Discussing Law Practice in Africa with AB and David, the Only African Law Firm with Lexcel Accreditation

Interview with David Ofosu-Dorte, Senior Partner at AB and David

What is the main focus at AB and David Law and what makes you stand out?

We are a business law firm, and we serve clients across multiple jurisdictions in Africa. What makes us different is first and foremost the fact that we are Pan-African. Not many law firms on this continent are Pan-African. The other factor is that we are entirely focused on the business sector and transactions relating to business. We advise governments, as well as the private sector. Essentially, we cut across the entire spectrum of business. And perhaps most importantly, our lawyers are very commercial minded and focus on delivering not just legalese, but commercial advantages to the clients they represent. We go beyond law to look at the business aspects of transactions and we bring total value to our clients.

Because we cover the entire business spectrum, we have grouped it into separate practice areas and within them, are different industries. One group is infrastructure projects and PPPs (public-private partnership), another group is energy, which also combines oil and gas. We have dispute resolution which generally focuses on business disputes, and a corporate and finance group that deals with transactions from all angles of finance. We are also perhaps the only law firm that has a special practice that deals with government business and policy reform. That focuses mainly on government efforts to reform parts of the private sector to help it improve, or when private companies want to take advantage of some kind of government business in one form or another. For example, we have industries acting with the agribusiness sector and we deal with fast-moving consumer groups. We are quite active in the finance and capital risk and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) space, as well as infrastructure and project development, and our lawyers specialize in all of these categories.

What is your international reach?

We are spread across 30 countries in Africa on different levels. The first level is where we have our own offices that are registered and independent in each country. All of them come under the big umbrella of the AB and David Africa group. It includes Mauritius, Ghana, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Those countries are where we can serve clients directly. Below that level, we’ve got a group of affiliate firms in places such as Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon. Then under that, we have a network of ‘best friend’ firms that we work with regularly. We know them very well, so that when we refer a client to them, we know they will provide excellent service.

What is your assessment of the sectors in which you work in Ghana in terms of how they are evolving? What are the latest news?

When I look at sectors, I look at them from two angles. First, and most importantly, are they sectors our clients are in? And then I look at the sector’s legal and professional services. Fast-moving consumer groups in the agri sector is an example. It is valued at $35 billion US per annum increasing to an estimated $110 billion by 2025. And agri’s value add, in terms of manufacturing, is increasing by about a trillion dollars and this trickles down to projects and finance in many areas. If you take oil and gas as an example, you see the idea about going green and how daily transitions are affecting M&A acquisitions and things like that. Because of the increasing integration of Africa, there is growth, albeit with challenges. If you look at professional services and the legal sector together, there is growth, however, it is not commensurate with the growth of industry. So, there is a proliferation of professional services firms that are small enough to be able to make something to survive and sustain themselves, but none growing big enough to be able to match the size of the economy that we are proposing to create as a continent. That is the dichotomy that I see happening and it drives some of the things we are trying to do to make sure we can help fill that gap, but more importantly, to help clients be able to invest in multiple African countries.

How does your business deal with competition from international firms?

The market is premised on two things. The first is the assumption that global law firms have branches in Africa, which is not exactly the case. A lot of them are set up in two main countries in Africa only – South Africa and Morocco. Africa consists of 54 or 55 countries, depending on who is counting and whether you want to count the Western Sahara or not. So, there is no way a global law firm can have a presence in all of them. Second, there is the assumption that all investments are coming from outside of Africa because the people who hire global law firms are likely to be located outside Africa. They speak to someone in London, New York or Paris, and then direct them to Africa. You find that most of these law firms themselves need us because they want somebody on the ground, and they do not want to have to connect with 50 law firms in different countries. So, we give an advantage to all their clients and the law firms themselves. The third, more important point, is that there is a gap that nobody is filling. There are investments on the ground in Africa and they are not driven by investors instructing lawyers in Europe or North America to come down. They are instructing lawyers here. Even if there is an increasing number of referrals that we give to lawyers in the UK, in Paris and the US, we do it because a business originating from here may need funding from those places. We are a regular source of referral to them, so our offering is completely unique.

How do you establish partnerships with international law firms?

We have been working with a lot of them for the past 20 years or more. Hardly a week will pass when there is not a global law firm located in the US or the UK calling us, and when we travel, we visit them as well. We do a lot of things together, plus there is a regular number of secondments. Almost half of our lawyers here have been hired out by UK and US law firms, so there is a significant amount of bonding.

Do you have any success stories where you have solved issues for clients with international firms?

There are quite a number. We have done joint pitches with international law firms, some of which we have led because in certain specifics we are more experienced. It is not just a question of being located outside, or being big, it is a question of what a client is looking for. There are some transactions that we have done with them where along the line the client has realized that they do not need the international aspects anymore and want to continue to work with us. And they do recommend us in that regard. And there are some instances when we come together to work for clients and direct them on what is changing. One significant example is the joint training we have done with a firm in the UK on libel in the financial sector and to what extent the financial sector was going to change. We did a similar one on Africa’s debt restructuring and what the local impacts will be of increasing debt. They are examples of things that we do together. We see them as equals with whom we can add value for clients. Something worth mentioning, in 2014 we became the first, and still are the only, African law firm with Lexcel accreditation of the Law Society of England and Wales, which means our practice standards are the highest you can find anywhere in the world.

Legal firms coming to Ghana can register with the JIPC, but is that enough for them to be able to service clients?

The JIPC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation) is an investment driver on one hand and a regulator on the other. If a client comes to us wanting to set up a business, we tell them that they must register with JIPC to get permission to operate, etc. We speak on how we see investments in the private sector and clients like to listen to us because we come from that sector, rather than being a government official. We work with the JIPC, and we complement each other.

What is your vision for AB and David in three to five years’ time, and what do you want to achieve?

We work in five-year strategy cycles. Currently we are on what we the call the fourth strategy, which is the last year of the cycle. Incidentally, we have decided to have shorter strategy cycles because five-year strategies are beginning to get out of date because of changing technology and the speed at which things happen, so we are going for a three-year strategy cycle. The core of that is for us to be able to give more value to the client. Over the longer period, we want to remain among the top ten law firms in Africa and we want to focus entirely on our mission statement. It is very unique because we have indices on how to make a client happy, so we focus quite a lot on that. We believe that we will expand in that sector in order to make many more clients happy. We look at Africa as being a more integrated continent and we are becoming a significant player in the legal profession in this market.

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