FOCUS - DAVID GRAY: The Gray days.

(From The Lawyer)

David Gray has overseen a steady increase in PEP since becoming Eversheds' managing partner in 2002, but he is not resting on his laurels. By Jon Parker

Eversheds chief executive David Gray describes himself as "not a particularly religious man", but he has given up alcohol, chocolate, bread, cake and biscuits for Lent. More zealous than religious, perhaps?

For all Gray's privations, he remains upbeat as he describes the future for Eversheds.

"We want to be the most client-centred international law firm in the world," he enthuses between mouthfuls of lettuce. "But when I took on this role four years ago, we weren't as sure where we wanted to go."

Gray says that as little as three years ago much of the partnership was still unconvinced of the merits of going global. Many partners saw it as an expensive and potentially distracting exercise for a firm whose partners were already turning a relatively satisfactory national average profit per equity partner (PEP) of GBP287,000.

"International [expansion] is connected to our entire future," Gray argues. "But when we were looking at this five years ago and asked clients, 'do we need an international operation?', most said 'not really'. That was why we had a lot of our own people thinking going international was a waste of money. But that's changed, and management had to predict that change before it happened."