Polishing the diamond

FOR somebody brought up in the most northerly tip of Norway, enduring complete darkness for three months of the year, Ole Lund is a man who is hungry to be in the heat of things. "A good shipping lawyer must be a deal-maker, not a deal-breaker" he says.

Over the last decade, lawyers have moved from advising on law to playing a more active role in decision-making. Participating in the decision-making processes of his clients is something that Ole Lund likes to do. He is also more qualified than most to do it. In 1826 the family name appeared for the first time in the judiciary lists of Norway. Born in 1934, the son of a lawyer, Ole became the fifth generation of his family to enter the law. His two daughters and his son (with whom he works) have followed suit, making it six generations.

With the law permeating the family line, Ole departed from the norm as a young man when he spent six months at the Consumers Council working on contracts for cars and refrigerators. This introduction to the world of consumerism was to have a lasting effect upon his later career, which has spanned academia, the law, the shipping industry and the board tables of countless blue-chip Norwegian companies. His speciality has been ship finance, and "working with ships proved not too different to selling refrigerators," says Ole, "except that there are more noughts behind the figures in each deal."

Ole has always seen it as a priority to be involved at the centre of commercial life. It has been his way of "feeling the pulse of the heart of Norway", he says. It has also, he believes, made him a better lawyer, and it has been good for business. So why maritime rather than corporate law?

"When I was eighteen, " explains Ole, " I read a trilogy of novels called The Free Sea about a young Norwegian in shipping. This led me to write a thesis at college on Norwegian shipping and the English Navigation Act. The abolition of this act enforced the opening up of the seas for Norwegian shipping and free trade for Norway."

After completing a degree in law at the University of Oslo, Ole followed in his father's footsteps when, in 1962, he studied maritime law at the London School of Economics in the UK, while living in Putney, south London. Upon his return to Norway, he became an assistant professor at the University of Oslo and the Institute of Maritime Law. But in 1965, bored with lectures and students, he decided to leave academia and to work instead as a lawyer at the Northern Shipowners Defence Club. He stayed there for ten years, specialising in shipbuilding and ship finance.

Initially he worked on problems relating to the long-term financing and chartering of vessels, but this changed in the seventies when shipowners began to run into financial trouble and needed to renegotiate the financing of their contracts. This made him hanker after practical commercial experience and to actually be involved in shaping, influencing and ultimately making the decisions he was advising on. He also harboured an ambition to be president of the Northern Shipowners Defence Club and thought that if he left to be involved in mainline shipping he would stand more chance of achieving this. A great secret in life, Ole believes, is to "grasp the possible, not the impossible."

Ole spent three years in mainstream shipping operations as president of Olsen & Ugelstad, later becoming senior vice-president of Fred Olsen & Co. Then he returned, as he had hoped, to the Northern Shipowners Defence Club as president from 1978 to 1986.

Does he get easily bored? "I still have the ambition to do new things and climb new mountains. I can see what can be done. I can see the challenges."

His client base is in Norway, Sweden, Finland, the US, the UK and Japan, a place he has been to on no less than 115 occasions. He has seen many changes, including the decline of the shipping industry in Norway from over three hundred companies in the sixties to around fifty today. "I am always anxious about when, and from where, the next interesting case will come. I do relax, but still, I would like to see the mountain."

In Norway there is a saying that, "The person who always walks in the valleys never reaches the mountain top." Ole Lund takes an unorthodox approach to the law when he says you have to "work with your fantasy". But more lawyers should catch this vision.

Ole says, "To be a lawyer, you have to recognise that you are in a service industry". What would he describe as the benchmarks of success? "A good result and the ability to show your clients that you really identify with and care for them. Don't be a yes man, set the boundary lines of what your clients want, but don't just do what they tell you - exceed their expectations. This way, you build a good reputation and gain the respect of those on the other side of the table. Next time, they'll want you acting for them."

Ole Lund founded his own firm in 1986 and, from 1993, together with Jon R Gundersen, operated under the name Lund, Gundersen & Co. Twelve years later, at a time when most men his age are dreaming about retirement, Ole found himself still coveting bigger and better deals but feeling the constraints of being senior partner in a firm too small for his dreams. To do the work he wanted to do required more support than his firm could give him so - unusually - he left the firm he had founded to join Bugge, Arentz-Hansen & Rasmussen (BA-HR) as a partner in September 1998. Ole felt that the twenty-three partners and over forty associates at BA-HR offered the strength and depth of expertise needed to focus on the shipping, finance, corporate, stock exchange and securities work he does.

"What drew me to BA-HR was the fact that it had a lot of hungry people working there," explains Ole. " Also, its recruitment policy is to grow its own lawyers, not to grow by merger. The founder of the firm worked in shipping, but BA-HR has recognised the changes that have taken place in the shipping market and has adapted its focus accordingly to embrace wider corporate work."

"Let your young lawyers have direct contact with clients. Let them get to know your clients without being afraid that they will run away with them. Trust yourself and trust your colleague .. polish the diamond so that it really can be seen."

Good leaders do not simply focus on their own vision and success. They know how to teach others to reach the limit of their own skills and talents. What does Ole Lund have to say about training the next generation of lawyers?

"You have to inspire people to do well," he says. "This means trusting them and giving them responsibility to work on their own. Let your young lawyers have direct contact with clients. Let them get to know your clients without being afraid that they will run away with them. Trust yourself and trust your colleague. Polish the diamond so that it really can be seen. If you have talented people working with you, don't hide their light under a bushel - let your young people shine."

This takes wisdom and balance to achieve. "If you give people freedom, in return there must be a demand for the same quality of work that you engage in," says Ole. Returning to his theme of looking to the mountains, inspiring others to look beyond the humdrum routine of everyday life, he tries to draw out the ambition of his young associates by telling them that they will never find a cheap estate in the hills around Oslo. But they will find one in the mountains nearby. "You get nothing for free," says Ole. "Everything comes through hard work." He tries to impress this upon the associates at the firm.

How does he separate the goats from the sheep, so to speak? How do young lawyers, beyond hard work, get on? Ole says, "They have to consider their time and how to use it. You have to choose in life. The thing you really want to do, you always have time for. Lawyers, like everyone else in business, have to prioritise their time between work, family and friends. This may mean that you drop the golf and instead take a walk in the forest with your family."

It appears that Ole Lund has a high capacity for stress. In fact, one suspects that he actively thrives on it, needs it to succeed. He combats stress by ski-ing in winter and walking in the mountains in summer. He has cabins on the coast, in the forest and in the mountains - each with its own fax machine. "I spend seventy to eighty nights a year in the cabins. I know how to work and to play," he says. No fear of all work and no play making Ole a dull boy then.

At 64, does he not have any plans to retire? "Not as long as I enjoy my work, " he says. "And as long as clients come to me, I will carry on." He has three children and a wife (who has worked full-time since their youngest was six months old) who keep him firmly in line, he says. And he is assured that they won't hesitate to tell him to stop work when they think he should do so. In the meantime, don't get in this man's way, or waste his time - because he knows where he's going.