Setting the pace

During his 17 years at Al Tamimi & Co, Managing Partner Husam Hourani has seen the firm evolve from a local outfit to a regional powerhouse with enviable banking and capital markets practices. He talks to Ranajit Dam about the highlights of his career, the challenges of running a regional firm, and how Al Tamimi & Co can hold on to its pre-eminent position.

Tell us about your career so far.

I started my career in Jordan with Arab Bank, where I was in-house counsel for two years. After that, I moved to Dubai and joined Al Tamimi & Co as a junior associate, with the aim of helping to set up a banking department for the firm. That was 17 years ago. I started by first helping to build a banking team, and then created the department, before becoming head of that department. Then, after becoming a partner, I expanded the department, and found myself getting more and more involved in the management of the firm. I was then named deputy managing partner, and after being in that role for a period of four years, I was elected as managing partner, and have been in this position for about three-and-a-half years.

What do you enjoy the most about your work?

What I enjoy and get most satisfaction from are things like working on deals with clients, working on creating new concepts and new products, working on developing new specialty areas, setting up new free zones for various government institutions, and so on. I also like being creative and coming up with something new, and additionally building on what has been started.

THE TAMIMI TEMPLATE

What would you say sets Al Tamimi apart from other firms in the Middle East?

There are three main things. First, we are a regional law firm, and that means that we’re not a local law firm, and not an international law firm. We are more or less the only regional law firm in the Middle East. We have offices in many countries in the region, and are expanding in other countries as well. This concept was actually created and expanded by us, so we are unique in that regard.

Second, all the offices we have set up are full-services offices. We provide clients with both the consultancy and the litigation, and wherever we go, we always try to provide the full range of services, in effect becoming a local law firm in that particular country. This is something we have managed to achieve in all the countries where we have set up offices.

The third is the standard. Al Tamimi & Co is known as a regional law firm with an international standard. Our standard is very much equal to that of international law firms, but we also have the local flavour. With our local knowledge and experience, clients don’t have to compromise one for the other. Al Tamimi & Co gives you the best of both worlds, and that is not something other firms give you.

Do you face challenges maintaining standards across offices?

To be honest, that is one of the key challenges we face. Ideally, we’d like to maintain the same standards and the same approach, and also provide the same quality of services to our clients in all of our offices. This is something that we try very hard to do, and it’s something that takes time. We try a two-pronged approach. Firstly, we take someone from our head office in Dubai here, someone who has been with us long enough to understand how we operate and how we deal with clients. And then we either second him to the new office, or have him set up a new office for us. We then recruit someone from the local market who we feel will be the right fit for us, and bring him to Dubai to train him and make him understand our culture and our way of doing things. We then try to marry Al Tamimi & Co’s standards with the local knowledge, and have these two individuals manage the office.

However, it hasn’t been easy. In some of the markets we enter, it can be quite difficult to recruit individuals who have local knowledge and understanding of local laws and cultures, and also meet the standards that are required by Al Tamimi and Co. Finding that ideal combination of local knowledge, management skills and international standards within a lawyer who is willing to leave whatever he or she is doing and join us can be quite challenging. At the same time, it is not always easy to take bright senior associates and partners from Dubai, where they enjoy many conveniences, and move them to countries where they might not find the same facilities.

What are the other challenges you face as managing partner?

The other challenges that we typically face are maintaining high international standards in areas like technology and IT systems, business development, and management. Speaking of technology in particular, you have to have the best new technologies, and be able to upgrade to new systems and processes to keep pace with changes. When you are a regional firm, you have to develop everything yourself. You have to buy it from the international market and localise it to your needs, and then see what works and what doesn’t. That is not something that is easy to manage.

FIRM CULTURE

How would you describe the culture at Al Tamimi?

We have many things that make us unique. We were the first law firm in the Middle East to promote associates to partnership. In this region, it is not easy for associates to be promoted, as most law firms are small family offices, and it’s basically generation after generation running the same office. Associates at these firms end up staying as associates. Al Tamimi was the first law firm in the region to offer partnership to associates, regardless of nationality or background. When we find the right individuals, they are made partner. So we have this culture that if you work hard, if you have the right attitude, if you are a team player, and if you understand business development, then the partnership path for you is very clear. The process is well known, and that develops a great environment.

It makes us a family growing and developing from within, rather than hiring from outside. At Al Tamimi & Co, we try to make sure all our lawyers are trained internally. In the UAE, not a single partner has come to us as a partner from another law firm. All of them joined as associates, and then became senior associates, before they were promoted to partnership. That’s the culture we have in the firm: You come in and then you gradually learn Al Tamimi & Co’s style and system. You become part of the family, and then you make it to partnership.

How would you describe your strategy as managing partner?

First of all, I want to say that there is no fixed strategy. We have a unique way of creating strategy, and it is by committee. We have some ten committees within the firm, and we have a management committee comprising the six most senior partners. They meet and they discuss, and they put forward the strategy, and then they share it with the various committees. So basically, they develop it from within. So it’s very much teamwork, it’s very much partners putting forward ideas and thoughts which they crystallise and agree on. And then it is my responsibility, and the responsibility of the other executive committee members to implement those strategies and move them forward. As a firm, our strategy is very much to continue our expansion, continue being the largest non-affiliated law firm in the Middle East, and to expand in areas where we feel there is more activity and more work. We want to be where our clients want us to be, and continue to opening offices in the rest of the region.

