Case Study - Designing Scalable Operational Support at Twomey Dispute Lawyers
Scaling and growing as a business is an exciting journey, but it’s also one of the most complex challenges a company can face. Growth doesn’t just demand more resources or bigger teams—it requires a robust organisational structure that can adapt and thrive under increasing demands. Thoughtful organisation design can empower scaling businesses to align their people, processes, and goals for sustainable success.
At Nine Yards we know the right design can be the key to unlocking the next stage of growth for our clients - just as it was for Twomey Dispute Lawyers, when we supported them to design their Operations team.
Twomey Dispute Lawyers are a team of specialist commercial lawyers, working across dispute matters Australia wide. Their highly experienced and respected team have grown rapidly - from a founding lawyer to a partnership with almost 20 specialist litigators, over four East Coast offices, in only 3 years (and this is just the beginning!)
The Challenge
When Twomey Dispute Lawyers approached us, they were growing and diversifying at a rapid rate, and knew they needed an effective and efficient Operations and Sales team that would enable them to build a pipeline of work, while allowing their Legal team to focus on what they do best - dealing with litigations!
They had a truly collaborative culture and some great capability that had got them this far, but they were already seeing challenges in capacity, efficiency and clarity of accountability.
They knew they needed “the best shaped Ops team to power our Legal team”.
The Opportunity
The opportunity was to support the Directors at Twomey Dispute Lawyers to design an Operations function that would build on what was working well, address their challenges of today, and enable their growth tomorrow.
The Nine Yards team recommended we take a human centred design approach to ensure we were designing a purpose built structure that met their needs, while balancing operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
The Discovery Phase
Leveraging our organisation design experience and frameworks, we kicked off this work with a Discovery workshop with the leadership team. The purpose of this workshop was to develop a deep understanding of the current state (strengths and gaps) and the firm’s future goals, needs and plans.
During this workshop we worked through:
The problems we were solving for
A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) assessment of the current team
A deep dive into each of the operational functions we were focussed on, including the strengths and pain points today, and the needs and considerations for tomorrow
The discovery phase allowed us to define the key problems to solve:
Some immediate capacity challenges and future capacity watchouts
A need for more clarity of accountability
Development support for key talent in evolving roles
Having validated these with the leadership team, we jumped into recommendations and solution design.
An Operations team for today and tomorrow
Our experience tells us the most effective structures and operating models are built on clarity of ownership and expertise. The right people, in the right roles, underpinned by effective use of technology and ways of working.
We quickly identified the immediate capacity requirements Twomey Dispute Lawyers needed to address, and made recommendations on new roles and a redesigned structure we were confident would not only meet today’s needs but also allow them to scale alongside future growth.
Alongside the structural changes, we recommended three key areas to enable the success of the new Operations team today and tomorrow:
Build capability by understanding the changing needs of the business and investing in the development of key talent their new roles
Unlock clarity of accountability and allow for effective decision making and communication by formalising reporting lines
Continue to review pressure points, particularly as it relates to capacity and ways of working - with some specific call outs in areas we knew would continue to scale and evolve.
Enabling the new model
Following sign-off of our recommendations, we supported the team with the crucial next step - implementation! For the Twomey Dispute Lawyers team, this meant supporting them with:
The development of position descriptions for the new and evolving roles
Advice on the competencies required to perform them, and
Recommendations on how to test for those competencies throughout the recruitment process.
We are excited to see Twomey Dispute Lawyers continue to scale and evolve, and realise the benefits of their amazing Operations team.
“As a rapidly scaling professional services business, we engaged Nine Yards to assist with organisational design. Not only were Rochelle and the team able to help us identify and solve for the present time, but they were also able to help map our course for the next 1, 2, and 5 years of our growth. We see ourselves partnering with Nine Yards throughout our growth journey, and highly recommend the team for anyone looking for elite partners in the People and Culture space.”
Director, Twomey Dispute Lawyers
