I don’t believe people that do well have an unerring right to succeed and it’s entirely down to their own abilities. Loads of incredibly able people don’t hit the right spot. I was very lucky that I started working as a lawyer doing something that I turned out to be good at. I could easily have done something else. I applied because I didn’t know what else to do.
Law attracts people who are not just in it for money, but want that sense of professionalism and intellectual curiosity, and also people who want to work with other people. I became more entrepreneurial as I became older, but whether I am entrepreneurial, I’m not sure. I’m a team person, not a classic entrepreneur.
I do quite a lot of semi-academic work now. I love teaching and writing and lecturing. I get a kick out of thinking about what law should be and the challenges of law, but then applying the practicality of what law is and how you help clients with that. I love complexity combined with practicality.
One of the most fulfilling parts of my career is working with government bodies. I’m particularly interested in financial regulation. Politicians always want to change the law. Most of the laws they change are not really the issue, mostly the issue is ineffective application of existing law.
I haven’t really had a boring professional period. Recently I was advising Anthony Salz, former senior partner of Freshfields, on the review of culture and governance at Barclays. Anthony produced a fantastic report.
I was introduced to [the writer and economist] John Kay by a government department because they knew I had been talking to them about some of the themes they were asking John about [for a 2012 report on the UK equity markets]. That was a good example of looking at public policy, looking at the structure of regulation and how you make it work, what its goals should be. One of John’s conclusions was that the cost of financial services in this country is too high, partly driven by regulation that is costing the public money. Regulators had focused on stopping problems, not at the overall structure of regulation.
When I qualified in 1989 we were given incredible responsibility. I remember going to my first board meeting about hostile takeovers for a major company when I was six weeks-qualified! We worked very hard. It gives you an accelerated learning curve if you’ve done 100 deals in four years. That’s not possible anymore. It was fun and satisfying.
You self-select clients to a certain extent. If you click with someone, you’re passionate about service delivery to them. I’ve got an incredibly interesting, nice group of clients. We get treated well by clients compared to people in other types of roles and businesses. Helping people, using experience and spotting thoughts that are useful – most people find that fulfilling. Most people want to feel valued.
I was head of corporate, but I cheated. My friend Patrick Mitchell agreed to be managing partner of corporate. My deal was that I only spent a maximum of 30% of my time on management. I don’t really believe in the term management. People in law firms don’t always understand what they want from management. It’s about leadership, strategy and implementation. I quite enjoyed bits of all of these, but I don’t think my time was best spent on implementation and it would drive my colleagues crazy. Clients are an easier constituency to look after.
I was an early enthusiast for the [Freehills] merger. Two things I was looking for: shared ambitions and shared culture and quality. They did have that. A lot people, including my colleagues, look at the differences and focus on them – to me the similarities are powerful. I do love the culture the Australians have – extrovert and overtly driven. They are also very collaborative and positive. But the quality was the key – if the quality wasn’t so high, we wouldn’t have merged.
The person who had the biggest influence in my career was [former Herbert Smith senior partner] Edward Walker-Arnott. He is a great lawyer, but also intensely commercial. He taught me you could get your head around any issue.
Everybody thinks people that work harder than them have got work/life balance wrong. I’ve never missed any of my children’s school plays. It’s about protecting certain things and where you draw those lines. I don’t work as hard now as I did when I was 30. I worked so hard in my early 30s, I was considering giving it up. Spent every weekend working and stayed late every night.
At the high end of the profession we have a responsibility not just to be a business. We have duties to the court, duties of integrity. Lawyers do fulfil a social role to make sure people comply with the law. Lawyers who continue to care about law should continue to practise it.
The idea that Western democracies have a monopoly on good law is delusional. One’s own morality should come into play, but there is lots of stupid law and we should engage. Lawyers who only think about what the law says, not what its objectives are, are missing something.
People being rewarded by their own performance is a disaster. It’s fine for a barrister, but a disaster for a law firm. I wouldn’t be interested in an organisation where the primary driver is self-performance and not teamwork.
Our lifeblood is our young lawyers. You have to look at what you value and it’s not just what you can measure. How law firms are is going to change with their size, but they can have very strong values while being very high-performance.
I’m certain I will be doing this job in ten years. I don’t have any great unfulfilled goals.
Career wisdom? Don’t let things just happen, take control. Try to find goals for things you want to do. Whether it’s work/life balance, family, work – don’t just let stuff happen to you.
James Palmer is a corporate partner at Herbert Smith Freehills