October is always a significant month for me because it marks the anniversary of Geoffrey Miller Solicitors.
This October, we celebrate 26 years.
Twenty-six years of clients, cases, challenges, successes, changes in the law and enormous changes in the way we work.
Anniversaries naturally make you look backwards. But this year, I find myself much more interested in looking forwards.
Because Geoffrey Miller Solicitors today looks very different from the business my late father started 26 years ago.
And I think that is something to celebrate.
The world has changed. So have we.
When the firm was founded, the legal profession was a very different place.
The traditional model involved offices, large teams, paper files and an enormous amount of administrative work that simply had to be done manually.
Technology has transformed that.
Covid then accelerated changes in working practices that might otherwise have taken another decade.
And now AI is challenging us to think again about what work actually needs to be done by humans and where technology can help us do that work faster and better.
Rather than resist those changes, we have embraced them.
Geoffrey Miller Solicitors has evolved into a significantly leaner business. We work remotely. We have reduced unnecessary infrastructure. We have invested in technology and we are developing ways of using AI to support the work of our lawyers and our team.
None of that has happened by accident.
It reflects a conscious decision about the kind of law firm we want Geoffrey Miller Solicitors to be for its next chapter.
Our ambition hasn’t become smaller. Our infrastructure has become smarter.
There was a time when business growth seemed inevitably to mean more.
More employees. More office space. More infrastructure.
After 26 years, I am far less interested in size for the sake of size.
I am interested in excellence, which is one of the firm’s core values and is surprisingly difficult to find in the legal market.
I want outstanding people, excellent systems, intelligent use of technology and an unwavering focus on the people who ultimately matter: our clients.
A smaller highly skilled team, equipped with better technology and freed from unnecessary layers of process, can be incredibly powerful.
That is the business we are building.
AI and the next generation of legal services
I have spent time in London this week at Legal Geek, where the future of technology and AI in law has been very much on the agenda.
For me, the exciting question isn’t whether AI can replace lawyers.
It is: what becomes possible when exceptional lawyers have exceptional technology supporting them?
AI can help remove repetitive tasks and enable people to process and organise information much more efficiently.
What it cannot replace is judgement.
It cannot replicate the relationship between solicitor and client. It cannot replace decades of specialist experience or the strategic judgement that comes from having dealt with thousands of real cases involving real people.
We want the best of both worlds.
Technology where technology makes us better.
Humans where humans make the difference.
A rather different kind of learning
My other London experience this week was rather different, but strangely complementary.
I had the absolute pleasure of spending a day undertaking mindfulness training with none other than Ruby Wax and was incredibly fortunate to be welcomed into her home.
It was informative, thought-provoking, compassionate and, unsurprisingly, very funny.
But what I took from the day went beyond wellbeing.
It was about clarity.
Running a business means constantly looking at what happens next. The next client, the next problem, the next decision, the next deadline.
Occasionally stopping gives you the opportunity to ask some much bigger questions.
What are we trying to achieve?
What still serves us?
What no longer does?
And if we were creating this business from scratch today, would we build it the same way?
For me, the answer to that last question is emphatically no.
And recognising that is exciting, not frightening.
Twenty-six years of change
We have changed our working model.
We have become leaner.
We work remotely.
We are adopting AI.
We are challenging traditional assumptions about what a successful specialist law firm needs to look like.
But the important things haven’t changed.
Our specialist expertise.
Our standards.
Our determination to achieve the best possible outcome for our clients.
Our willingness to innovate.
And our absolute belief that when somebody comes to us at what can be an incredibly stressful point in their life, they deserve our very best.
Those things are as important to me now as they were 26 years ago.
What does success look like after 26 years?
Perhaps this is the biggest lesson I have learnt.
Success doesn’t have to be measured by how many desks you fill or how many people appear on an organisation chart.
Success can also mean creating a business that is agile, efficient and ready to adapt.
It means attracting people who believe in where you are going.
It means having the confidence to change something that has worked because you believe something else can work even better.
It means embracing technology without losing humanity.
And, occasionally, it means becoming smaller in order to become stronger.
So this October I am celebrating 26 years of Geoffrey Miller Solicitors with enormous pride.
Pride in what we have built.
Pride in the thousands of clients who have trusted us.
Pride in the people who have contributed to our story over those 26 years.
And enormous excitement about what comes next.
We aren’t trying to recreate the Geoffrey Miller Solicitors of the past.
We are building the Geoffrey Miller Solicitors that makes sense for the future.
Happy 26th anniversary to us.
Here’s to the next chapter.
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