‘Quite unexpectedly, the skills and experiences you’ve had in your previous career make you a better lawyer and more successful. Having a completely different dimension to your personality makes you more interesting to the clients. It turns you into an asset.’ So observes James Anderson, almost-famous musician, and now head of Skadden’s European tax practice.
While Anderson may still be kicking himself over what he calls ‘the Radiohead misfire’, his view rings true for all of the lawyers interviewed for this piece. Perhaps his former career imbued in him a desire for recognition – he now features in the lofty ranks of The Legal 500’s Hall of Fame for corporate tax.
Einstein said that the measure of intelligence is the ability to change. The sentiment has perhaps never been truer than it is now in these times of radical upheaval. As such, we spoke with lawyers who have entered the profession from jobs as diverse as chef to the stars, cricketer, police officer, nurse and travel agent, to delve into the reasons why they made radical shifts in their careers.
Helen Simpson, from running a travel business to practice partner for the UK and Middle East at Dentons
For Helen Simpson, it was less a case of changing track entirely, but running two careers in tandem. Tragedy struck in the second year of her law degree, as Simpson’s father died suddenly, putting the student in the unlikely role of running a retail travel business in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
Simpson attributes her decision to take over the family business to a combination of stubbornness and a sense of duty. ‘The business had my dad’s name on it and the staff’s livelihoods were riding on the business. People said I couldn’t do it while doing my law degree at the same time, which only made me more determined.’
While it might be reductive to label Simpson’s working life as a classic case of lawyerly overachieving, it is a refrain that springs to mind repeatedly while chatting with her.
She ran Dave Simpson Travel for a decade from 1998 to 2008, overlapping – much to the consternation of the graduate recruitment staff – with her training at Linklaters and in 2002 qualifying into the Magic Circle firm’s litigation and arbitration team. Simpson quips that the experience stood her in good stead for the juggling involved in law firm management while having four children and a dog. ‘It influenced my leadership style. I had to manage and lead 30 people and develop a strategy to evolve the business. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that until I did what the employees did, so I went and learned how to sell holidays. I made up luggage labels.’
‘People said I couldn’t do it while doing my law degree at the same time, which only made me more determined.’
Helen Simpson, Dentons
Simpson signed over the five shops to their respective managers to run as family businesses in 2008 but her leadership style has endured. ‘I don’t have a desk at Dentons but I move around different departments and absorb the atmosphere of what’s working well on the team. That’s how I learned my understanding of the shop floor.’
Another terrible loss, her sister dying from a brain haemorrhage on her way home from school at the age of 14, also put things into perspective, making Simpson unfazed by the usual legal career hang-ups. ‘I wasn’t afraid of stepping away from the Magic Circle. I took a sabbatical and drove to South India in a campervan. I wouldn’t have given that up for the world.’
She left Linklaters for Dentons in 2009 and left Dentons in 2017 to run a consultancy business, where she advised on the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and advised boards of directors on governance issues. Simpson then returned to Dentons as practice partner in May 2022.
James Anderson, musician to European head of tax at Skadden
James Anderson’s career has ranged from sax to tax. Growing up in a council house in south-east London but gaining a scholarship to private school for his musical ability, Anderson describes himself as ‘a chameleon, having to develop different faces for different places’.
Notwithstanding academic aptitude, studying law at Cambridge was for him a vehicle for indulging his love of playing in bands, rather than a route into a legal career. After busking around London to raise cash before going to university, Anderson threw himself into the music, with his degree at times playing second fiddle. ‘I assumed Cambridge was a place where I had more opportunities to play music. I was a session horns player – harmonica, clarinet, any of the saxophones, sometimes percussion like conga or bongo. I was able to surf lots of different styles of bands. For the university balls you got two hundred quid. Real money in 1987.’
The circuit threw Anderson into the path of one Colin Greenwood and his brother, Jonny, both of Radiohead. He recalls: ‘Colin and Jonny could play anything, so ended up in Dylan cover bands, funk outfits, jazz, blues – you name it. We sometimes slept on the floor of Colin’s bedroom in Oxford and played there or in London, Bristol or Cambridge, sometimes with Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien, the guitarist.
‘That was 1987-90, when grunge was emerging and Nirvana was coming through. Dark, heavy, introspective music was novel after ‘80s pop, and I didn’t particularly like it at the time, but it was beautiful stuff. After Cambridge in 1990 I decided to forge my own path, seeing no way through for that kind of music or band. Oh, by the way, Colin had changed the band’s name from On a Friday to Radiohead.’
Anderson took a job teaching jazz and western culture at a classical music girls’ school in Tokyo, returning after three months. He remembers: ‘I came back to London and discovered that Radiohead had reached number one in the States with Creep. I went into Our Price in Notting Hill and that sound came out of the speakers. I thought – “Oh boy. What have I done?”’
Downcast by the ‘Radiohead misfire’ as he calls it, Anderson threw himself back into the session scene, recording parts for Fine Young Cannibals, Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox – but fate and a fraud had other ideas.
The bitter decision was taken to do something with his law degree. ‘I had suffered a stolen identity scam, and was plunged into a huge amount of debt. In those days, the law was unsophisticated and it was harder to get any compensation or redress. The pressure was on.’
He signed up to law school and while waiting for that to happen, took a management consultancy role for Arthur Andersen based mainly in the Middle East. ‘That was a fun job. We had our doors kicked down, our support staff kidnapped and our laptops stolen while investigating a corporate crime in the UAE.’
Arguably as far removed as possible from performing in Ronny Scott’s and the 100 Club, Anderson landed a training contract at Clifford Chance (CC) in 1994 but was ambivalent to partnership. ‘Some start their careers thinking if they don’t make partner they’re a failure. To me, it was just a way of getting through the next few years financially. I focused on being technically good at my job, paying down the debt and avoiding the bailiff.’
The debt was cleared, Anderson met his now wife and made partner at CC, before moving to Skadden, where he now heads the European tax team. He is philosophical: ‘I’ve loved my career. It has taught me that creativity is vital in everything, a performance must always go on whatever happens and failure never really exists – you just try again with something different.’
Marco Bagnato, chef to the stars turned Kirkland debt finance associate
‘I’m from the deep south of Italy – the tip of the boot. Growing up there, you’re lucky if you don’t end up in jail!’ So quips Marco Bagnato, a former chef and now Kirkland associate.
Bagnato recalls a newspaper article about litigation sparking his interest in law as a career, though there was a slight obstacle. ‘I didn’t know much about law but I would need to learn English if I wanted to study it. I never got taught English at school and couldn’t speak one word of it!’
Unperturbed but unable to afford summer school in London, Bagnato went to stay with relatives in Australia at the age of 18. It was there that he had his first brush with the culinary world, getting work washing dishes in a restaurant.
The window of opportunity to learn the language was small, given his education visa allowed only three months. ‘I went to school every morning and worked every day. I got fired from my job as a kitchen porter. Then I found work in a fruit shop in Sydney market. It was a 4am start and an 8pm finish. I tell people it was like being a lawyer but without the air con!’
‘I had to find a job. I signed up to chef agencies. I cooked for the Queen several times. I went to Buckingham Palace and cooked for the then Prince Charles (now the King) and Camilla, Kate and William.’
Marco Bagnato, Kirkland
It was there that a chance meeting changed his course. ‘I met Francesco, a chef who ran several good Italian restaurants. He told me he was opening a new restaurant and said if I worked for free he would teach me to cook. I became head chef by the time I was 21.’
Another pivotal encounter with a partner at Allens, the leading Australian firm with an alliance with Linklaters, inspired him to study law in London. ‘I had the same issue of no money, so I had to find a job. I signed up to chef agencies. I cooked for the Queen several times. I went to Buckingham Palace and cooked for the then Prince Charles (now the King) and Camilla, Kate and William.
‘The Queen complained and I was so relieved when it wasn’t my dish! Beckham was my favourite celebrity. He was humble and approachable. We talked about wine, Tuscany and his son, Brooklyn, who was very young at the time. I’ve cooked for Bruce Springsteen at Wembley and the All Blacks at Twickenham.’
Bagnato then got onto the vacation scheme at Linklaters, having set his heart on the firm through his Allens contact. Then, meeting influential Kirkland partners Neel Sachdev and Kanesh Balasubramaniam on a deal during his training contract put him in the path of kindred spirits.
‘Neel and Kanesh reached out and we clicked straight away. It was a natural fit. I got an offer on a plane to New York within a week of the first meeting! There is a hunger to do well and be entrepreneurial and client facing here, not rest on your laurels. That was the reason I went to Kirkland. It was a culture thing, and because of Neel and Kanesh, who have become mentors.’
There are also many transferable skills. ‘The ability to control your emotions under pressure is most important. People think of Gordon Ramsay shouting in people’s faces. Actually, my residing memory of those years of professional cooking is silence. You have to have the ability to focus under pressure. Be able to talk to people, customers or motivate the kitchen porter – to know what makes people tick, just like on a deal with the team around you.’
