Moore Barlow

During the pandemic, two well-established law firms — Moore Blatch and Barlow Robbins — merged to form Moore Barlow, a top 100 UK firm with a clear ambition: to fill the gap between city and local firms, delivering expertise with empathy and care. But two firms merging meant two cultures, two sets of habits, two ways of working. Without a deliberate plan, the merger would either default to the dominant culture or quietly fragment back into legacy camps. Moore Barlow’s leadership knew which one mattered: get the culture right or the rest of the strategy wouldn’t hold. Four years later, after further restructure and technology integration, they came back to ask the harder question — has it stuck?

Two distinct engagements, one continuous relationship. 2020 — building the culture from the merger. We ran an organisation-wide survey that captured 70% of the workforce, benchmarked the culture against high-performing organisations, and set an internal baseline to measure against in future. Staff co-creation workshops, validation drop-ins and a train-the-trainer programme of culture champions co-created the firm’s purpose — making a difference — and four values: Human First; Stronger Together; Lead the Way; Make it Happen. The values now act as a lens for business planning, decision-making and policy. 2024 — testing whether it had stuck. We returned with Lumin, our culture diagnostic solution, to assess what had been sustained and what needed to evolve. AI-assisted desktop immersion, a refreshed culture survey, focus groups across the firm. We compared 2024 against the 2020 baseline and against our high-performance benchmark, identified the root causes holding the culture back, and turned them into a strengthening action plan.