Introduction: 0:13

Gary says radar's journey from a health platform to a national platform backed by major international investors, including a prominent private equity group and a sovereign wealth fund. We explore how that investment is fueling in ambitious acquisition strategy and reshaping the legal services landscape.

Jeff Zindani: 0:32

Hi Gary, thanks for making the time today to come on to our podcast, Leaving the Deal, just by way of an introduction for everybody. Gary's the CEO of a law firm that a lot of people probably have never heard of, radar. Excuse the pum, definitely under the radar in the legal sector. What you won't know is that this now national firm, founded, I believe, Gary, back in 2012 by you, now has close to 300 people working for you. Turn over, I think, over 24 million or 24 million-ish.

Gary Gallen: 1:05

Over 24 million, but substantially more than that already this year. We've achieved that mark before the end of the end of the year. So we'll we'll exceed that again this year.

Jeff Zindani: 1:14

Because I know there was a pretty substantial jump last year. And in the top 200 lawyer list of firms times 100 list of law firms to work for as an employer. So all very exciting stuff, Gary. But can you talk us through, right? This will really help everybody. Your professional journey, if we can. And what inspired you, if I can say that, to create radar?

Gary Gallen: 1:41

So I am a qualified solicitor. I've been over 30 years now in the legal profession. And my particular area of expertise and experience that I've practiced has been the criminal law code. In criminal law, I use that in the widest sense over that 30-plus year journey, in that it includes risk management, compliance, regulatory type work. If a if a corporate client or individual can be investigated for something, prosecuted, sanctioned in some way, professional license under threat, a qualification, a business certification, or their liberty or fines, that kind of area is pretty much what I've looked into and either prosecuted, defended, or investigated for that 30 plus years. In that period of time, working with people when things had gone wrong, when they were in a crisis and they needed to be defended, protected through a process where they were often quite intelligent, capable individuals, entrepreneurs, great business people. But when the regulator knocks on your door and says you've done something wrong and takes you through legal process, that's a very uncomfortable, anxiety-filled process. That as a lawyer, that's my comfort zone, but business people, that's way out of their comfort zone. And I recognised helping people, human beings, through that process. And I found in my career a handful of people that were genuinely bad, shall we say, that did something for ill-gotten gains, got caught, and they then wanted to be introduced to me to use my skills to try and help them in that situation. That's a rarity. The majority of business people in my career that I've met are good people trying to do a good thing, and they don't understand enough about the rules and about law and fast-changing compliance and risk and insurance. So instead of just helping them when it had gone wrong, Jeff, I actually started to get more and more challenged by my clients. Said, you're very good at helping us when it's broken and putting it back together. Can you stop it breaking in the first place? Can you start looking at what we do and how we do it and all of the knowledge that you've got in your head and try and show us how to avoid the pitfalls in the first place? And that was really where I started on my journey to build radar.

Jeff Zindani: 4:07

Let's just talk about in terms of practice areas. I just want to focus on insurance services, because this is a sector. Um, I know it obviously from the other side to some extent. Um it's famously competitive, famously challenging in many ways. How have you been able to stand out and succeed in a really demanding environment, particularly with some of the larger consolidation that has taken place in the insurance sector? So, how how have you been able to do it?

