I didn’t want to be a lawyer. My father wouldn’t let me go to RADA. Acting is what I wanted to do but people from Leeds in 1984 didn’t go to acting school. My favourite uncle said: ‘You’re going to be a lawyer’. So I jumped on a conveyor belt and ended up becoming one.
My father was a taxi driver and mum was a housewife. All our holidays were in Blackpool, St Anne’s and Scarborough. Now everyone’s only allowed to go to those places.
My history teacher used to bang us on the head with a blackboard rubber. I used to go home and my mum thought I had bad dandruff but it was all the chalk dust. But that teacher gave me a passion for history. He said: ‘Kids like you don’t go to university but I’ll help you with your applications.’ But for him, who knows?
I did theatre when I was younger at places like City Varieties Music Hall and the Playhouse in Leeds. Stage stuff is terrifying because the audience is right on top of you. No room for error. It’s a bit like doing a conference but more fun. People actually come along and want to listen to you!
I took some clients to see Waiting for Godot with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The clients wanted to shoot themselves but I thought it was amazing. Stephen Merchant sat behind me and I met him again at a bar in Laguna Beach in California. I’ve met Larry David and tried to make him laugh but he was dull. A lot of his stuff is improvisation and it’s very clever. You have to be very talented to do that.
I used to put ‘comedy’ on my CV as a hobby but I was told to take it off. Years later I was sat next to Gordon Stewart, the guru of Allen & Overy’s insolvency practice, and he was massively into comedy and had it on his CV.
We had a 48-hour closing. I missed the whole celebration dinner. The team went out and I woke up thinking it was 12 midnight. It was 12 – two days later.
Often the smaller cases are most fun. At Jones Day, Hagemeyer was completely, utterly crazy. It was one of those old Dutch trading companies that are built up by acquisitions, so there were 99 countries and 650 companies. I had one other person on my team and on the other side was the might of Clifford Chance. It nearly killed me. I went to Amsterdam 29 times and we had a 48-hour closing. I missed the whole celebration dinner. The team went out and I woke up thinking it was 12 midnight. It was 12 – two days later. Two days of my life had disappeared sleeping.
Once a Manchester firm asked me to go along to a liquidation meeting at the Bloomsbury Hotel in London to hold the hand of the liquidator. It was a derivatives trading company and the director was this young guy who was incredibly sure of himself and wouldn’t shut up. There were two fellas sat at the front in suits making notes. The meeting finished and the director was really pleased and wanted to go for a drink. I didn’t want to, because this wasn’t my client and the liquidator didn’t want to spend time with the guy. Finally we agreed to go to the bar with him. The two suits then approached the director and asked him his name. When he confirmed this, they said: ‘City of London Fraud Squad – you’re under arrest.’ I got a call from his mother, asking if I could help her son. I said I’d never acted for him, but could give her the name of a lawyer if she wanted!
The most pressured thing I’ve done was the MF Global first creditors meeting. One night only at the Barbican! On the top table with one of my assistants, a barrister and a couple of the administrators from KPMG with a thousand people looking at us, wanting to know where their money had gone. Chinese people kept taking photos of us. We weren’t sure how it was going to end and there had been death threats against traders. My desire to be on a stage had waned by that point. It was the first time special administration had been used, meant for companies in the financial trading sector. That was a day to remember.
Restructuring and insolvency is really interesting because you can go into any industry. It’s not really a profession any more, it’s a business. And if you’re going to be in business, be in business, don’t be in law. Entrepreneurs put everything on the line but we don’t.
With insolvency you have to venture an opinion because everything’s going to hell in a handcart. If you go into a boardroom, you’d better speak up because the company’s going south. You need to save it or minimise losses. You can’t be a shrinking violet to go into a boardroom or act for creditors because everything is very fraught. You can bring calmness to the situation or an air of calm. When I was doing British Home Stores, every day I was at Marylebone Road at their offices, eight in the morning till midnight, seven days a week, trying to restructure and rescue the business. You have to be quite proactive.
