see a straight line through that.”

Overall, however, Hogan said the firm opted against a domestic merger as the partners “did not feel there was a cultural alignment so we thought that would be a struggle too”.

That led to option three. In the first half of 2021 the chair of Leman David Pierce received an approach. 

A former corporate banker with Ulster Bank and consultant with Maples & Calder, Pierce was plugged into the legal scene overseas. Ogier told him they were interested in building an Irish presence and asked him if he could introduce them to Leman. “They were looking for a cultural alignment with their firm,” Hogan said. 

In July 2021 a first Zoom call was arranged between Leman and Ogier. “We’d had a number of approaches over the years,” Hogan said. “Some big ones, but we had never found the cultural synchronicity that we wanted.”

However, Leman clicked with Ogier. “We wanted to create more opportunities for the people who work here,” Hogan said. “Our people are ambitious, and we wanted to create even more room for them to succeed.”

In September 2021, Leman went to visit Ogier in Jersey. Ogier is based in six countries. It doesn’t have a mothership, but Jersey is its biggest office. Hogan said he met Edward Mackereth, its global managing partner. “I went over slightly careful,” Hogan said. “But I came back very enthusiastic. I really liked their people and they seemed to share our values. They’re very invested in the success of their people and things like internal promotion and reward.” 

A deal quickly followed. Ogier, he said, now planned to invest in Leman allowing it to launch new service lines and hire more people. “In the next 12 months the most obvious areas are financial services, funds and regulatory,” Hogan said. “Those three are the ones we are going to target in the medium term as well as adding a bit of extra heft to our current offerings in corporate, real estate, climate and dispute resolution.”

He said Leman had been named a Best Small Workplace in the ‘Great Place to Work Best Workplaces in Ireland’ every year for the last five years. “We want our people to be happy as we feel they will do their best work that way,” Hogan said. 

Technology, the law and ‘swing-gate’

Unusually for a mid-sized law firm Ogier Leman has two legal tech subsidiaries that it has developed over the years. One of these is LexTech, a sister firm that provides legal, compliance and regulatory technology solutions to various industries.

The other firm is called HRLegal, which uses technology to make the delivery of human resources solutions easier. “We feel that for some traditional legal services there is a sunset on delivering them in the way they always have been,” Hogan said. “People are looking for efficient solutions. They want to digitise.”

For example, Hogan said LexTech had developed an insurance notification app to help businesses record any incident fully rather than filling in a paper form. “Forms can get lost or be filled in incorrectly,” Hogan said. “By the time it ends up as a claim if you have poor documentation that can be a jamboree for a claims lawyer.”

I ask Hogan did his firm act in ‘swing-gate’, a well-known incident where a then politician ended up dropping her personal injury claim against the Dean Hotel, a property owned by the Press Up group. “We did have that case. We defended that case very successfully, but it is just one case,” Hogan said. “The whole idea with the App is to capture activity live, take photos and so on and ensure lower insurance premiums and better claims management.”

Hogan said he expected technology developed by Leman will be now rolled out throughout the wider Ogier group. “They have the same innovation culture we have,” he said. “They are committed to looking at how technology can help provide better solutions.”

Hogan said he admired companies like Johnson Hana who were using technology to do certain legal tasks more efficiently. “I really admire what they’re doing,” he said. “They’ve a new model that is not just technology for the sake of it.” Another firm he admired is British legal tech firm Riverview Law, which was acquired by EY in 2018.  

A landscape in flux

Ogier does not plan to scrap the Leman brand, and the firm will trade under both names. “We’re not going to be subsumed overnight or anything like that,” Hogan said.

There would also be opportunities for staff to work with Ogier overseas. “People are putting their hands up for a Cayman trip already,” he laughed. “The Irish card is still a hugely powerful card when talking to foreign investment, even fund managers globally. They like Ireland as a place to do business.  They want to do business here.”

Hogan added: “Ireland is the bridge to Europe. Ogier has got a lot of international clients who are looking at Europe and saying where do we put our beachhead? Ireland is a natural choice and I’m really excited about wearing the green jersey.

“For example, say private wealth might be housed in the Cayman Islands but it wants to invest in Ireland. Typically, the structure around that would involve them sending the money from Cayman through Luxembourg into Ireland. But not many firms can offer the full breadth of services to do that. We can do that.  I think we can offer a lot more now.”

Ogier Leman currently employs 55 people in Ireland. In its other offices it typically employs between 75 and 150 people. “Our target is to get to the midrange of that, so close to 100,” Hogan said, adding it hoped to get there within two years.

Ogier Leman’s existing office on Percy Place in Dublin 2 has sufficient capacity to take more people, but he added it will likely only need space for 80 people at any one time because of hybrid working patterns.

Hogan said he already had potential new hires reaching out and wanting to talk following news of the merger.  

When Hogan co-founded Ogier Leman, the Irish legal market was firmly dominated by indigenously owned firms. “In the last three years I’ve probably seen more flux than in the previous 20,” Hogan said.

As a mid-sized firm, Hogan said he was conscious of the advantages of having an overseas partner. “I think running very hard to stand still would have become harder and harder,” he said. “That said I’m not sure that some new firms arriving in Dublin will stay here forever or make a massive investment here.”

Brexit, he said, had forced many British law firms to set up a base here, but he wasn’t sure how committed they were long-term. “It’s a question mark, I would say,” he said. “There could be a case of brass plating in some cases.”

In others, however, he said it was clear from the long-term leases they were signing and the number of new hires that they were in Ireland seriously.

Ogier was not investing in Ireland because of Brexit. “They came here to offer more services to clients,” he said.

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“This is an exciting new chapter for the business and I’m really looking forward to it.”

What will Ogier Leman look like three years after the merger? “Honestly, I don’t think it’ll have changed.  Its DNA won’t have changed at all. What we will have done is add on new service lines and deepened our resources in our existing departments,” Hogan he said. “We’re not out to be the next A&L Goodbody. There are brilliant, enormous firms in Ireland, but we don’t want to be one.

“We will have more internationally based clients investing in Ireland than we probably do now. But that is something we want.

“I’ve absolutely no doubt that this is the right decision for us and I’m watching that with real interest (what happens elsewhere). And whether people can make a success of that and will it be really disruptive in the Irish market. So far, there haven’t been major shockwaves, but it is early days. Existing partners in these firms will have to invest heavily to fill senior roles. They will have to make very substantial investments in what is a risky venture. So, I’m definitely watching with interest.

“This is an exciting new chapter for the business and I’m really looking forward to it.”

Law outside the Pale

Hogan said an overlooked effect of new firms entering the Irish market and consolidation in its major cities was how this was impacting rural law firms. 

“Outside of the cities there’s a big change happening in the delivery of legal services in the next ten years,” he said.  

“At the moment there are only a handful of trainees being trained outside of the major city centres now. I’m concerned in the next ten years you’ll see the withering of local legal services in towns outside of the cities.

 “The stats are pretty scary about the number of people training in maybe as many as a dozen counties where they haven’t got any trainees in them anymore. When I was training, there were people from all counties, all walks of life and all different experiences and it was great, a real melting pot. Law isn’t all just about what’s happening in the Pale.”