How has the firm changed in the last 17 years?

The firm, when it started, had only one individual: Essam Al Tamimi. We started as a small local law firm, and now it has become the largest independent firm in the whole of the UAE. In 2004, we decided we wanted to become regional. Our clients were telling us: “We wish Al Tamimi was in other countries,” and they pushed us into different countries to set up offices there, because they wanted the local knowledge and international standards communicated to them in different countries. We were slowly pushed to become regional, and we moved with [the clients]. And this took us from being a one-man law firm to a local law firm, and then the largest non-affiliated local law firm, and finally the largest non-affiliated regional law firm, which is what we are now.

What have been your most proud moments as a lawyer?

When I joined Al Tamimi, I started to develop a banking and finance department. Most of my competitors were international law firms, and we were the only local law firm trying to get into that practice area and attract clients, who were typically international banks like HSBC, Standard Chartered and Barclays, to name a few. They had always worked with international law firms, and it was a challenge trying to at least get a part of their business, if not make them switch law firms altogether. It required lots of hard work, and a few years for me to start persuading banks to work with Al Tamimi & Co. Once that was achieved, and I created what I would call one of the largest banking teams in the whole of the UAE, with over 75 lawyers, it gave me lots of satisfaction. That made me proud of what I had achieved together with my partners and other colleagues.

The second one was developing our capital markets specialty. Again, we were competing with the international players, who came with their teams from all over the world to do capital markets work, and we had to start from zero. We started with no knowledge, and built up a team from within to be able to compete with them, and slowly with our determination, our knowledge and our experience, have again built up the best capital markets team in town. In the last 10 years, we have worked on every single IPO in the UAE. We are the No. 1 team when it comes to IPOs, the only team you can come to. And again, this gave me great satisfaction and a sense of achievement. Those two moments I would consider to be the most important when it comes to my career.

What are the ingredients to Al Tamimi’s success in the future?

If we are to continue at the same pace of growth and expansion, we need the right people to rely on and grow with. That means we need the right associates and senior associates who we can promote to partners in the future and who will start to take over from the existing partners, who in turn will be given more time to develop the business in other markets. And so we will move from one generation to another, the new partners taking over from the old partners, the senior associates rising into partnership. Thus we will be able to maintain the momentum, and continue the success story of Al Tamimi & Co.

We have identified that our assets are our lawyers, and they have to be given the appropriate training, and the appropriate preparations for the future, so that they can take up the top positions. And that is what we have started doing from now. We have several leadership programmes for senior associates to prepare them for partnership, to prepare them for leadership roles, for the responsibilities that they will have to take on in the future. We have started to work on the talents of our leading junior lawyers to make them good managers as well as good lawyers, to introduce them to the worlds of finance, business development, IT and HR, and make them leaders for the future. That is a challenge: To continue to find the right lawyers, to work with them from now, and to develop them to become leaders of the future.

How do you expect the legal landscape in the region will change over the next few years?

The recession of 2008 was a novel experience for the Middle East. This was the first time we had a major recession. It brought to the attention of the governments a number of loopholes that needed to be filled and needed to be worked on from a legal and regulatory point of view. This involved making the market more regulated, more balanced and more competitive. And we’ve started to see a huge number of rules and regulations being drafted, or on the verge of being enacted. We will see more and more in the coming years, and you will see the markets becoming more regulated and more transparent when it comes to transactions, and more similar to the international standards that others are used to. This means it’ll encourage businesses to increase their activities in the region and expand their presence. They will become aware that there are plenty of new opportunities coming into the region. The region is still a developing one; it is still a region that has plenty to work on and expand, including infrastructure, projects and development and so on, and we will see an expansion of the legal market to support this.

What advice do you have for other managing partners?

There would be a few things I’d ask them to keep in mind. First of all, being a lawyer does not mean you’re a good manager. To the contrary, actually; many of the good lawyers I know are not good managers. Work on your managerial skills. Make sure you understand the basics of doing business from a management point of view. Understand numbers and finance, HR and recruitment, IT and the business environment. And give it time. Many of the managing partners continue to focus only on their clients and their billable work, and don’t give enough attention to management. That, in my opinion, is wrong. You have to give no less than 50 percent of your time for management, for development, and for internal issues, so you have the right balance within the firm, and you are available for your lawyers, for your management. You will then have the support, so you can take steps in the right direction, and have all the right components.

The second thing is, make sure you’re a team player. Don’t move forward by creating the plan yourself, and then moving it forward on your own, while expecting everyone to follow. Make sure everyone buys into what you think you want your firm to be in the future. Make sure as many partners as possible buy into your vision and strategy, hear what they have to say, share with them, and have them share with you. And run the firm as an institution, not from an individual perspective. Makes sure you develop committees that specialise in different areas, and are able to support you. This will prepare the firm for the future, so that once you leave, the committees you have created will provide the right individuals to fill the roles, rather than relying on an individual vision that will move the firm forward.

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