Smart clients can look on the internet these days if they want to know what the law says. What they want is someone who can get a deal done, drive it over the line and get everybody together. The best lawyers are the ones who understand that.
I was in New York with my son and we were in a restaurant sitting next to Scarlett Johansson whose table I’d just nicked. She was really cool but I was more interested in talking to the waiter about football. It’s all about being genuinely interested in what someone is talking to you about. Years ago I went to Isleworth for a Chinese on a Monday lunchtime with this banker whose only hobby was flying balsa wood airplanes. I was genuinely interested as I’d never met anyone who had that hobby. You have to make people feel comfortable with themselves.
In interviews I ask odd questions – ‘You’ve got 30 seconds. What are your three favourite films? Go!’ Most people fluster, tell you their three favourite films, or tell you what they think you want to hear. My favourites are Once Upon a Time in America, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
I’m into boxing. Raging Bull involves De Niro at the start of the film super fit and swearing a lot and at the end super fat and swearing. I’m like De Niro at the end! I haven’t boxed during lockdown. You can’t think about the law or family or the weather or anything for an hour while somebody’s trying to punch you in the face! Lockdown for me has been difficult. Zoom doesn’t work for me. I have to see people. In the natural flow of a conversation, the important things come out.
I must have ordered 50 books during lockdown and probably got through four. I like detective novels and I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie. I like The ABC Murders. It’s a bit dark. They’re mostly set in English villages, which we all know are the most dangerous places in the world, more so than Washington DC. I used to make my daughter watch Miss Marple and Poirot. I love Midsomer Murders and Sherlock Holmes. A lot of the books I read are narrative history – authors who recreate a plot around historical events like Robert Harris. I love The Simpsons. It’s the cleverest TV ever written.
Psychoville was filmed in my house. It hadn’t been done up at the time and they wanted something gothic. My wife insisted on renovating the house for that reason.
The last band I went to see was The Alarm, or it might have been ELO. The Jam would be great but they’re not going to re-form. I’ll see anything – from Barry Manilow to the Pet Shop Boys to Lady Gaga to Aerosmith.
Psychoville was filmed in my house. It hadn’t been done up at the time and they wanted something gothic. Afterwards, my wife insisted on renovating the house for that reason. Dawn French is amazingly funny. I can’t tell you how many neighbours popped round for a cup of sugar once they realised she was in the house!
I don’t regret becoming a lawyer but it takes a huge toll on your personal and family life. Law firms are paranoid that they’re going to miss out on the next job, the next fee, someone’s going to steal their clients. Whatever Shakespeare or anybody else thinks, there aren’t actually that many lawyers. There are probably too many law firms all competing for the same business, but the same number of lawyers. Clients still need our services, we should be a bit more confident. My dad used to think it was a weird profession. He said: ‘You’re worse than a double-glazing salesman. They have to sell the double-glazing but they don’t have to put the windows in.’ That’s what we have to do – go and find it and then do it.
There are incredible opportunities for associates now. When I started a few people went in-house, mainly because they wanted a different lifestyle. Now they could join a big tech company. People will ask if partnership is what they want. It can’t just be about benefits like working from home because every company is doing that now. What are you offering people?
I’ve only ever hired talented people. I don’t care what their background is. Working class, ordinary people are not in the law at all. Social mobility is a struggle. Law, especially with the rise of commercial law above all else, is very full on. It’s not for everyone. If you take someone who’s not used to that rarefied high-pressure environment and put them in a system that demands that, you can break them as well as make them.
There will be some consolidation of law firms, it’s inevitable. Some US firms may take a view on whether they need to be in London and wider in Continental Europe and further.
I like to include people who want to be part of something, driven and enthused. It’s important to lead by example. I want people to come to work and like being there. One of my favourite-ever Leeds United players, Billy Bremner, summed it up perfectly when he said: ‘Side before self every time.’
Adam Plainer is co-chair of Dechert’s global financial restructuring group
nathalie.tidman@legalease.co.uk
Portrait: Stephen Widdows Photography