I didn’t plan a career in law. At school I did those career survey things twice and on both occasions it said I should become a fashion designer.
I have been a bar manager in a country house hotel and then a golf club bar. Great fun. Taught me the concept of keeping people in the line happy. I always say to junior lawyers: ‘Make sure you respond quickly to clients.’ It doesn’t mean you produce all the work in half an hour, as long as they know someone is looking after them.
I used to make clothes for my little sisters when I was a teenager. Learned how to use a sewing machine. I have a great passion for design and horticulture. I used to be a landscape gardener. Sewing machines, making clothes, flowers, gardening – sort of a sensitive young man. A renaissance man. Don’t put that in [laughs]!
All the milk rounds were all too early in the morning. I whittled down my career options through a law fair, which took place in the afternoon.
I originally thought about law by watching Rumpole of the Bailey. I referred to Rumpole during a talk at St Paul’s Girls’ School a few years ago and had this blank look from the audience.
Advocacy appealed because, as a Welshman, I talk far too much. I did a couple of mini pupillages, but being a solicitor seemed more modern and dynamic.
It distresses me that over 50% of partners at City law firms are still from privately-educated backgrounds and only 20% of equity partners are women. Law has a long way to go, probably the furthest to go of all of the professions.
There are two things I enjoy the most about the job. One is chasing down work, the big client and deal wins, which are still immensely exciting. The other one is seeing enthusiastic young lawyers’ careers develop and hopefully being a positive part of that.
‘We were paraded around the paddock with numbers. John McCririck picked out the winner and it was me. I did like the attention.’
I enjoy the culture of a law firm: being in the trenches together, collegiality in the face of stressful circumstances, pulling together and getting deals done, rewarding people for it.
Years ago I took a group of clients to the Hennessy Gold Cup. There was a best-dressed gentleman competition. Before the first race, I was singled out as someone who appeared quite well dressed. Later for the final, we were paraded around the paddock with numbers one to ten around our necks as if horses. John McCririck, the great racing commentator, picked out the winner live on Channel 4 and it was me.
The clients took photographs of me and sent them to the office. I was ridiculed for a long time. I got a Savile Row suit and a weekend away for two in a five-star hotel. Worth the humiliation, but I have to admit I did like the attention.
I surprised myself by becoming a banking lawyer having decided at a young age that I was virtually numbers illiterate. I was attracted to the diversity of the transactions. An excellent banking lawyer has a wealth of experience.
There’s only one occasion where I did a double all-nighter and there is a photograph in the office of me dribbling on my desk, having pretended I was awake for about three days in a row. I was caught out and someone did see me catching a nap at my desk at six o’clock in the morning.
A closing process that takes more than 24 hours is a failure. It suggests something has gone wrong or people haven’t been organised properly.
With hindsight, I would have enjoyed being a restructuring lawyer. It’s one of the most exciting areas of law. Requires street fighting. Or private equity. I would have had to grow a more forceful personality.
Boring lawyers annoy me. City law puts a lot of pressure on people, but certain character traits I really dislike. Point-scoring, pompous lawyers. I also don’t like lawyers who talk about ‘my clients’. We are not sole practitioners. I find it utterly bizarre there are still people who believe they will do better by being territorial and protective of clients.
The telephone is a far better invention than email. If the phone had been invented in the 1970s and email had been invented in the 1890s we’d all be saying: ‘What a brilliant invention. You can cut through all the nonsense and deal with everything far more efficiently.’
I spend a lot of time socialising with clients and potential clients, and very much enjoy it. It is a matter of being friendly and likeable. I’ve taken clients to the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Royal Ascot. Back in the glory days, pre-market crisis, I helicoptered a group of clients to lunch at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire. Great fun but not easy to replicate these days.
I have an absolute obsession with Winston Churchill. I was born just outside of Oxford and my earliest memory is going to Blenheim Palace. I was always impressed by Churchill because he appeared to do virtually no work at school and by fluke managed to get into Sandhurst and save our country from the evil threat of Nazism. I admire people like him who are mavericks and have the courage of their convictions and do the right thing.
