What made me decide to become a lawyer? Almost certainly watching Crown Court as a small child. Although it’s a fictionalised representation of court cases, the process intrigued me.
It is a vocation. People underestimate the degree to which becoming a lawyer is motivated by reasons that are not strictly career trajectory related. You do have the altruistic aspect of, if I can learn the law and I understand how to apply it, I can help people with their problems.
If I hadn’t been a lawyer? I was actually interested in going into broadcasting. One of my cousins is a radio and television presenter in Ireland and I had done some youth TV work when I was at school. That was something I really enjoyed.
My management style is supportive and, ideally, empowering. I give people lots of responsibility and hope they thrive. It’s incredibly important as a leader to be someone who challenges and expands the horizons for the juniors, but also acts as a shield for them so that they can make mistakes safely. You are the face of your team so it’s really important both to give credit where it’s due and to take responsibility.
Shortly after I qualified, I worked on a big banking litigation case which involved allegations of misuse of confidential information. It was quite new law at the time. It was on a very speedy timetable because the case involved an injunction which was being maintained over an asset in an industry where price volatility was quite substantial. We were doing what would otherwise have been a four or five-year case in 18 months. I learned a huge amount from working under that kind of pressure over a sustained but short period.
More recently I was involved in a big case in Dubai. It involved, unusually, a family matter at its heart. The people involved had fallen out very badly and the case was all to do with trying to give effect to agreements they had entered into at a time when their relationship was less strained. I had the opportunity to do the advocacy for the second hearing. It was one of those cases which mattered enormously to the client because it was their life. It was incredibly stressful for them because it involved very close family members. It’s a different experience when you’re advising an individual, rather than a corporation. At the heart of every dispute, there’s always a personal relationship that’s gone wrong somewhere along the line. It was an enriching experience for my skills as an adviser and as an advocate. In the end, we got a great result for that client. That would count as a real high point for me.
Attention to detail is critical. So often a case will turn on something that might at first appear to be a minor issue. You need to have strong commercial sense. You have to be willing to approach procedural issues pragmatically. Increasingly, both courts and tribunals are impatient with parties who simply adopt a battering ram approach. A sense of humour doesn’t go astray. Not in the sense of being a joker, but being able to lighten the mood. Being able to cut through something that’s quite difficult with a little bit of humour and being personable is important, as much as it’s a slippery concept. It’s a real advantage, being somebody that people think of as being both competent and pleasant.
The most effective people are those with lightness of touch. That comes with experience. Very often aggression is the product of a lack of experience, or it’s become a house style.
There’s still an inherent reluctance to yield on a point because it looks weak. Whereas, actually, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is adopt an approach that is more conciliatory. It often exposes a lack of substance on the other side.
I’ve got on very well in the past with opponents and it’s led to a better process. The opponents where you dread hearing from them because you know it’s going to be a six-page letter – five pages of abuse of you and your client – and then a tiny compromise in the last paragraph. It’s not a pleasant experience. It doesn’t enrich anybody.
I give enormous credit to my first trainee supervisor, Dominic Spenser Underhill. He is an independent arbitrator these days and was the first person who taught me about arbitration. He’s been a brilliant role model and mentor to me ever since. He has always brought independence of thought to everything he does. I’d like to think I’ve modelled myself on him.
Outside the law, my biggest influence and inspiration are my parents. My father had an absolutely brilliant mind and a very successful career and always maintained a courteous, charming demeanor. He was very much loved by the people who worked with him and by the people who dealt with him. My mother was academically very rigorous, extremely cultured, and a wonderful teacher. I learned a lot from her too.
My biggest achievement? Being offered a place at Oxford when I was 16. I applied at my mother’s suggestion and was offered a place, much to my surprise. It changed the whole course of my life. I probably wouldn’t be sitting here now had it not been for the opportunities it gave me. Both to develop independently at a much younger age than I might have done, and to bring me to England to develop a career that flowed from that academic experience.
There are perennial questions around the death of the billable hour and diversity issues, which are increasingly pressing, and rightly so. The hot topics at the moment really seem to revolve around AI, the metaverse and cryptocurrencies. Although the degree of scandal that’s now associated with cryptocurrencies perhaps suggests that may come and go. I do think that the involvement of thinking technology in the form of AI is going to make a difference to how we work.
I have a lucky pair of shoes that I wear on the first day of every hearing. Patent leather, pointy toe, titanium heel. They mean business.
We’ll continue to see people making use of the techniques around greener dispute resolution processes. That can only be a good thing, because dispute resolution has to be accountable to the world.
Having just come to the Bar, there is a part of me that thinks maybe I could have gone to the Bar to begin with. I was scared to take the risk of being self-employed and I was worried it might not be somewhere I would thrive. You have to back yourself. In your early 20s, it’s quite hard to know whether the Bar is going to work for you.
I’m probably the last generation of law firm partners who trained at the firm where they became a partner. It’s now an unusual career trajectory. There is a lot to be said for having those different experiences and challenging yourself in a different setting. I might have been more mobile were I to be starting again now. I don’t have any regrets about my career path and I don’t feel there were missed opportunities along the way. I don’t think life could have been better had it been somewhere else.
In the early days of virtual hearings, I was sitting as an arbitrator. We had people dialing in from, I don’t know how many different jurisdictions and because of the time zones involved, we were starting quite early in the morning. I logged into the call and went off to make a coffee. I came back and realised that my then very small cat was curled up on the sofa in my study. I knew that the minute I started talking at the hearing, he would wake up and want to come and see what was going on. I thought that would be terribly embarrassing so I scooped him up and took him out of the room, talking to him the way one talks to a small animal. I turned back to my desk and saw 14 grinning faces on the screen. I said rather lamely that I was just evicting the cat, but they had heard everything. If anyone thought I was hardcore and intimidating, I’d wrecked that reputation. It was a valuable lesson in the use of the mute button!
I have two lovely daughters who are 13 and 11. We like to bake, and I’m also very keen on all kinds of fabric crafts, so I do patchwork, embroidery, tapestry and knitting. I like to knit for people who are having babies because baby knits are small and they’re quick. It just suits my general impatience, but I do find it very soothing and therapeutic. I enjoy travel and theatre and I love music. I always listen to classical music when I’m working. Lots of Bach and Brahms and Schubert, which I find helps concentration immensely.
Shoes are probably my biggest guilty pleasure. I have more shoes than any one individual could ever possibly wear, but I love them. I take great pleasure in wearing nice shoes. I actually have a lucky pair of shoes that I wear on the first day of every hearing. Patent leather, pointy toe, titanium heel. They mean business. That’s really the message I hope they send. I’m incredibly encouraged because I see more women wearing colour and being bolder about how they present themselves. There is room in the law for people who are not drones. It’s important to embrace your individuality as part of your practice because, especially in arbitration, it’s so much about personality. If you are true to yourself, it makes you a better lawyer because you’re not playing a part, you’re just doing your job.
Philippa Charles is an arbitrator at Twenty Essex and was previously a partner and head of international arbitration at Stewarts