Lewis Silkin’s Jo Farmer on growth, leadership and doing things differently

Lewis Silkin has grown revenue by more than 50% in three years, but joint managing partner Jo Farmer says the firm has deliberately avoided setting itself big growth targets.

The firm’s turnover has climbed from around £86 million when Farmer took over alongside Richard Miskella in 2023 to £136 million in its latest financial year.

“We deliberately don't say to the firm, we're going to be £200 million by X date,” Farmer told The Non-Billable Podcast. “Chasing revenue for revenue's sake is definitely not what Lewis Silkin is about.”

Instead, the firm has focused on areas where it sees opportunities to grow alongside clients, while expanding into locations where it can find the right talent. Lateral hiring is typically aimed at adding new skills or filling gaps rather than simply buying books of business, Farmer says.

An unlikely law firm leader

Farmer's own route to the top of Lewis Silkin was unconventional. Her mother had her at 17, she grew up with her grandparents and had no lawyers in the family.

“A few people were kind to me, and showed me the way,” she says. That experience is one reason why social mobility remains particularly important to her, including through Lewis Silkin's growing solicitor apprenticeship programme.

Farmer also never planned to become managing partner. She says a three-month sabbatical in 2022 gave her the space to consider the job, and she is now a strong advocate of sharing it with Miskella.

Having two people at the top, she argues, creates a “better class of decision making” by forcing them to challenge each other rather than simply seek consensus.

What comes next

Farmer is bullish about the changes now facing the legal market. Lewis Silkin adopted Harvey early and has built Delphius, an AI-powered employment product drawing on proprietary knowledge from firms across Ius Laboris, the global alliance of employment specialists it belongs to.

She expects AI to change how work is divided between in-house teams and law firms, and potentially the shape of law firms themselves. In heavily transactional practices, she questions whether the traditional pyramid could become “more cylindrical” as technology takes on more repetitive work.

But Farmer doesn't think technology will mean the end of the human lawyer. She expects judgement and firms' sector knowledge to become more valuable.

The winners, she says, will be firms that can turn that knowledge into something clients can actually use.

“Those firms that can productise that and get that proprietary knowledge in a format that means that you can play it out to your clients will succeed.”

Listen to the full conversation with Jo Farmer on The Non-Billable Podcast.