When Culture Begins to Carry Itself: Growing KJ Smith Without Losing What Matters

As a firm grows, maintaining its culture cannot remain the responsibility of one person. Karen Harvey, Managing Director of KJ Smith Solicitors, reflects on what happens when the people you once supported begin doing the same for others.

One of the most reassuring things I hear as a managing director is that a problem has already been dealt with.

Something may have happened in one of our offices, and a colleague has needed support. By the time I become aware of it, another leader has already stepped in, taken responsibility, and helped resolve it. I am not being presented with a difficulty and asked what should happen next. I am being told what has already been done.

For me, that is one of the clearest signs that a culture is working.

It does not mean that senior leaders are kept away from difficult matters or that people act without accountability. It means colleagues understand their responsibilities to one another and feel confident enough to act when help is needed. They recognise that we succeed as a team and that there may come a time when they need the same support themselves.

Preserving that instinct as KJ Smith has grown has always mattered enormously to me.

At its simplest, employment is a transaction. A person brings their time, work, and expertise, and the business pays them for it. In any good organisation, however, the relationship quickly becomes more than that.

We want more from people than their contracted hours. We want them to engage with the firm, contribute ideas, care about its success and feel that they are genuinely part of it. If we ask for that level of commitment, we must offer more than salary in return.

People need to know they are building a worthwhile career. They need to understand where their path may lead, what success looks like for them personally, and whether the firm will genuinely help them to achieve it.

I tend to think of each person as almost a small business in their own right. Everyone has different strengths, ambitions and measures of success. For one person, it may mean qualification or promotion. Another may want to lead a team or run an office. Someone else may have no desire to manage people but wants to become an exceptional technical lawyer, which is no less valuable.

A good firm should have room for all of them.

For anyone considering a career in family law, I think that breadth of opportunity matters.

We need leaders, but we also need technical lawyers, analytical thinkers, academics, and people whose contribution may be less visible but is every bit as important. There is no single personality type that succeeds at KJ Smith. What matters is that people want to be part of the team and take pride in the work they do.

Our responsibility is to make the possible routes clear and give people the training, guidance, and opportunity to pursue the one that is right for them. The success of the individual and the success of the firm should not be competing objectives. The better our people do, the better we all do.

A pyramid with a broader base

I often picture the firm as a pyramid.

As we have grown, the base has become wider. We now have 19 offices, more people and a broader geographical reach, but the principles at the top remain recognisable. What has changed is the number of people progressing through the structure and then helping others to do the same.

There are colleagues I supported earlier in their careers who are now running teams and developing into highly capable leaders in their own right. They are now helping the next generation of people coming through behind them.

That gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction.

There is something very special about seeing someone you once helped become the person other colleagues now turn to. They are not simply repeating what they were told. They have understood the reasoning behind the way we work and are applying it with their own judgement and in their own style.

That is how culture becomes sustainable. It is passed on through behaviour rather than instruction.

We have seen the same thing as experienced lawyers have joined us from other firms, sometimes as part of entirely new offices. Starting somewhere new is demanding. People are learning systems, establishing relationships, and dealing with practical challenges as they arise.

What has impressed me is the way our existing leaders have responded. They make themselves available, share their experience, and help new colleagues find their feet. They do not wait to be asked because they understand that the success of one office contributes to the strength of the whole firm.

Nobody has to instruct them to care. That is already part of how they work.

Growth that creates opportunities

Expansion is of little value if a business loses the qualities that made it successful in the first place. It is also difficult to justify growth if it creates no meaningful opportunities for the people already within the organisation.

This is where growth can become an ally rather than a threat.

As we open offices and develop teams, emerging leaders have opportunities to take on greater responsibility. People who might once have felt they needed to leave the firm to pursue a particular ambition can increasingly find that opportunity here instead.

I would much rather create room for good people to progress within KJ Smith than lose them simply because there was nowhere for them to go.

That does not mean giving somebody a management title and assuming the rest will follow. An excellent lawyer does not automatically possess every skill needed to lead people, manage performance, or run an office. These are distinct responsibilities that require proper preparation. The legal profession has not always been particularly good at equipping people for management before asking them to undertake it, but we try to take a more considered approach.

We want people to understand what a role involves before they accept it. We provide training and ensure that support continues once they are in post. Our leaders meet regularly; discuss the issues they are facing and benefit from the experience of colleagues performing similar roles elsewhere in the firm.

We do not want anyone to feel they have been handed a title and left to work everything out alone. Our responsibility is to equip them properly and give them every reasonable opportunity to succeed.