Gary Gallen: 4:40

So I have to get very close to insurance policy wordings and understand the different types and categories of insurance from employers' liability to public liability to directors and officers to corporate legal expenses after the event, before the event, and you know, international programs, etc. And I started to recognise that these policies were extremely complex, had lots of conditions, warranties, exclusions, and hurdles, effectively, that were often so incredibly difficult for the business to overcome, particularly when there was a serious incident where there might have been a raid by the competition authorities, the tax authorities, the serious fraud office, where you have to provide advice who being and support and take steps and could you be in a police station in a matter of minutes, being able as a client to understand that you need to agree your insurance, notify incorrect ways, and take appropriate steps is difficult for corporate clients. So it was from looking at the process and thinking there's got to be a better way to do this. And quite often the corporate clients, sophisticated corporate clients, you know, billion turnover corporate clients would ask me, as the lawyer that they called with the expertise, can you help us navigate the insurance? Can you come into a meeting with our broker? Can you talk to our insurer? Can you explain who we are, what we do, how we do it, etc., to get us through this process? I have never represented a corporate client in 30 plus years that wants to be in court, that wants to be arrested, that wants their business reputation and brand tarnished and damaged with publicity and adverse social media if something goes wrong. So the client would actually say, I've paid insurance premiums for 20 years and never had a claim. I would like to get more value from those thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds that are being paid. And that was the education. So by recognizing what the old process was, I designed a new process, a new insurance product, a new wording, worked with the insurers for them to recognize that that was of benefit to them. And that instead of saying insurers were not relevant, they are massively relevant. The world will not work, and commerce and industry will not work without them. And the insurers don't want to not pay claims, they would like to help, but they're behind in understanding how a business works in this modern age. My goal was always to help the business to stay out of trouble. So by building a new product but joining up everybody else in the value chain, that's where the business model and opportunity came from. And so by enhancing insurance as a lawyer with litigation skills, I started partnering with the people that were already there and improving the product. So one CEO of a very well-known insurance company says basically, so you've invented the new laptop and you're the new smart chip that makes it work better inside it for all of us. And I thought that was a very good analogy that we were like that new computer chip, just enabling a better and a smoother process.

Jeff Zindani: 7:57

Can we just move on to to some extent what you probably have needed to power radar? And that's on the kind of investment piece. In 2022, you obtained quite significant investment from a sovereign wealth fund and also I think a P-backed US group. Obviously, you can't mention names, but can you just talk us through why you went down that road and how it's helped radar?

Gary Gallen: 8:27

Sure, well, that's that's been an interesting journey. And the road to success is never straight, it's never incremental and simple. Um, it's a bowl of spaghetti, uh, and you're following that spaghetti ground in circles, but you always have the end in mind. And I suppose another thing that I was very clear on was the business model, which I've explained. I wanted to help corporate clients, I wanted to help lots of corporate clients, I wanted to help them stay out of trouble. So by providing proactive solutions, using insurance as a partner, I could be sold by those insurance relationships and partners to thousands of corporate clients across the country. So by being clear on the plan, Jeff, by clear, being clear on the opportunity, the entrepreneur in me recognized that I could deliver that business, but only with the need to recruit lots of people. And that I would have to develop the technology at scale and pace. Because as the product could be sold through that harnessed partnership of sales professionals, the brokers selling my product for me around the United Kingdom morning, noon, and night, I would have to put a lot of resources behind it. And the reason I explained that context is because people want to run lifestyle businesses or they want to be a PLC or they want to be a 10 million turnover business, a 50 million turnover, 100 million turnover business. With that commercial model, what you also, or in my humble opinion, need to be clear on is what capital is required to deliver that plan in one year, in two years, in three years, in five years. What is your intentions with the company? Is it to scale it and to build certain metrics? But your intention as the founder is to build that business to that point in three years and then sell it for the most amount of money and exit. I always wanted to stay in the business and continue to grow it because the vision I have for the business is to be an international global business and to build a business that will be around for a long time, providing lots of leaders in the business, lots of managers and lots of people in the business with a secure future, helping lots of other businesses in the same way that we are today. So my exit is not a traditional exit. It's not to build the business to make it look good on paper and then sell it and disappear and then leave those people there wondering who's now going to lead us, what direction is the business going in. That certainty for me, that I wasn't building to leave quickly, helped me then prepare my business plan to talk to investors with a clear business model, clear confidence that I'm staying in, and that the business had a clear vision for the next five to ten years of how it wanted to grow and develop. And also how much money I anticipated I needed, and for what purpose. The first private equity investors in law, I think, got it fundamentally wrong, because they don't understand the culture of lawyers, they don't understand the behavior of lawyers, they underestimated the centuries-old partnership model and how ingrained that is, and that lawyers don't like change, and that lawyers are trained not to believe anything unless there's already an authority and proof for it. Lawyers tend to be extremely risk-averse, they run on rails, they look at facts and proven wonderful stuff, Gary. And so the entrepreneurial risk-taking side of things, again, was very, very underestimated. So the first investment into consumer-related law firms, looking at volume of consumers that personal injury law firms, for example, were dealing with, I found the rush to invest in those practices all hardy, and it was no surprise that a lot of those crashed and burned. So I see did the business myself. Having been extremely well paid, I'll be honest, as a lawyer, a high-earning, successful lawyer, it had given me an amount of wealth that I was able to back myself and invest all of my savings into the business. But when you're building technology, recruiting lots of people, paying rent on premises, paying insurance and travel expenses and all of these things, I actually exhausted that seven figures of my own personal funds and ended up remortgaging the house, cashing in the pension, selling the car and everything all in. And it was that commitment that not just sweat equity, but pure cash and risk appetite, that won success with the insurance partners, with the brokers, they recognized the effort, the sheer dedication. They worked with me and then they actually saw that the idea was proving extremely successful with their insurance customers. And that those customers started buying this new product that I'd invented in their hundreds and then indeed in their thousands. And that allowed me then to go to the first private equity investor. But again, I found that in the north of England, in the regions, it seemed too ambitious, it was too new, it was without enough proof points. So I ended up going for what they called a 200-pound cup of coffee and getting on a train and going to London. And my first three investors, the A round, the B round, and the C round, were all from southern um London-based investors that recognised that if I'd put that much money in, risked my career and reputation, but had built contracts and relationships with blue chip insurance businesses and had got so many corporate clients so quickly, there must be something in the model. And that allowed me, Jeff, to raise the first £12 million.

