Robert Nicholson
"Without an MBA you're a bit blind, because this type of information is not something you necessarily pick up from experience."
Robert Nicholson
Chairman
Freehills
Robert Nicholson, Freehills chairman, is a rare breed of lawyer with business acumen.
Most lawyers are not skilled managers or trained in management disciplines. How can they be? Law students seldom study business as a discipline in itself.
Yet according to Robert who graduated from Melbourne Business School with an MBA in 1989, in his role it helps "enormously" to understand strategy, finance, organisational and marketing issues - both within his own organisation and that of clients and the industries in which they operate.
He says, "All those factors are relevant to the work that we do and our work product and services must be provided in a framework that recognises those issues so that we can help achieve the client's objectives."
He added that from a legal-service provider viewpoint, clients often don't provide the level of background environment information that's required to add the most value. "You have to probe for those things," he says. "Without an MBA you're a bit blind, because this type of information is not something you necessarily pick up from experience."
He argues that business is not just about economics, which some lawyers have from an undergraduate degree. He says, there's a big people component to it and marketing and other disciplines that are not necessarily financial in nature.
Robert advocates that an MBA can accelerate your career as a lawyer. There are so many factors you are conscious of as a result of doing an MBA that people years ahead of you in experience may not pick up.
For a lawyer this is unusual. There are very few practicing lawyers who have done MBAs. Robert says that few lawyers make the commitment and those that do tend to use the course to transition into another career, such as management consulting or investment banking.
With a double degree in Science and Law from Monash University, Robert started with Corrs Chambers Westgarth, and then moved to Freehills in 1991 a couple of years after completing his MBA.
He claims there were several things that motivated him to do an MBA. Firstly, his mentor at the time, John Dahlsen from Corrs, was closely associated with Melbourne Business School. As a young lawyer, Robert saw how John brought the benefit of his MBA training to bear on everything he did. "I thought if I could try a bit of the same thing, I might possibly be just as successful," he says. Another Corrs partner, Robert Poulton, had also done an MBA and was managing partner at the time. Both Dahlsen and Poulton had been very successful M&A lawyers - and both had won the Clemenger prize in the MBA program.
Robert recalls the clincher was a lecture on mergers and acquisitions by Mike Tilley who was at the time with Lloyds Corporate Advisory Services, but who is now Challenger's CEO. "The lecture was inspirational," he says. "I could see there was much more behind M&A transactions that I had no visibility on, I didn't understand and didn't know about. I wanted to get that knowledge and have those frameworks to work with in future."
Doing the MBA also helped him to recognise Freehills' potential. A solid performer at the time, Freehills had big plans and is now one of the largest professional services organisation in Australia with more than 200 partners, 900 lawyers, 2,000 staff and revenue of about $500 million.
During his career Robert has specialised in mergers and acquisitions, and equity capital markets, especially in the energy, resources and infrastructure industries. He says, "I like those industries. They're large and capital intensive and play a big role in the economy."
One of his favourite projects included working on the reforms and privatisation of the State-owned electricity, gas and plantation assets for the State of Victoria under the Kennett government, and as a result of that, working on a similar project in Korea and many other transactions within the new industry structures.
"You can't just do the same thing all the time," Robert advises. "You've got to look for new challenges. After being on the board of Freehills for six years, Robert has recently become chairman.
"That's been another opporutnity and a new way to contribute to the firm," he says. "I'm a non executive board member. The board is established like the board of a public company. We are trying very hard to make the management of this firm as professional as we can. We would like to think the management of our business could be compared to the best of breed management in any other private sector organisation of a similar size".
This may be helped by two other MBA-wielding board members out of the eight-member board - Gavin Bell, CEO and Helen Nugent, external board member, and also on the board of Macquarie Bank and Origin Energy and chairman of Funds SA, Swiss Re and Hudson (Australia and New Zealand).
Although about ten percent of his 60-hour or so week is dedicated to board responsibilities, Saturday mornings Robert can often be found on a river bank somewhere around Melbourne or country Victoria, watching two of this three daughters row competitively for their school or chauffeuring his third daughter around parties.