Our Investors in People Platinum accreditation gives us an external benchmark against which to test that work. I value the recognition, but more importantly it requires us to keep listening, reviewing and improving. The objective has never been the accreditation itself. It is to build a firm worthy of it.

Autonomy supported by structure

The same philosophy shapes the way we approach consistency across the firm.

Lawyers enter the profession to exercise judgement, apply their expertise and develop their own professional style. I would not want to remove that individuality by making every person or every office operate in precisely the same way.

Consistency does not have to mean uniformity.

There must be clear standards, proper training, and sensible working practices. Once those foundations are in place, people should have the confidence and autonomy to apply them well. The same is true of our offices. They share common values and professional standards, but each is allowed to develop some character of its own. The people leading them are individuals and will naturally have different strengths and approaches.

That is not something to eliminate. It is something to support properly.

Autonomy is not the absence of structure. It is what becomes possible when the structure is sound and people have been equipped to work within it.

Remaining visible

My own role has inevitably changed as the firm has expanded geographically. There is more travel, and I expect there will be more still. I regard that as part of the role. It is important to me to remain visible and connected, and neither can be achieved entirely from behind a desk.

I still meet colleagues at every level of the firm. I value the informal conversations, hearing how people are getting on, understanding what they hope to achieve and helping them make sense of the route ahead.

Junior colleagues can often see where they would like to end up without knowing precisely how to get there. A significant part of my role, and that of the wider management team, is to make that route clearer and provide the support needed along the way.

It also matters that good work is noticed. Nobody should feel invisible because their office happens to be some distance from mine or because they do not regularly come into contact with the board.

We have newsletters, inter-office working, social events, and clear lines of communication with me and the wider leadership team. Those mechanisms become increasingly important as the firm’s geographical footprint grows.

This Christmas, almost the entire firm will be together under one roof for our Christmas party. That matters because there is real value in people meeting colleagues they may normally know only through calls or emails.

But culture does not reside in a newsletter or a social event. Those things support it, but the real test is whether people feel included, whether their contributions are recognised and whether they know someone will respond when they need help.

Clarity must also begin at the top

The shareholders set the firm’s objectives, and my responsibility as managing director is to develop a strategy capable of achieving them. The business plan is how that strategy is then communicated to the people responsible for delivering it.

I involve the board closely and take my accountability to the board very seriously. No one person has a monopoly on good ideas. The best decisions usually emerge from proper discussion, constructive challenge, and a shared understanding of what we are trying to achieve.

Ultimately, it is about the client

For all the discussion about growth, careers and leadership, the quality of service we provide to clients remains our priority. Without our clients, there is no firm.

Family law is demanding. Our clients are often going through one of the most difficult periods of their lives. They need lawyers who are capable, attentive, and able to concentrate fully on the matter in front of them.

That is why the environment we create for our people matters so much.

When lawyers are properly trained, well supported, and not distracted by avoidable internal difficulties, they are better able to give clients the attention they need. When they have experienced colleagues to consult and a team around them that wants them to succeed, the quality of service is more consistent.

Our commitment to our people and our commitment to our clients are not separate ambitions. The first helps us deliver the second.

As a specialist family law firm, our lawyers also work among colleagues who understand the demands of the same discipline and share the same professional focus. Family law is at the centre of what we do, and that creates an environment in which expertise and experience can be shared readily.

Having nothing to add

I was not present when KJ Smith was founded in 2009, and I will always be clear about that. The considerable work involved in establishing the firm was undertaken by our founder, Kerry Smith, and it required a level of determination that should never be underestimated.

My role has been to build on Kerry’s original vision and lead the phase that followed, particularly the period over the last seven years during which the business has expanded significantly.

I developed much of the administrative structure, beginning with our mission statement and client charter. Since then, I have overseen the development of departments, management structures, leadership programmes, and the way we support and develop our people.

Work of that nature is cumulative. While you are doing it, progress can feel slow. It involves years of thought, adjustment, and refinement, and the results do not always reveal themselves immediately.

Eventually, however, you begin to notice that the organisation is doing what it was designed to do.

People step forward without waiting to be asked. They support one another, exercise sound judgement and produce excellent work. Decisions reach me that are already right. Problems reach me after they have become solutions.

I do not believe maintaining the culture means ensuring every decision continues to pass through me. In many ways, it means the opposite.

It means people understanding what we are trying to achieve, taking responsibility for one another, and delivering work of a standard that requires no further intervention from me.

When that happens and I genuinely have nothing to add, that is what success looks like to me, and it still makes me smile.

Karen Harvey is Managing Director of KJ Smith Solicitors and has led the firm’s growth and development over the last seven years.