It’s been an amazing career. I’ve been with Clifford Chance (CC) for 40 years. People had just stopped wearing bowler hats when I started, I was relieved to notice. What I remember was being in Royex House at Coward Chance. No air conditioning – we used to bake in the summer. People used to go out for lunches and have a bottle of wine a head and work in the afternoons.
I remember watching then senior partners walking in at ten in the morning. They’d go for a long lunch with clients and go home at three. I thought one day that might be my life. Of course, it never has been my life. The City has changed completely.
Being a corporate lawyer, you become a deal junkie. I used to love doing the deals, particularly hostile public takeovers. That was fun, exciting, very fast moving. It was a wrench to give that up for management. I don’t think anyone joins a law firm and thinks: ‘One day I’m going to be a manager.’
Management is totally different. You need to be very organised. There’s a huge amount of stuff being pushed towards your desk all the time. Unless you’re organised, you get swamped.
I had some great advice when I took up management. Firstly: write down five or six objectives in your term and be absolutely clear what it is you want to achieve. Almost everything you do should be designed to achieve the list. If you’re doing things that aren’t on your list, you’re probably not using your time wisely. The second piece of advice was that there’s no such thing as spontaneity in business. When you see someone walk into a room, lean against a desk and start talking for half an hour, they’ve rehearsed that over and over again. Don’t think they just go in and speak off the cuff – they don’t. All these great business leaders rehearse and rehearse and rehearse… I’m pretty sure I rehearse more than anyone.
The last five years have been tough since Lehmans went under, but we’ve achieved a lot. We made a huge effort to grow the firm in growth markets and diversify away from Western economies. We’ve also diversified the client base. We are now really successful in sectors we were hardly recognised as being in five or six years ago.
Following the financial crisis, there was huge contraction in demand, so we had to reduce the scale of the firm. We quickly realised that included reducing the partnership by about 15%. There’s two ways to do that. You can make the decisions in the centre and just say to people: ‘We want you to go and if you don’t agree, take us on, but we’ll take it to a vote and being the management we’ll win.’ Or you decide to do it democratically. I decided I wanted the partnership to support me.
It was clear in 2008/09 that we had come to over-rely on financial institutions. We had a great trade mark among them. They’re great clients, but there comes a point where you’ve got to take action to make sure you’re not just becoming a financial institution law firm.
Things I wished we’d achieved? I think we were the first firm that said openly that we wanted 30% of the partnership to be female. You can’t get away from the fact that it takes time, but I would have liked to have seen more progress, to be frank. I tell the partnership that all the time.
What makes a good managing partner? One of the most important things that sounds very simple is having the ability to go from A to Z without deviating. When I look at people who aren’t very good managers, they have a course of action, and when they get to F or G, they get a bit fed up and start doing something different. That confuses everybody. They flicker around like butterflies – that’s hopeless in management. Persevering is very important.
I’ve [been leading CC] long enough. It’s time for someone else. I am genuinely proud of the firm and the partnership has achieved tremendous things. I shall miss my partners, the staff, the buzz of the place, lots of the clients – not all of the clients… but some. I won’t miss feeling the weight of responsibility of the firm. It’s always on my mind. You do feel responsible – you’ve got a staff of 6,000 and they’ve all got families.
It’s not terribly fashionable to say this, but I really admire Tony Blair. I spent an afternoon at a small meeting – about 14 or 15 of us in the cabinet – and I was really impressed. The guy had natural charisma and natural abilities. Lots of business leaders impress me… ranging from a good friend of mine, Louis Camilleri, who is now the chairman of Philip Morris International. I really admire Bob Diamond… again it’s not fashionable, but he did an outstanding job for Barclays. Hopefully that won’t be forgotten.
It’s a relief [to think about life outside CC]. I only came for two years to do articles and then I was going to go back to be a lecturer at university. I don’t know where those years have gone. I’m looking forward to a different life. My wife can’t wait. [laughs]
Globalisation is unstoppable, whether you like it or not. For most clients, they want to reduce the number of legal providers the same way they reduce the number of providers in other spheres. You’ll see the emergence of elite global firms. CC has to keep to its strategy to ensure it’s ultimately the leader of the elite. Similarly, the structure of single profit pools is very strong because it aligns behaviour, but again, can a single profit pool survive not just 6,000 people, but 15,000 people? I’ve no doubt firms will get significantly bigger in the next 15 years.
Career wisdom? Unfortunately, the haggard expression that it’s all about hard work is true – you don’t see anyone achieve real success without an enormous amount of hard work. That’s my wisdom… if that is wisdom.
David Childs is the outgoing managing partner of Clifford Chance.