The Godfather is a great film. Tom Hagen was a bit of an inspiration. There’s that scene where he turns up at the hospital where the Godfather is staying with all these private detectives, and he deals with the police. Then there’s another part where he says: ‘I have a special practice. I handle one client. Now you have my number. I’ll wait for your call.’ That kind of power, that kind of control was inspiring.
I quit studying law after a year. I switched to history and politics because there were a lot of hours in the classroom doing law. After university, I travelled and taught English abroad. My girlfriend at the time wanted to come back to the UK as she had a job lined up as an accountant, so I came back with her. I would have been happy staying a teacher. One of the things I applied for was law school and I ended up doing the conversion course. The rest is history.
I loved teaching. If I hadn’t done law, teaching or lecturing would have been good. The other job that did intrigue me was being a securities trader. When I first came to London, I had a friend who was the head of a trading desk. I got on really well with him and he offered me a job, but I was midway through doing my law exams. I had that lawyer mentality. I had already banked my legal studies and it was a big risk. I was clearly going to be a good lawyer because I was good at mitigating risk even then. I decided against it, but it was an interesting offer. Although, I don’t know if my maths would have been good enough!
A few people have been inspirational to me. Steven Davis, who is now at Proskauer, was someone I worked for from qualification to partner and beyond. He’s not only a great technical lawyer but also a great commercial lawyer. There’s also Matthew Hudson, who was head of corporate at SJ Berwin when I qualified. I also admire Martin Bowen because of his integrity and Jonathan Blake for his knowledge on how to build a successful business. He was an early thought leader in private equity and founded the SJ Berwin private equity practice, which at the time was the most successful in the City. I’m also lucky to have worked closely with Michael Halford, one of the most talented private equity lawyers in London, for most of my career. More recently, there’s a partner called John LeClaire at Goodwin in the US, who is just an incredible lawyer and person. It is impossible to not be inspired by him.
I admire Winston Churchill for his tireless energy and never giving up before finally achieving his dream job at 66 years old! His life was like a Boy’s Own story.
Mentors are essential. On the way to developing the finished product, you need to see what it takes. You take a bit from different people but inevitably you’re your own individual. Each person is their own individual and they won’t be comfortable with being someone else. You take all those bits that are either necessary because that’s what an organisation or the wider profession demands, you then you mix it with you, and you have a finished product.
When I was a trainee, we had a high-net-worth client who’d been for lunch at Harvey Nicks. In the restaurant he spotted the ‘love of his life’ across the room, but he hadn’t the courage to speak to her. I was training in the litigation team, and he told us to get a private investigator to track her down. We hired a private investigator and he tried to find out who this woman was by visiting the restaurant a few times. He had a description of this woman in his pocket. Unfortunately, we didn’t find the woman, but it was great fun reading the reports.
I was referred a mandate to buy Michael Jackson’s ranch. When Michael Jackson died his Neverland ranch was up for sale, funfair and all. My client was the son of a wealthy family, and he was trying to buy it, but he didn’t have any money because his money was in a trust with very aggressive trustees. The trustees said he could only have money for a house and school fees, so he was looking for finance. We had a lot of fun doing preliminary diligence on the asset, what was included, what wasn’t, bits of the funfair and so on. It went down the road a bit, but he didn’t quite have the cash, so he didn’t buy it. It was an interesting deal though, potentially making a theme park out of Michael Jackson’s ranch.
There are inevitable changes. Technology is changing at a super-fast pace; AI is coming in and Covid has led to some changes in workplace practices. But at the end of the day, the fundamentals of the legal profession will remain the same. Clients still value good quality, no-nonsense commercial legal advice. They want their lawyers to be available and they want value for money. All those things will carry on. If I was advising someone coming into the profession now, that’s what I would say to focus on. Although you do need to be aware of technological changes and take advantage of them.
