The session will review the optimum structure required for building a sustainable firm in terms of partner and lawyer numbers, new practice areas and the options for adapting your ownership, decision-making and governance models as you grow.

In particular, the session will review the stages of transition from a founder-led firm, through the entry of new partners (who may or may not buy-out the founders), into an institutional firm that will outlast the founders. Above all, we will hear how the early keys to success (such as the entrepreneurial and informal spirit) must inevitably change and adapt over time.

Topics will include:

• Understanding the right structure
• Growing the firm by bringing in new partners
• Opening the ownership model (through sale or gift of shares/buying out the founders)
• Developing a robust governance model: a management committee and/or board
• Defending the rights of founders within the larger entity
• The role of the partners meetings and inter-play with the management committee/board
• Agreeing the role of equity partners, with a selection process and appropriate remuneration approach
• Planning for the safe and successful transition of founders to next generation leaders
   

We will be closing the session by interviewing three young female lawyers, Carole Ayugi, Suzanne Muthaura and Waringa Njongo, who set out a decade ago to break the mould by launching MMAN Advokates in Nairobi. They will share their challenges as co-founders and reflections on the keys to success.