Chair

Gillespie Macandrew is a successful independent Scottish legal firm with a strong focus on property-related legal work across 4 principal sectors; Land & Rural Business, Renewable Energy, Commercial and Residential Property and Private Client and Tax. The firm operates multiple service lines to provide a full-service to clients in these sectors, covering corporate and commercial advisory services, property law, planning and construction, and dispute resolution.

With 29 partners and around 150 staff, the firm operates from offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth and by turnover is one of the fastest growing large law firms in its sector. The firm’s client base extends throughout Scotland, the UK and beyond – from private individuals to large UK based companies and SMEs trading on an international basis. The firm is therefore dual regulated in both Scotland and England & Wales. The firm is also a member of Lexwork International and is ideally placed to advise businesses extending their operations overseas and inward investors looking to make strategic investments in Scotland and wider

Our firm is now seeking to appoint a non executive Chair by the summer of 2025 (when the current Chair retires) for an initial 3 year term.

Our firm is unusual in having appointed external professionals in both the Chair and Chief Executive roles in place of the more traditional Managing Partner structure. While responsibility for the day to day operation of our firm lies with the Chief Executive, the non-executive Chair is expected to play a vital role in supporting our firm in achieving its ambitious plans to develop the business significantly over the next 3-5 years.

The successful candidate will possess the attributes to be an effective Chair within a partnership model. Stewardship of the partnership is an important aspect of this role, and is likely to require the attributes of excellent communication and listening skills, leadership qualities both internal and external to the partnership, and critical acumen to assist on the wide range of issues that affect a highly regulated and people-oriented business. Candidates will have operated at Board-level, either as an executive or non-executive, such that they would bring strong experience in the areas of governance, strategy and leadership as well as being able to be highly effective at leading the Board and supporting and overseeing the CEO.

As a genuine partnership in terms of culture, it will be important for the Chair to be visible and known to the partners as a senior leader within our firm, inspiring, coaching, mentoring senior colleagues and fostering a positive working culture and engagement across our firm as a whole.

Beyond these attributes, candidates will ideally have some experience or understanding of partnership business structures. Prior experience within the legal sector is not required, however experience gained in any branch of the professional services industry would be of interest, particularly where candidates have had strong exposure to legal professionals.

The time commitment is expected to be the equivalent of an average of 1 to 1.5 days a week and there is an expectation to be present in the offices of the LLP for a significant majority of this time. A competitive renumeration will be paid.

Gillespie Macandrew, is partnering with Nurole, the leading board-level search specialist, to find a new Chair to join the business from July 2025. You can find out more and apply https://app.nurole.com/roles/67c06801f7bd7b190c0dbeaf To arrange an informal conversation or in case of any other queries, please contact alex.osborne@nurole.com