When sitting down to write this piece and pondering my chosen title I became aware of both the truth and the lie simultaneously and intrinsically bound up in it. I could after all have gone with “plus ca change c’est plus le meme chose” instead but that would have required a Google search to check my schoolboy French and there’s just no time for that! In any event I’m sure everyone knows the phrase is intended to convey the sentiment that despite things appearing to be changing radically, in reality very little changes. Let me explain.
A few weeks back at the end of October, when solicitors annually renew their practising certificates and professional indemnity insurance, I did not. This has of course been in planning for some time as part of a handing over of the reins to my younger, smarter and indubitably better-looking co-directors Laura and Stacey who have been incrementally acquiring my interest in the practice over a number of years now. Our name change this summer sought to recognise the huge part the girls have played in the firm’s more recent successes and was perhaps the first outward sign of a succession road map which has been in place for around five years. This month is now the next step along that road, being the last I will spend suited and booted and sitting behind a desk on a full-time basis. The momentous decision not to renew my practising certificate now means that for the first time in nearly forty years I am no longer a practising solicitor nor director of the firm. I have instead now taken up a consultancy role within the practice I started eighteen years ago and looking to a new relationship with the firm. Come Christmas I will step back further, working just a few days each month to help with mentoring Laura and Stacey if ever they need a sounding board and it is they who will now steer the practice supported by the fabulous team we have built around us.
There’s no denying that it’s a time of great change and as we all know change can be challenging. After all, I will have to learn to adapt to no longer getting up at 6am every day and working 55-hour weeks, although it is a challenge, I have to say, I am more than ready for! Laura and Stacey and the team will now drive maloco mowat parker forward, pursuing their vision of what a top performing customer focused solicitors and estate agency should look like. I have every confidence in their wide-ranging talents, and I know that they will take the practice to the next level in professional excellence. I am also delighted to say that the vision of customer excellence, innovation and pro activity with a few giggles chucked in for good measure and which course I have sought to pursue, is very much the one they too will follow. Plus ca change as I said.
Another aspect of time moving on but staying the same that struck me as I indulged in a little wistful reminiscing was that I entered the profession at a time of big hair and mullets and now as I leave the mullet is, I find, making a comeback! Sadly, I myself can no longer rock the look being a bit more follicly challenged than in 1984 when I began my apprenticeship, but it’s reassuring to know my trend setting ways and days as a fashion icon were not in vain!
As I say, I will continue to be involved with the practice albeit on a light touch basis. I will, I know, miss the daily contact with Laura, Stacey and the team, the general chit-chat and the laughs. I’ll miss too the many professional friendships I have built over the years with other local solicitors, mortgage brokers etc. The local faculty of solicitors has always been a very supportive and collegiate one so that despite being in competition with one another, we all get along incredibly well. I’ll miss the many clients (well, maybe not the difficult ones!) it’s been my privilege to represent over the last four decades and whom, I hope, will continue to support the practice. You are in the very best and the very safest of hands, I promise. Laura, Stacey and the team, I know, will excel without me and that is exactly how it should be. The times indeed are changing and yet much, I know, will remain the same.
