Maths, physics and law: it's all part of the package that makes Herbert Geer's managing partner Bill Fazio. He speaks to Angela Priestley.

Bill Fazio is a numbers man: despite his family connections to the legal profession and the fact he is now the managing partner of one of Australia's fastest-growing law firms, Fazio originally wanted none of it.

Instead, upon graduating from school, he chose to explore the world of reason via a maths and physics degree.

While Fazio later studied law (under the influence of friends and not his parents, he says), he's always stayed true to his numerical roots throughout his consequent legal career. He maintains that his love of mathematics is just part of who he is and that it doesn't hurt to be able to quickly calculate the mental arithmetic behind "what if" scenarios when discussing matters with clients.

"Being comfortable with numbers and statistics is useful when it comes to thinking about money and margins," he says. "It's a different style of training for the mind; you do think of things with a different rigour. It's very strong on logical thought." Clearly, it doesn't hurt to be able to bring such rigour to the management of a 330-person law firm, especially a firm of the magnitude of Herbert Geer which has seen some significant growth in the last couple of years and, as evidenced by a number of significant appointments, looks set to grow even further in the future.

Andersen's fall to staying local

Fazio brings a broad range of legal experience into his role as managing partner and can certainly boast some significant lessons learned during his legal career. A two-year stint at Blake Dawson led him to Ellison Hewison and Whitehead (later Minter Ellison) where he was managing partner for four years during the 1990s. Fazio then worked as an investment banker with Bankers Trust followed by four years as a lawyer at Andersen Legal.

It was the latter two places of employment, says Fazio, which encouraged him to seek something different.

"I felt being in the main office of a more domestically driven organisation may avoid some of the tensions I'd experienced at those two positions," he says.

Nine years ago he found his domestically driven organisation and joined Herbert Geer. By that time, the historically Melbourne-based law firm had opened offices in Sydney and Brisbane and was ramping up for significant growth.

Fazio quickly found himself in management positions, and four years into his tenure became managing partner. Since then, Fazio has overseen the firm's expansion of its interstate operations, and achieved significant growth in overall lawyer numbers during his time at the helm.

But Fazio doesn't seek growth for growth's sake: he says he set out to maintain the current size of the Melbourne office - aside from opportunistic hires - but build the interstate branches. While opening in another state outside of Victoria, NSW and Queensland is not completely out of the question, Fazio says his current priority is growing the Sydney and Brisbane offices to the point of significant relevance in their respective markets.

Such priorities also include the personnel aspect, and Fazio says the firm is currently reviewing its culture and seeking to build a strong sense of commonality and identity across the three offices. "To get people aligned into a common culture is one of the challenges," he says.

He adds that getting to the people part of the firm - especially in managing trust, expectations and belief in the firm's values and ambitions - is one of the toughest parts of his job, and one in which he believes all lawyers in his position can always do better.

"Law firms talk about valuing their staff and things but then when it comes to staff surveys aren't we [the profession] regularly one of the worst performers?"

Back on the global front

The other thing law firms currently talk about is change: particularly the pace at which the profession is changing its shape and structure.

For Fazio, with experience at some of Australia's largest law firms and knowledge of what life was like at Andersen Legal before its eventual collapse, the significant mergers and arrival of global law firms in the Australian legal market is a fascinating trend to watch.

Locally, with UK players like Norton Rose, Allen & Overy and (subject to a partnership vote) DLA Piper opening shop, Fazio believes that few can predict just what lawyers will face in the coming years.

"If you look at an Allen & Overy you can see that the sort of work they're trying to win is the same that Clayton Utz or Freehills is trying to win," he says. "But if you affect one part of the puzzle it affects other parts. If more of those firms come, say if Clifford Chance does come to Australia, not only will it be seeking to extract people from other firms, it will also change the entire landscape."

And while Fazio doesn't pretend to know what the sector will look like in the next couple of years, he does maintain that globalisation, particularly the arrival of multinationals and global law firms in Australia, is going to be the single biggest factor influencing the profession.

"People are going to have to adapt to it. It may help some people, it may hurt some people. It could mean all sorts of things will happen - whole firms may try to [merge with a global law firm] then a handful of people say 'no' and suddenly you have a new boutique firm that pops up."

The future of the legal sector is unknown, but outside the industry and away from the office, Fazio sticks to the knowns and keeps his active mind alert by dealing with the "nuts and bolts" of fixing things, even those that are not necessarily broken. "I'm a do-it-your-selfer," he declares.

And he's also one who can leave the calculator in the office drawer.