Instruct Counsel heralded a new concept for those needing advocacy services, but unfortunately it passed into legal history within a year. Undaunted, co-founder Gordon Stead has relaunched the concept with a new team of advocates to call upon, and maintains that the specialist instruction liaison concept remains as solid an idea now as it was a year ago.
Richard Draycott finds out more.

he first time The Firm met Gordon Stead was over a coffee at Sarti’s in Glasgow a year ago. He had just left his job as a lawyer at Brodies to go into partnership with advocate John Thomson to launch Instruct Counsel, a whole new concept aimed at making life easier for lawyers when instructing advocates in personal injury cases. The launch of any business is exciting, but what Stead was launching was unique and totally new to the Scottish legal marketplace. Hopes were high and expectations even higher.
A year down the line and Instruct Counsel is already no more. The partnership came to a sticky end early in May after what has been diplomatically described as a clash of personalities.

However, Stead was staunch in his belief that the Instruct Counsel concept could and would work given time and so out of the ashes of Instruct Counsel, a new company has been born – Instruct Us Now.

Speaking of the demise of Instruct Counsel, Stead said: “Instruct Counsel was actually on target to hit the targets we had set. The planning we did at the end of the calendar year, eight months into the business, didn’t show that we weren’t going to achieve those targets and it came as a bolt out of the blue to me that John no longer wanted to be involved with the business. That effectively was putting an end to it because of the logistical problems and practical problems of me continuing with it alone. I think it was more of a personality clash problem than a problem with the concept of what we were trying to do with this business.

“That is the reason that I have continued with the basic concept of Instruct Counsel, albeit under a new company. If I didn’t think there was future in this concept then I would have given up on it too. My business partner didn’t want to be involved anymore and I effectively had to decide what I wanted to do almost overnight.”

Since launching the concept a year ago Stead is proud of what he and his former partner Thomson and their employee Richard Haddow achieved and how Scottish solicitors were beginning to take on board the concept and recognise the savings in both time, effort and frustration that putting instructions through Instruct Counsel could offer. That said, Stead says there is always room for improvement.

“I have been reviewing a lot of things about how the business operates and the advocates that do the work for us. I have been meeting with a lot of advocates recently to make sure that the infrastructure is more solid than it was before so that when we do start getting a lot of work in the best advocates are there and in place to service it.

“John has gone back to being an advocate and all the best to him, but I am moving the business forward with a fresh crop of counsel who I feel are very good quality and will be able to work with my business.

“My business is now back to the purest form of the business model and because we now have no formal ties with any advocates the relationships we have with them is at arms length. In the past where our involvement with John has bought us in some work because some people wanted to work with John in particular. Now we have no formal ties with any advocate, which I feel is better for the independence of the business and every member of counsel is there on their own merits.”

So, was there a time when Stead considered giving up on the whole idea and returning to private practice?

“I suppose it did cross my mind to forget about it, but I do truly believe in the concept. I knew I could go back to doing what I was doing before, but I knew that I either had to give it another go now or the opportunity would be gone forever. When I sat there holding with BT for the fifth time in one day I did wonder whether I was doing the right thing, but I am convinced that I am and I now just have to get on with it. You have to positive and not let silly things like organising bank accounts grind you down.

“I actually had very positive support from people who I spoke to about whether I should continue with this concept. They said I shouldn’t just let it drift away, that I should give it another go because it was working. So, that was part of my thinking, if people who had used the service wanted to continue using the service then it must be worth giving it another try. Even people who had not tried the service encouraged me to carry on offering it to the market.”

Stead is now two months into his new venture and already instructions have been received directly through the new website, www.instructusnow.com. His main priority now though is to ensure that the instructing solicitors who use the service receive the quality of service on which Instruct Us Now will either live or die.