My dad was born in Kashmir and was in the Pakistani Air Force, posted to Turkey. India and Pakistan were separating and he decided he wouldn’t go back. He moved to the UK and met my mum at night school. She worked in a biscuit factory when I was a kid and was all about, ‘You’re going to do better than this.’
I didn’t start working life as a lawyer. I’m Asian and started in retail – freshly-squeezed orange juice and health food products. My dad wasn’t impressed. He was first generation here and said: ‘This is a fantastic country with great opportunities, I did not come here for you to be another Asian shopkeeper.’
I kept my retail background a secret when I entered law because it was still a very closed shop. My first job was in the early 1980s at a High Street firm in Shepherd’s Bush. Most of my clients in those days were at Wormwood Scrubs, the local prison. My daily walk was to see who had come in overnight and if they needed representation.
I’ve changed practice areas but it was a great introduction because in a High Street firm you do everything that comes through the door. It could be a boundary dispute, someone buying or selling their house, someone making their will, or very sad things like battered wives.
I liked that real estate was a condensed process with a definite beginning, middle and end. Litigation I was doing at the time – working with a partner who did medical negligence – would go on for years.
I didn’t go to university. I was the equivalent of a paralegal now and worked during the day before going to night school. I was working for a guy called Jeremy Denning – he is related to Lord Denning – who told me that if I didn’t go to law school he’d sack me. It is what I needed because I lacked the belief that I could do it and was worried that as the mature student everybody would think I’m a weirdo.
Law was male and pale, you had to go to the right schools. I was an Asian minority from Hounslow who didn’t tick any of the boxes and certainly wasn’t well connected. But in 1995 I took a year out and went to law school. My dad funded it. I really enjoyed it because I’d not been a full-time student before.
I wouldn’t change any of it. Your experiences are what make you.
In 1996 I came out of law school and started looking for a job, and decided it was going to be real estate. Real estate’s collaborative, that’s why I love it. It’s a very social industry.
My first proper boss was a guy called Roy Cruse. He started putting the coal in the partners’ fireplace and worked his way up. A fantastic mentor. His view was that anything was possible if you work hard and apply yourself. He used to say: ‘You’ve got a chip on your shoulder, stop it. You’re as good a lawyer as everybody else.’ He got my head in the right place.
I went on my first site visit in Southampton. They take you into this cabin where they put on the high-vis and hard hat. But this was 1999 so they didn’t have a lot sized for a woman. They didn’t have a pair of welly boots that were small enough so they stuffed newspaper in the front.
My boss told me that if I didn’t go to law school he’d sack me. I was worried everybody would think I’m a weirdo.
I married a fellow partner. I did work with him [Gowling WLG real estate partner Jon Lloyd] for six years before we decided to date. He’s been a massive influence in terms of training and making me the lawyer that I am. He’s brilliant on deals and execution.
Being partner in the same firm as your husband has it challenges. I left Lawrence Graham for Addleshaw Goddard because I wanted to see if I could stand on my own feet.
I was very drawn to Addleshaws because it had just gone through its merger and everybody I spoke to talked about what an exciting firm it was. It took two years to leave my old firm, but I’ve been here 13 years.
When John Joyce became managing partner he asked me if I’d like to be head of real estate. My first reaction was: no.
I’ve got imposter syndrome. I was worried people would know that I didn’t know what I was doing. But there were lots of good people around me that encouraged me to do it.
Talk to people, listen to people. Lots of business leaders talk about how important people are, but you’ve got to live that. It’s easy as a partner to just engage with partners and that’s important but there are a whole host of people in our business that make it what it is.
When I took on the role in 2014 there were all sorts of challenges. We’d had Lehman Brothers in 2008, which inevitably had an impact on real estate. I saw that as an opportunity. We had a very particular client base and needed to balance our business.
It’s been a very interesting market. The amount of international capital coming into the UK has been extraordinary, particularly considering we made a decision to come out of Europe. It’s coming from Europe, Asia, the US. I’ve just come back from a week in the Middle East, they still love the UK and London. But we’ve got March looming…
If you speak to anybody in the real estate industry, it recognises it needs to be more diverse. They consider the legal profession as being one of the forerunners in terms of there being more women and ethnic minorities. I see lots of very positive things happening in the industry.
I’m most passionate about social mobility. We miss out on so many talented people just because you go through one route of recruiting. Our firm’s into its seventh year of its apprenticeship scheme, it’s brought some amazing people into our business and it’s one of the things I’m most proud of. I used to do the grad recruitment and sit there thinking: ‘I wouldn’t have even made it through the front door.’ How can that be right?! Everybody needs a break.
My kids would say I work way too much, but equally my 16-year-old daughter tells me that I’m ‘peng’. Peng means that something’s good. I’m ‘slaying it’, apparently. I think I’ve got a good work-life balance, I do a lot of things to switch off.
I remember being 16 – I was desperate to have the satin trousers and the top Olivia Newton-John wore in Grease, because I was going to a school disco. I thought my mum was the coolest mum ever because she went out and she found them. I rocked it when I went to that disco. That’s peng.
My kids would say I work way too much, but equally my 16-year-old daughter tells me that I’m ‘peng’. Peng means good. I’m ‘slaying it’, apparently.
Penélope Cruz would play me in a movie because I’m completely fixated by Javier Bardem. There’s no resemblance and I don’t speak a word of Spanish, but my husband thinks Penélope Cruz is hot, so it’s a match made in heaven.
My family is fixated on food. My dog is a beagle named Coco, I love her. She has a supermodel face but has let the supermodel body go a bit. My family spends its whole life cooking and thinking about food. Some of my best dishes are the ones I’ve just made up. Like sausage pasta: you’ve got to get the right Italian sausages, take the skins off, break them up and cook with tomatoes, basil and garlic. The slower you cook it, the better it tastes.
My dog and I have an interesting relationship, because I can’t sing. My sister is a trained opera singer, so she has the most amazing voice, but I’m tone deaf. I love a bit of Whitney and if I do that hairbrush moment, my dog pees because it’s that bad. There’s the headline, ‘When I sing, my dog pees.’
I love Italy. I travel to a lot of places but London is just such a diverse, amazing city. It’s got everything: architecture, history, you can eat food from anywhere in the world, there are people from all walks of life. It’s a beautiful melting pot. I love Parliament Hill in London, the views are extraordinary.
If I was to talk about retirement now my husband would sit there thinking, ‘She’s going to be there to annoy me’ and my kids will be thinking, ‘God, OCD mummy at home!’ The dog would be pleased, she’ll get even fatter.
Leona Ahmed is head of the real estate sector at Addleshaw Goddard
hamish.mcnicol@legalease.co.uk