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vandelanotte helps vdv advocaten ensure continuity
Vandelanotte helps VDV Advocaten ensure continuity
After years of organic growth, VDV Advocaten’s founders wished to take steps to ensure their law firm’s continuity and achieve further growth. As they believed in the value of adequate support, they turned to Vandelanotte for help. The assignment: checking for partnership ambitions among the lawyers on staff and defining and supervising the transfer process. This process was concluded by the practice gaining four new partners in September.
In 2014 lawyers Antoine Van Eeckhout, Lode Derudder and Koen Vandenberghe joined forces to become the law firm VDV. “Our three individual practices had been collaborating for some time and shared the same cost structure. After a prolonged ‘courtship’, we finally tied the knot in 2014,” says Mr Van Eeckhout. “Following our partnership, we concentrated on the firm’s organisation and further efficiency gains. Our team grew until it consisted of fifteen lawyers, two jurists, one business manager and five paralegals.”
In 2020, they decided to further strengthen their organisation. “After all, the founders are all approaching 60 currently. Furthermore, within our sector it is common for lawyers to move on frequently. We wanted to strengthen a few key players’ ties to the firm and offer them an opportunity, to create more stability and a future for our practice. We decided to assure ourselves of proper support in achieving this.” The choice of Vandelanotte was only logical according to VDV. “Vandelanotte stands for quality and know-how. Also, Jan Degryse was already very familiar to us. He was happy to take on this project along with Veerle Cool.”
Multiple steps
The first step consisted of exploratory interviews to learn everyone’s thoughts. “Veerle conducted these in-depth meetings with a great deal of empathy and confidence. She discussed the atmosphere at work with all our members of staff, explored their ambitions and spoke with us and our families as well. Koen’s daughter works for our firm as a lawyer and my own son is a lawyer as well at a different firm. While it was not a prominent concern, it still held relevance, of course. She made sure to check whether our staff had any objections to either of them coming on board. Based on those meetings, Veerle created a clear report without giving away who said what. This revealed that one of the founders was willing to step down and four members of staff were eager to become partners in the firm.”
“Vandelanotte stands for quality and know-how.”Antoine Van Eeckhout , VDV Advocaten
The next step was more technical. “Jan Degryse got to work on the technical and financial aspects. Again, this happened openly while maintaining the necessary discretion. He worked out all the financial and technical details required for the transfer: the firm’s valuation, investments to buy in, how the shares were to be arranged, growth plans, etc. We relied on our own know-how and expertise to draw up a share transfer agreement, shareholders’ agreement and Articles of Association. Those included several provisions regarding family members. While family members can become partners, we also made sure to include various checks to ensure a good balance of power.”
The entire process took close to a year and was concluded by the firm gaining four new partners this past September. “It does not end there, though,” says Mr Van Eeckhout. “We will begin by consolidating the new structure, but after that our goal is to continue expanding our practice systematically. Internally on the one hand, by strengthening our own areas of expertise, but also externally, by collaborating with other firms. Who knows, we may well return to request Vandelanotte’s expertise again in future.”
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