Jeff Zindani: 14:29

As much as that, that's that's a hell of a lot on the first round, given the size of the firm as it was, really, back in 2022, I suppose.

Gary Gallen: 14:37

And I'll be honest with you, it I had to get comfortable with the fact that although I had put everything that I owned in cash into it and my reputation and sweat, etc., to those investors, they look at things in numbers and time frames. Yeah.

Jeff Zindani: 14:53

You've been acquisitive and you acquired a specialist sort of boutique law firm in the Northwest, backhouse Jones and the Hawleidge sector. And also completely to me, something I've never come across, which was the Forum of Private Business. So can you just talk us through without going into obviously detail what perhaps you're looking at as a potential acquisition? I don't mean live acquisitions now, but what really you would see as the sort of type of firm you'd want to acquire?

Gary Gallen: 15:27

I go back to the plan, and that those different acquisitions have to be part of the plan. So an acquisition needs to align with the journey that you're on and not pull you in a different direction. But in the direction of travel that we have, we have a fixed goal. We know where we're aiming for, so that every decision that we make here today is in line with that North Star and that direction that we're heading in. So an acquisition can't pull us off track and distract us and waste time and waste money and disrupt the growth of the business and that journey towards our agreed goal.

Jeff Zindani: 16:05

Looking ahead to um seems a long way off, actually, 2030. What kind of business do you think or hope radar will become?

Gary Gallen: 16:16

Did you say 2030?

Jeff Zindani: 16:18

2030, yeah.

Gary Gallen: 16:20

For five years. Okay. So that plan already exists for us in that direction of travel.

Jeff Zindani: 16:24

Oh wow.

Gary Gallen: 16:25

One of the key things for us, we set up our own insurance company, Relentless, that was another development of the group. So having built insurance programs, embedding our risk management solutions in those programs, and being the delegated authority to all of the claims. So there's no panel law firms involved in what we provide to our customers. They buy us, and then when it goes wrong, they also get to work with us and it doesn't get swapped or changed. That business model has proved so successful, we'll be doing more of it. But by delivering our own insurance company, the insurers now trust us so much with what we've achieved over the last decade or more that we actually now do the underwriting so that we can be faster and smarter at building new products and delivering them to customers. So having all of that end-to-end value chain now in place, we want to scale that and build that up in other jurisdictions. So recruiting more people into the business, looking at specific skills and roles, for example, into the FCA-regulated insurance company, the underwriters, the actuaries, the client money professionals for insurance-related businesses, as opposed to SRA and our Law Society of Scotland businesses. We're looking at taking the last 12 years and in the next five, doing the same again, but to grow the business 10 times quicker over that period of time and being international, and that the business will be um 10 plus times the sizes we are today, at the very least. Otherwise, I won't count that as being a success.

Jeff Zindani: 18:03

Gary, thank you so much for sharing some of the insights and some of your experiences. I'm sure a lot of people will listen to this podcast will actually get a couple of out of it. So thanks a lot.

Gary Gallen: 18:15

Thank you very much, Jeff.