Every time my father got a promotion we had to move. It trains you to fit in with new crowds. He worked for the Midland Bank. We lived in Carlisle, Shropshire, Birmingham, Kingston-upon-Thames and Manchester. It focused me on academic work as each new school had a different syllabus so I was always catching up.
I used to stand in our garage handing my father spanners. My favourite car in my youth was the Lancia Aurelia B20 GT, which was one of the classic Pininfarina designs of the ’50s. They were the embodiment of high-quality engineering. I went through a severe Lancia-buying phase in my 20s. I bought five!
I spent a lot of evenings being a barman between school and university – The Pownall Arms Hotel in south Manchester. The worst moments were Christmas Eve when it was heaving and I was running up and down, with people shouting: ‘Come on, Chris! Where are you?!’ A pint of mild was 15p in 1973 and I was paid 30p an hour! Not Slaughter and May money!
I only applied to Slaughter and May. I had done a bit of office jobbing at a Manchester firm called George Davies & Co and I told my university tutor I was going there for my articles. He said: ‘Oh, no. Go to the City. If you don’t like it you can leave, but it will always be better to start in the City.’ He arranged an interview at Slaughter and May. I took the bird in the hand.
Solicitors seemed more worldly, dealing with normal problems, and you are with people all the time. The barristers’ world seemed lonely.
There was this thing at university that Linklaters and Slaughter and May were very big and just factories. I never felt that. I felt easy in the community.
Part of my growing up was my first year at the firm with a man called Thomas Buckley, who was articulate and very funny. Everybody had a nickname. For some reason he called John Gatehouse at Flemings the Goat Herder and obviously Mark Sketchley was the Dry Cleaner. I learned the craft of commercial lawyering, but also that a twinkle in the eye is often more effective in negotiations than a thump on the table. It disarms.
It is important to do menial things to the best of your ability as then you get something more responsible to do. In the book, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves – the heroine lives in a block of flats and the professorial janitor is called Ezra. This is a short quote from Ezra: ‘The secret to a good life is to bring your A game to everything you do. Even if all you’re doing is taking out the garbage, you do that with excellence.’
My first big deal was in ’83 for a fundraising for All Nippon Airways. I went to Japan for the first time and wrote the prospectus. It was the first time I felt: ‘This is down to me.’
Sometimes you have to be firm in this job. There have been times when I’ve had to get tough and say: ‘This is what it’s going to be and this is what my client requires.’ When things got difficult I wasn’t afraid to put the fist on the table.
There were three young ladies from France at a course for international lawyers in Dallas, Texas, that I was sent to in 1983. One of them was Anne Cartier. It took a while for her to notice me. I saw her getting her key at reception so in my best French accent I said: ‘Ah, Miss Cartier, how did you enjoy the lectures today?’ She was furious: ‘How dare you! I do not speak like Maurice Chevalier.’ But she started speaking to me. We went to Cardinal Puff’s beer garden, which was the place to go in Dallas, and when I asked her what she would like to drink, she said: ‘I only drink water or champagne.’ We married in 1985.
I’d been up all night on a deal and my phone rang when I got back to the office. The voice said: ‘It’s Tony Mallinson.’ This was significant because it was the senior partner and normally he would have said: ‘It’s Mallinson.’ I went to his room and he asked me to be a partner. You’re on cloud nine and then you come back down to earth. But people underestimate the step change.
The policy of Slaughters is up or out. The partnership track is about eight years after qualification and at the end you are seen by a lot of partners so they can express a view. If, sadly, it is a no, then the best thing is that people are told it’s best to find another role as there’s a natural progression.
The culture in the ‘80s was manly, but even then it felt a little old-fashioned. With the bankers, the brokers and the stockjobbers, there were striking divisions between the financial institutions. The Big Bang was a revolution. You could feel barriers being broken down and vested interests chipped away.
The lockstep we have is a great source of strength. It’s different if you have 25 offices around the world. It is clearly harder to sustain as you have different economic forces operating in those jurisdictions. You’re also not seeing each other every day. That reinforces the bond between our partnership. It’s an important distinguishing factor in the culture of the firm, which is all about quality and teamwork.
I enjoyed the cheerleading as head of corporate and the whole: ‘Hey team – let’s go do this!’ When Tim Clark was going to retire I threw my hat in the ring. I thought I had a reasonable chance. Bookie’s odds, maybe 1/3 – 2/3rds.
It’s about demeanour and style. We have a strategy we feel good about. So leadership elections at Slaughter and May are a case of style, approach and nudging on the tiller, but not a handbrake turn.
As I went into the senior partner job, I thought: how can I help to embellish Slaughter and May? The real response ended up being firefighting for our clients. I was interested in expanding internationally and driving forward our friendships. On the client side there was more in our tank. We had a great client base, but I wanted to see if we could find more addressable markets, so areas like energy, financial services and private equity, where we could do better. Then came the global financial crisis and the world was convulsed.
I remember vividly the Friday afternoon before the bailout of the banks. You could feel the air was thick with anxiety. The UK government turned to Slaughters and there was an extraordinary focus on recapitalising the banks. It required great novelty. It required resilience and new ideas while working under enormous pressure. The sense of stress was palpable and it was followed by the private sector feeling the blast of the recession.
We avoided redundancies and that was incredibly important. The ethos was that we shouldn’t do that as that’s what equity is for. We just didn’t make quite as much money, but sometimes you have to strap yourself in and a much more competitive world came out of the sausage machine. I went to a meeting and the chief executive said: ‘How much did you bill us last year?’ And when I responded he said: ‘I want the same work but for 10% less.’ I said: ‘Absolutely.’
We suffered a dip like everyone. Those were tougher years. You have to be clear what your proposition is. We’ve come out of it stronger for that cathartic experience.
Often you have to arbitrate between different personalities if you’ve got strong-minded partners. There have been two or three times we’ve had potentially huge new client instructions and one of your talented partners who has been wooing this client finds there is a conflicting interest. You are going to upset one of your treasured partners, but you have to make a decision. If you’re doing your job right they will know that next time the decision could go the other way.
Around universities people think Slaughters is a bit posh and a bit public school, but when vacation scheme students come here they find approachable people who are interested in music, literature and cinema. I suppose there is a mystique about the firm, but the sense it is some sort of secret society is overdone. We don’t disclose our numbers, but that’s because we worry that would drive short-termism. We feel it would distort our approach to business.
Be up. Not manically up! But be positive. So when someone says ‘How are you?’ you don’t say you’re good, you say you’re great, because positivity breeds positivity and people warm to that.
It’s important for young people to maintain a work/life balance. I say to the trainees: ‘We recruited you because you are bright people but also because of your breadth across a waterfront of interests that will help you turn into an adviser. Don’t forget to read classic novels, go to the theatre, or go to the Emirates stadium.’
Treat everybody in the way you would wish to be treated. It’s rare, but you have to step in at times. People want to do better for the firm if the environment is one of support.
Firms have given up approaching us for mergers because we are clear in our strategy. The phone is definitely not hot with people saying ‘Can we talk?’
We have a big dinner to say goodbye to the retiring partners and hello to the new partners every year. It’s a crystallising moment as there you are in your black tie and that’s a big celebration. This dinner in May I will be on the other side of that hill. That’s scary. My number 63 napkin will soon be retired!
Chris Saul is the outgoing senior partner of Slaughter and May
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk