I didn’t study law at university. I studied history at Oxford. A huge love. I’ve loved debating since a young age. My mother would despair of my father and me, telling us to stop arguing. We’d say: ‘It’s not arguing! It’s a healthy discussion!’
I was quite naive. I remember saying to my tutor that I was thinking of doing law and I got a little postcard in my pigeon hole, saying: ‘The Bar, I presume?’ I replied, ‘Actually, no, I’m going to join Clifford Chance.’ It’s international and I wanted the bright lights of the City. Not to mention that the firm was going to fund me through law school for two years. That was a big incentive. It also had a swimming pool in the basement.
I was given a seat in shipping and I thought, ‘God, that doesn’t sound very glamorous.’ But I absolutely loved it. Had no idea that international trade and shipping cases formed the substantive work of the commercial court. I was lucky as it was a blend of litigation and arbitration work. I eventually decided to specialise in international arbitration.
An instrumental mentor was Judith Prior. I sat with her in my first seat. An incredible lawyer. So helpful in terms of her mentoring; she was a very successful female lawyer in a man’s world of international trade shipping. Inspirational in the way she conducted her cases. Incredibly organised, very bright and commercial as well.
Chris Colbridge left Clifford Chance to set up the international arbitration London offering of Sherman & Sterling and I later joined him. A huge supporter and instrumental in my transition into international arbitration. When Chris left to go to Kirkland & Ellis, I went to Skadden.
The draw at Skadden was Karyl Nairn and Paul Mitchard. Karyl is an outstanding lawyer and person. She taught me that you need to support the team because you are only as good as the team you work with. Promote people that you think are cleverer and better than you so that your team gets stronger. Charlie Falconer has also been inspirational – a superb advocate and great fun, too.
Don’t argue for arguing’s sake. Be strategic and pick your battles. From an advocacy perspective, it’s really preparation, preparation, preparation. If you know the case and the law, if you can answer questions while you’re doing something else, you’re going to be able to perform well on your feet when you get those difficult challenges from the tribunal.
We were doing one of the first in-person hearings at the IDRC and the tribunal asked everybody to test for Covid. We were due to start on Monday and on the Saturday morning I got a call from one of my team members, saying: ‘Oh, Penny, have you seen your Covid test is positive?’ I was the only person to have to get beamed into the hearing. The IT department came and set me up with lots of different screens. My son came home, and went: ‘Mum, have you started running a spy ring?’ I got a negative test on the Thursday so I went in but, needless to say, nobody would shake my hand!
Global Telecom against Algeria was a creeping expropriation. The CEO was put under criminal charges. He was under a travel ban for a year and I had to fly to Algeria and meet him. It felt like you had to put your phone in a plant pot and go for a walk because everything was being bugged. There was always that slight sinking feeling that I would get a tap on the shoulder and be asked what we were doing.
The CEO was convicted for a three-year prison sentence. He didn’t go to the sentencing hearing himself, and then he disappeared. I tried to call him. His phone had been left behind in his residence in Algeria and nobody knew where he was. Forty-eight hours later I got a call from him in the middle of the night, asking me to book him a flight out of Tunisia. I asked him where he was, and he didn’t know – somewhere in the desert between Algeria and Tunisia. He’d been in the boot of a car and on the back of a camel; this extraordinary escape. He said: ‘You need to book me on the first safe flight and a hotel room, but don’t book the hotel room in my name.’ I booked a hotel room in the name of Mukhtar Madden with my credit card. He asked us to fax the flight details when the sun went down. My team was scrambling to work out what time the sun goes down in Tunis! We finally got the most incredible settlement and the clients went into a joint venture with the Algerians. It was quite a brave move.
Orascom Telecom was a rollercoaster of a case against France Telecom. We won and then we lost, and then we won, and then we lost. The final determination was in the Egyptian courts. We spent five days and five nights trying to negotiate a settlement while living on about an hour’s sleep. Naguib Sawiris, the chair of Orascom Telecom, threw a big party. The great and the good, celebrities and politicians and actresses. I had nothing to wear and the shops were closed. I put on a very boring shift dress and a grey cardigan; everyone else was dressed up to the nines. Naguib saw me in the crowd and decided to put me on a table to dance. So I’m in front of all of these incredibly beautifully dressed women in my grey cardigan, making my dance moves! It was not a good look.
For the last six years I’ve been involved pro bono on the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case. That’s been very difficult. Trying to force government to take action; getting Jeremy Hunt to give diplomatic protection. Credit to Richard Ratcliffe, the most remarkable husband. I would like to think that my husband would fight for me in that way if I got imprisoned. An incredible ending. As a team, we were so thankful when she finally came home and was reunited with Richard and Gabriella. I still see them all – she is the most delightful young lady.
I love horse riding. There is nothing more cathartic than galloping up a hill and hoping that you’re going to stop. Dodgy brakes and unassisted steering! Lawyers spend a lot of time being sedentary, looking at documents and using our brains, so when you do something in the moment – riding, skiing, something that gives you an adrenaline buzz – it is grounding.
We are sociable beings and the need for collaboration means that we interact and work better when we do it face to face. Nothing beats popping into people’s offices and pooling ideas in an ad hoc way. Clients are increasingly interested, not only in what our teams look like, but in our policies and cultural values.
They threatened to call the police and I was saying, “What crime have we committed?” I think that’s where my legal career was born: “I know my rights. I have not committed a crime!”
Barbara Becker’s election to chair underlines Gibson Dunn’s focus on diversity and inclusion. She was transformational on the executive committee when it came to diverse promotions. Diverse teams are the best. That balance: excellent men, excellent women, diverse backgrounds. You have to put together the best team and perspectives to be able to work out the solution for the clients.
When you are a young lawyer, you try and be too prescriptive. ‘When am I going to have a family?’ You need to be nimble and adaptable; allow the route to develop. Judith Prior gave me probably the best piece of advice, that there’s no ideal time to have a baby. You may look back on your career and wish that you’d had a child. You will never look back on your career and wish you’d done two more all-nighters, worked much harder or taken on an extra case. I have a 23-year-old daughter and a 21-year-old son.
As a teenager I was in an anti-apartheid association, and we did this thing called Supermarket Trolley Anti-Apartheid Run or something like that. A lot of the supermarkets were stocking South African goods and we were trying to pressurise the government to impose sanctions to stop them supporting that regime. We’d stack the trolleys full of South African goods and then you’d have to try to line up so that everybody went through the checkout at the same time. We handed the checkout person a little card which said: ‘Sorry, I can’t purchase these goods contaminated by apartheid.’ Some checkouts were faster than others! You’d have to leg it before you got nabbed by the store manager. It was absolute chaos. They threatened to call the police and I was saying, ‘What crime have we committed?’ I think that’s where my legal career was born: ‘I know my rights. I have not committed a crime!’
Growing up, it felt easy to campaign. We had a very strong sense of right and wrong, that there were things in the world that were wrong and that we absolutely had to try and change. Going into the nineties with the collapse of apartheid and the Berlin Wall coming down, it felt like everything was moving in a positive pro-democratic way. I feel for my kids’ generation. They don’t have that clarity of social justice. Everything has got so complicated and there is no clear, linear, positive trajectory. The next generation of lawyers wants to make a difference and they do have strong values. That needs very much to be encouraged.
Penny Madden KC is co-partner-in-charge of the London office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher