* LORNE Crerar joined Ross Harper & Murphy eight years ago to form its
commercial division, which consisted at the time of one other solicitor
and two support staff.
Today, Harper MacLeod has a staff of 84 -- 25 of them solicitors --
and accounts for 25% of the practice's fee income.
Lorne decided in the very early days of the new division that it would
have to do something different if it was to have any chance of breaking
into a field dominated by long-established firms.
''It is a difficult market,'' he says. ''We had to show we were
different, and to use new marketing skills.''
To demonstrate this difference Harper Macleod has developed in
specialist areas which perhaps the more stuffier of corporate legal
practices would have ignored.
There is, for example, its Sports Law Unit and the partnership was a
founder member of the British Association for Sport and Law.
''The involvement of sport in legal proceedings is becoming more of a
daily feature of our life,'' says Lorne Crerar. ''We are not creating
the situation, only responding to need.''
Harper Macleod's interest in sport is not surprising given that Lorne
is himself a rugby referee, and staff members run a five-a-side football
team and frequently play 10-pin bowling.
The partners also spotted the changes taking place in local government
and formed a Local and Public Authority Unit to take advantage of these.
Last year the unit successfully tendered for the legal work of
Stirling District Council.
Lorne Crerar is particularly proud of the firm's record in introducing
legal health checks for companies, a practice which has been emulated by
the Law Society for Scotland, and also Harper Macleod's pioneering of an
''alternative insolvency strategy''.
He says: ''Our methods encourage continuation of the business and cut
down the expenses incurred by banks and their customers. Under the old
system banks were receiving a low asset return, and were being hit by
massive fees. Now more firms manage out their problems.''
Lorne Crerar does not want Harper Macleod to become too big, but still
expects the practice to grow by a third.
On the sports front he is now looking at Outward Bound activities,
which is an apt description for his aspirations in both work and play.
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