It is clear that Bagnato’s work ethic has found its rightful home at the firm. ‘At Kirkland I can be myself and accelerate my career and I’m proud of that. Kirkland is a true meritocracy and what sets you apart is just how good you are. Ultimately, the most valuable currency here is excellence.’
Lee Ranson, co-chief executive officer of Eversheds Sutherland, former police officer
Having inexplicably decided to become a solicitor at the age of 11, Lee Ranson’s previous career at the forefront of the thin blue line came about through poor planning at university. Not having any precedent in his family on how legal education worked, by the time he realised he needed to apply to law school, all the places had gone.
‘I had zero money and an overdraft,’ recalls Ranson. ‘I wanted to do something that would answer the legal piece but also earn money. I applied to the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. I was doing the interviews while my finals were taking place. I got accepted and started straight away.’
After a gruelling training course, Ranson started in B Division, a unit which oversaw some of the more deprived areas of Somerset, and immediately enjoyed the camaraderie. So much so, he almost didn’t leave. He says the steep learning curve gave him an edge over peers in his legal career.
‘I had to take some big decisions as a 21-year-old. People looked to you to have the capacity to positively shape a situation. I worked through riots where there were petrol bombs. It was a close-run thing whether I would go to law school, but when I got my training contract, I felt I was massively accelerated compared with people who hadn’t had jobs before. I learned early on that society is not made up of a narrow line of people. In the police you see the whole of society and interact with them.’
Ranson waxes lyrical about the many skills he learned that prepared him for the hairier aspects of law firm leadership. ‘I arrested about 130 people. On many occasions I was hugely outnumbered. It’s about how you get people to calm down in a tense, fraught and potentially dangerous situation. The best officers police by consent, and defuse the situation rather than going in aggressively.’
It also taught him the importance of teamwork, which he maintains has been the most important part of his management style throughout his career. He recalls a cautionary anecdote, funny in hindsight: ‘Someone had a horse on a tiny patch of grass. This was when glue sniffing was a thing and this skinhead approached sniffing from a bag. He jumps on the horse and starts swinging from its neck. He tried to punch me after I intervened, so I cuffed him. Then six of his friends came around to help him so I had to radio in. It ended in multiple arrests. After that I was told never to go for a walk on my own again!’
Nigel Popplewell, cricketer turned Burges Salmon tax co-head, turned mediator and judge
It might be said that Nigel Popplewell became a first-class cricketer because he was stumped as to what career to pursue on graduating from Cambridge with a 2:1 in natural sciences.
‘I played cricket in Hampshire in the Second XI between 1976-77, but didn’t want to play professionally. I thought it was slightly going against my parents paying for my public school education. In 1979 I went to Somerset for a trial and ended up playing for the whole season,’ Popplewell recalls.
He describes something of a charmed life, playing cricket in the summer and teaching biology and chemistry at public schools during the winter. Reminiscing on quite a different sporting time, he remembers: ‘We were sponsored by Benson & Hedges and by the John Player League. I smoked 30 a day just because I could. You don’t need to be aerobically fit to play cricket. It doesn’t matter if you can run if you can’t hit or catch a ball! Smoking helped with the unconscious anxiety. It’s quite nerve racking, playing professional sport in front of a thousand people. I have been in court as an advocate and nothing has been as emotionally difficult as playing cricket.’
‘One thing cricket taught me was the importance of taking responsibility. The buck stopped with everyone.’
Nigel Popplewell, mediator and judge
He retired from cricket in 1985 after a career that saw him score 1,064 runs at an average of 38.00 in 18 first-class matches. His wife’s career as an anaesthetist in Taunton meant that his next career move had to allow him to stay in Somerset. Inspired by his father and brother, who were both High Court judges, he decided the law would fit the bill.
He finished his articles at the age of 30 and qualified at 32, imbued with a maturity that he argues made him more determined. ‘10% of the firsts in the solicitors’ finals were awarded to people in my class. We were committed and had taken the decision to change the course of our lives. There were single mums. You could only do the course face-to-face in those days.’
An early decision to become a corporate finance lawyer, and the need to be conversant with tax law, led him to complete his Chartered Institute of Taxation qualification in 1990. ‘It changed me into wanting to do tax. There wasn’t scope for corporate tax so I did inheritance tax, partnership work and tax litigation. I spent a lot of time in tribunals. In 1999 I joined Burges Salmon doing pure tax.’
Popplewell also wanted to diversify his career options to become a mediator and a judge. ‘In 2015 there was a recruitment drive for judges and I threw my hat in the ring while still at Burges Salmon, becoming a first-tier tribunal judge. ‘I decided that when I retired I wanted to do more judging and that’s what I did. I was 58 years old and a lot of the other judges were a lot younger. You’re never going to earn a living as a tax judge. It’s not a meal ticket.’
