Kroll's president of risk advisory, Brent Tomlinson, has said the firm would rather hire five culture-fit partners than one star revenue generator, drawing a sharp line between his growth strategy and the traditional professional services reliance on 'rainmaker' personalities.

"I'd rather have five really good partners who are focused on building the right culture and client delivery model than one all-star who's a jackass," Tomlinson told City AM.

His comments land as the industry scrutinises the star-partner model following the collapse of Weil, the 95-year-old law firm that voted to liquidate.

What does Kroll's structure look like?

Tomlinson, who has spent more than six years at the New York-headquartered firm, framed Kroll's architecture as the opposite of Big Four incumbents. "We're not the Big Four, so we don't have geographical borders, and we don't have thousands of juniors running around. We are a senior top-heavy platform that is intentionally incentivised to be multi-jurisdictional," he said.

The firm claims an edge in competitive pitches precisely because it lacks internal silos. "I can point to our competitors when we pitch and say they won't do that," Tomlinson said of cross-vertical work. "We incentivise that way, we're culturally structured that way, and we are organised that way."

That commitment gets tested, Tomlinson acknowledged, when money is involved — a sector reality where rainmakers command outsized regard.

How does leadership enforce collaboration?

The message from the top, he said, is repeated daily and concerns who claims credit for revenue. "I [couldn't] care less if [the revenue] sits in my P&L. [The co-president] couldn't care less. It does not matter. We are shareholders and leaders first… It does not matter where the revenue goes or who got it, as long as Kroll won," he said.

Collaboration holds up best, he added, when it produces results. "Winning cures everything… people like winning with people they like and who they trust."

On recruitment, the calculus is explicit: firms must accept lost revenue to protect culture. "The real question everyone has to deal with is: are you willing to lose revenue to keep the culture you want? And the best firms say 'yes' if they believe in their culture and the strategy they're building," Tomlinson said.

Where is the firm growing?

Although Kroll is headquartered in the US, London is its largest office, and roughly half of its undisclosed revenue comes from outside the US. Tomlinson relocated from New York to London two years ago as the office's first senior executive, with growth high on the agenda.

Kroll operates in 30 countries across more than 70 offices. Tomlinson said the firm will pivot away from smaller, sub-scale outposts to build "full suite" capabilities in major financial hubs instead.

"We need more scale in key financial hubs and geographies," he said. Dots on a map alone, he noted, are not enough.