Neville Eisenberg on Leadership, Strategy & High Performing Firms

Our guest on the Performance Leader podcast is Neville Eisenberg. Neville grew up in South Africa, where he qualified as a lawyer. After gaining his Masters in Law from the LSE, je joined the London Corporate Finance Department at Berwin Leighton in 1989.

He was made partner in 1995, joined the board in 1996 and was elected managing partner in 1999. Neville oversaw Berwin Leighton's successful merger with Paisner & Co, to become Berwin Leighton Paisner. During his 15 years as managing partner, the firm grew its revenue by more than five times, more than tripled its profit per partner, and grew from two offices to 14 offices in 11 countries. In that time, BLP became known for pioneering innovation in legal services.

After stepping down as managing partner in 2015, Neville became senior partner until the firm's US merger with Bryan Cave in 2018. His final act at BCLP was to set up and run BCLP Cubed, a platform for delivering routine legal services at scale.

In this podcast, Neville talks about his time as a leader. We discuss his interest in strategy and the value of democratizing strategy in firms. We delve into what made BLP innovative, including how Lawyers On Demand was born. We cover high performance firms, building a feedback culture and having difficult conversations. I hope you enjoy listening to a professional services leader who really understands the power of strategy and culture.