Popplewell says his cricketing career stood him in good stead for the rigours of lawyering, giving him invaluable transferable skills. ‘One thing cricket taught me was the importance of taking responsibility. The buck stopped with everyone. I have played with Ian Botham and Viv Richards – amazing players. You could have relied on them to win the match but the reason we did well was because everyone took responsibility. Don’t expect others to do anything for you and if you make a mistake, ‘fess up!’
Jennifer Bethlehem – from nurse to Freshfields corporate and M&A partner
Jennifer Bethlehem’s career before law was born more of necessity than a vocational passion for nursing. In her final year of school in South Africa, her father developed a brain tumour and died within nine months of diagnosis. Bethlehem’s parents’ careers were noble rather than lucrative (her father worked for the British Council and the UN in education and her mother worked for Save the Children) so there was little money for her three younger brothers to stay in school and to put her through university. With teaching and nursing the only two careers that offered paid training at the time, Bethlehem was encouraged towards nursing by her aunts, one of whom was head of the South African Nursing Council.
Bethlehem was sceptical: ‘I told my aunts that I was terrified of blood and got anxious when I got to hospitals. They said: “Nonsense – you’ll get over that!”’
‘On my first day in nursing they took us around a tour of the hospital and I saw some kidney patients on a dialysis machine, with all this blood whooshing around. I took one look and fainted. That was an auspicious start!’
Bethlehem did overcome her fears and in impressive style: ‘I ended up working in trauma and intensive care, probably the most extreme areas for a squeamish person! I wouldn’t say I chose to become a nurse, but while I was doing it I had a great deal of job satisfaction.’
‘On my first day they took us around a tour of the hospital and I saw patients on a dialysis machine, with blood whooshing around. I took one look and fainted. That was an auspicious start!’
Jennifer Bethlehem, Freshfields
Meanwhile, the civil unrest sweeping South Africa posed its own – often harrowing – problems. At Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg, Bethlehem was routinely treating war zone-style injuries. Her future husband, a doctor, also had to flee to the UK to avoid conscription into the army. The couple got married and went to live in the UK.
Having already satisfied her academic curiosity by doing a degree at London’s Birkbeck in politics, history and philosophy, Bethlehem took the decision to do a law degree at King’s as she approached her 30th birthday.
However, when the time came to secure a training contract, top-tier law firms proved less than forthcoming: ‘I wasn’t somebody who read the FT or was particularly interested in the world of business. If I’d come to a Freshfields interview I would have failed because they ask you things like – “this month in The Economist, what did you read?” I would have said: “Nothing, who cares?”’
Fortunately, not every firm was put off by her unorthodox background: ‘I did my training contract at Nabarro and I will always have the most unbelievable gratitude to the people there who had the foresight to give me a chance. Nobody else did.’
Bethlehem wanted to pursue premium M&A instead of the property deals Nabarro offered, so (slightly daunted by its Oxbridge reputation) applied to become an associate at Freshfields during the dotcom boom. She got the job. ‘Once I arrived I felt I was in the right place. My perception was that Freshfields was traditional and closed, but I have been given every opportunity to be myself.’
She reminisces about an episode when, as an associate, her directness of manner saw her reproach former senior partner Ed Braham over smoking – a habit she detests – in the office.
She is bullish about her unusual route into law: ‘I’ve never felt the extreme stress of nursing in any situation in my law career. Nursing teaches you to be resilient when you don’t know what’s going to happen that day, especially in A&E or trauma. One of the most difficult things about working in the NHS is, you have complete extremes of people who are so dedicated, and people who don’t give a shit. There is nothing more stressful in the world than working with people who don’t give a shit. In my life now, everybody cares.’
Claude Brown, from the army to Reed Smith ESG partner
Claude Brown’s schoolboy fascination with the army led him to follow a well-marched path from Cambridge to Sandhurst before joining the Royal Artillery, where he stayed for a decade.
To avoid the career trap of hanging on for the pension or becoming desk-bound at the Ministry of Defence, Brown left the army and made his way into the City almost by chance.
‘I was looking for a job around the time of the Big Bang. I was having dinner with my now wife and her friends. One of the guys was a trader for a Japanese bank and said Nomura just hired a bunch of Guard’s officers into their private client arm. His Japanese managing director was looking for people in the army because Nomura had them,’ he recalls.
Brown passed the interview with flying colours, having only to assure the Japanese MD that Sandhurst was the premier military academy in Britain (it was the only one), and worked at the trading desk of the shop, which was later consumed by Mitsubishi Group, for just over three years.