Mentors? Graham Wedlake was my head of department when I qualified and one of the most charming and knowledgeable lawyers I’ve ever come across. He gave me enormous opportunity at a very early stage. Graham taught me how to be a great lawyer and Maurice Allen taught me how to win clients. The first important lesson as a partner was to win good quality clients and the second, even more importantly, is to get the clients to love your colleagues as much as they love you.
Maurice also taught me there’s no such thing as a difficult client. People who were supposedly notoriously difficult in-house lawyers became good long-term clients once you’d figured out the best way of gaining their trust.
I spend a lot of time with my family, going to my wife’s events – she runs her own business. I’m very proud of that. I thoroughly enjoy life. I love the countryside. Don’t say shooting. That’s quite divisive, isn’t it?
‘I’m in this ghastly situation where I started watching Game of Thrones two weeks ago. It’s absolutely inane, but I’ve become addicted.’
I’ve got a passion for Italy. A proportion of my practice is focused there, I used to live there and have an Italian wife. I have a house in Italy. I still have a great passion for gardening and history. I’m a collector of encyclopaedias of London history. I bore taxi drivers with my knowledge of historical parts of London. ‘Do you know, Nelson’s nose is up there?’
The importance of sport and the performing arts is in creating opportunities for young people. As graduate recruitment partner I see people come into our firm from less privileged backgrounds. The thing that makes an enormous difference is confidence. Those of us who are privileged have gone to amazing schools and universities, and had stable family backgrounds from which we gain confidence. People don’t necessarily have that confidence, but it can be created through sports or being on the stage.
I’m a big supporter of Unicorn Children’s Theatre. The headmaster of Morpeth School in Bethnal Green said to me the time the children spent on stage together in their drama department was one of the rare occasions when children from different cultural backgrounds would mix together. There is an incredibly positive social benefit.
I’m in this ghastly situation where I started watching Game of Thrones two and a half weeks ago and I’ve got through almost six series. I did an entire series last weekend. And I’ve come to the conclusion it’s absolutely inane. Terrible storylines, shabby acting, quite slow. You can go out, make a cup of tea or have a fag and you’ll miss nothing. But I have to watch it because I’ve become addicted.
I love clothes. I buy too many suits. I’m old-fashioned, Savile Row. I do love my Hermès and Ferragamo ties though.
I said in an interview that The Boundary was one of my favourite restaurants for the rum baba. I got a hand-written letter from Terence Conran thanking me. He said in the letter, ‘I’m very disappointed to inform you we recently took the rum baba off the menu, however, if you give us a day’s notice, we will make it for you.’ I did that a couple of times, just to annoy the kitchen.
Apocalypse Now is my favourite film. My favourite book ever would be The L-Shaped Room, or The Handmaid’s Tale for the commentary on the dangers of organised societies. I spend a lot of time at the opera. My favourite is Lohengrin.
I would like to have been the first ever celebrity gardener: a better-dressed, Welsh, Alan Titchmarsh.
Give it your best shot possible in the first couple of years post-qualification. Fight for every single opportunity. If it just doesn’t feel right after that couple of years, get out of the profession then. I’ve seen far too many lawyers who have left it too late. If it hasn’t worked out, its better to move on then, rather than trying to convince yourself it’s the career for you.
I’m worried about this interview. You’re going to write: ‘He likes Mayfair clubs, shooting small animals and bossing other people around.’
Maurice Allen said I’ve got more clubs than Tiger Woods. I’m a member of some old fashioned gentlemen’s clubs because I assume when I’m retired I won’t have anything to do so I’ll have very long lunches and read newspapers. But I have fallen out of love with them a bit because they are pompous.
The Arts Club is more fun. I’m a member of Daniel’s Club, which was an old coffee house just off the Strand for Welsh lawyers back in the early 18th century. I’m just about to become a member of an eighth club.
If you like cigars, you have to go to JJ Fox. It’s the only place I know in London where you can smoke. I don’t know how they get away with it. Some ancient decree. In St James’ though shalt smoke. Cigars. Maybe that’s the real reason I like Churchill.
Dominic Griffiths is co-head of banking and finance at Mayer Brown
nathalie.tidman@legalease.co.uk