My biggest achievement is Goodwin. I came here in 2015 to launch its private equity practice. I was the first partner, and I hired a bunch of lawyers in London, a team in France, built a Luxembourg office and seeded Germany. Growing that business from 0 to 180 lawyers in nine years has been an incredible experience. Partnering up with Goodwin allowed that to happen because it’s a great firm. It was a meeting of minds.
Would I have done anything differently? No.I might have said that I wish I had moved over to Goodwin earlier, but then SJ Berwin was a great experience for me. I worked with great people in what was a leading private equity practice. It was before the recent wave of American firms coming to London and the firm made me head of corporate at a relatively young age, so I loved that. I’ve been very lucky.
I like to think I have Jürgen Klopp’s management style. I’m charismatic but can be tough when necessary, and I’m understanding and loyal. Some of my team might say I am more of the Brian Clough school of management! When he was once asked what would happen if he had a disagreement with one of his players he said: ‘We talk about it for 20 minutes and decide I was right.’
You need to have extreme focus because everything is competitive. To be a top sportsperson or a top businessperson, you have to retain that focus to achieve your goals, and then implement them. That focus, that drive and desire, is really important.
I love cycling and reading. Particularly, history books, anything on military history or social political history in the 20th century. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some historians and they’re like rock stars to me. Dominic Sambrook, Andrew Roberts. Charles Moore was Margaret Thatcher’s biographer, and I was lucky enough to have dinner with him. I do read fiction as well, but I tend to find non-fiction more relaxing, having a stressful job.
One of my favourite books is Runyon on Broadway by Damon Runyon, who also wrote Guys and Dolls. It’s set in the 1950s, and it’s a collection of short stories about this particular character and how he interacts with the people on Broadway during the prohibition. It’s very, very funny.
I also love I, Claudius by Robert Graves. It’s so gossipy. It’s an interesting look at Roman life and it’s full of intrigue and very accessible. Graves was a classicist. His dad was an Irish poet, and his mum was a minor German aristocrat. Graves is somewhere in the middle of that. He’s a poet but also a serious academic. He takes all of that and puts it into these wonderful books. I love his book Count Belisarius, which is set in AD 500 Byzantium. The hero is a brilliant young man, who’s a general that marries a prostitute, as does the emperor. The two wives are friends, so he gets an inner look at the emperor, but the emperor is jealous of him because he’s so successful and wins every battle. It’s a wonderful book. They’re both great, but they’ve been completely forgotten about.
Graves retired to a tiny village in Spain, and I’ve ended up with a place almost next door to his cottage. When I read the book as a teenager, he described the location and I thought, ‘how beautiful, how romantic’. But the main reason for buying the cottage was the cycling.
It’s a bit unnerving for someone that’s on the right side of the law, but I do like crime movies. Martin Scorsese: Goodfellas, Casino, and my favourite, The Wolf of Wall Street. I love the drama, the comedy, and the characters. Also, anything with Denzel Washington, where he plays that hero type fighting against the odds. In terms of TV, I’m mad on Narcos. I’ve watched it about five times. I also love The Sopranos. They are both like fine wine.
I’m a big music fan. I love ’70s soul and funk the most but I’m a bit of a musical chameleon. I’ve followed the trends. I went from Paul Weller, to The Smiths, to Oasis and Blur, then into clubbing. So, I’ve done the whole movement of 20 years of different music.
My guilty pleasure is ABBA Voyage. It’s not very cool to like ABBA. Although, when I was going clubbing 20 years’ ago, no-one was into ’70s disco. I’ve got a friend who’s a DJ, who used to make fun of me for liking disco, and now he’s playing Brixton Disco week with a set of house music. I also like a bit of Elvis for karaoke purposes. If I’m really pushed and someone’s got both my arms twisted behind my back, I will do In the Ghetto.
Richard Lever is a partner in the private equity group of Goodwin.
Holly.McKechnie@legalease.co.uk
Portrait: Juan Trujillo