A perceived glass-ceiling for non-Japanese employees meant that he could not see a future in the City, having instead visions of a career that would allow him to retire to the country.
‘There were a lot of naughty soldiers in the regiment to put it mildly. I ended up as defending officer in an awful lot of court martials because I was quite good at filling in the legal aid forms.’
Claude Brown, Reed Smith
‘Law had appealed since being in the army in Germany. There were a lot of naughty soldiers in the regiment to put it mildly. I ended up as defending officer in an awful lot of court martials because I was quite good at filling in the legal aid forms. There were a couple of attempted murders, armed robbery. The first few were found not guilty so people said: “Go and ask Captain Brown – he’ll get you off!” I got quite interested in the law.’
Brown’s wife Claire was working at a Canadian bank at the time and the decision was made that she would support him through law school as, he quips, ‘a long-term investment’.
At the age of 32, Brown went to law school, doing his CPE in Guildford where his early morning habits elicited some concern from the lecturers.
‘I used to drop my wife off at the station for 6.30am and then go and work in the library until the first lecture. I was used to the army life of starting early. I’d been there three weeks and I had the interview with sherry, where the tutors invite you in for a glass and ask how you’re finding the course. He said: “I think you mature students struggle a lot. I hear you’re getting to the library at five in the morning!” I said: “No, I’m not!”’
Brown did his articles at Linklaters and was there two years post-qualification, but left because at the time the firm was only practising English law, which didn’t fit with his cross-border derivatives ambitions. He joined Clifford Chance, which did have a global strategy, and jokes that the office move to Canary Wharf was reminiscent of a unit move in the army.
Unsurprisingly, his experiences have taught him stamina. ‘I didn’t mind working late because I was warm and dry and no-one was shooting at me. In lockdown when the managing partner rang up to ask how everyone’s mental wellbeing was, I said: “I used to spend three months in a bunker underground in nuclear release. Here I am, looking out on a field in the Chilterns. What’s not to like?”’
Now a partner at Reed Smith, Brown credits his military training for his ESG specialism. ‘In the artillery, a rocket or missile is in the air for up to a minute so you have to learn all about meteorological stuff like the rotation of the earth and weather. Suddenly in 1998 someone rang me because I always seemed to know about obscure things. That’s how I started doing weather derivatives. No matter what you learn, however obscure, it’s going to have some use.’
Laura Sylvester, horse riding instructor turned probation officer turned medical negligence and personal injury partner at Kingsley Napley
Lawyers by nature are a high-achieving bunch and Laura Sylvester bears testament to that – having found success in numerous careers before arriving at the law.
With a degree in philosophy and classical studies with Latin, Sylvester had planned on becoming an academic but in 2002 that was a particularly uncertain path which would have required self-funding.
It was her love of horses that led her to meet some contacts that would shape her career. ‘I picked up a job in Wiltshire as a riding instructor and hunt groom for the yard. I was teaching a barrister and a magistrate to ride and I got to know them through the horses. I still wanted a career that involved intellectual study. The magistrate I was teaching suggested I did work experience with a judge she knew, Judge McNaught at Swindon Crown Court.’
After two years as a riding instructor, the judiciary experience prompted Sylvester to do a conversion course and, nine months before that, she landed a job in the probation service, commuting service orders, a role she maintained through law school.
‘I was teaching a barrister and a magistrate to ride and I got to know them through the horses. The magistrate suggested I did work experience with a judge she knew.’
Laura Sylvester, Kingsley Napley
Reflects Sylvester: ‘Court was daunting but there were magistrates from different backgrounds and the clerks were kind and helpful. Tutors told us not to have paid work or we wouldn’t have time, but I was self-funding. The probation service was understanding. Having wanted to go down the masters and PhD track, the law was not a big reach for me as it was very intellectual and dealt with complicated issues. Legal arguments in causation – philosophy taught me to do that.’
Sylvester is animated about the transferable skills between her academic training and her legal career. ‘In clinical negligence, you have to create a world where there wouldn’t be any negligence. I really like the technical aspects of arguments. Complicated and theoretical. Consent law changes all the time and there’s always something to read about. Philosophy gave me the confidence to have an opinion, as long as I could back it up and not be scared by it.’
She admits that some of her experiences in the probation service were unsettling, working as she sometimes did with sex offenders. Emphasising the business sense of law firms hiring from diverse background, Sylvester insists her unusual career track has made her a better lawyer: ‘I was more mature when I went into law and, because I was self-funded, I worked incredibly hard. It focused my attention because I had chosen to be there.’