University in my family was always something vocational. I hated science, so that was doctor and vet out the way. I did an accounting internship and found that just a bit dull. That really left law. That was basically it.
Studying law at university was awful. I enjoyed arts subjects at school, history and geography. I quickly realised that, when you’re studying at school, you’re rewarded for creativity. Studying law, you’re not. The first couple of years were just the building blocks of the legal system and it was very much – ‘this is what the rules are, you need to know them and apply them to the facts’. Overall, I’d give it a six out of ten, but the first two years were more like a three out of ten.
The only thing that piqued my curiosity about being a lawyer was that my dad had a signed confession from William Burke, who in the 19th century would kill people and then sell the bodies for medical and anatomical study. There was a whole thing about the confession being signed in front of judges and then he got trotted off to the gallows. I thought: ‘Wow, they actually let people commit themselves to death.’ It still hangs in my office at home. My wife just hates the thing because she thinks it’s so incredibly ghoulish.
I really wanted to be an advocate, which is the barrister equivalent in Scotland. My first seat was in corporate, and I’d heard all the stories about it being really hard work, but I really enjoyed it. At that point, I’d done five years studying law, and that was easily the most enjoyable six months. Then I did a litigation seat. Part of it was incredibly fun but other parts were just diabolical. The big disputes go on for years and years. I don’t have the patience for that at all!
The overseas seat from the Scottish firm was in London. It also coincided with the 2006 World Cup in Germany. I had half a mind that, if Scotland qualified, London would be closer to get to Germany. Then Scotland didn’t qualify, so it was irrelevant, but I was already coming to London.
I look back now and think about all the opportunities I could have explored. The whole ecosystem that existed around London was completely unknown to me.
I look back now and think about all the opportunities I could have explored. I didn’t know what a management consultant was, for example. When I was at university, people went on to become accountants or lawyers or doctors, or maybe they joined a graduate scheme. That seemed to be it. The whole ecosystem that existed around London was completely unknown to me.
I asked my kids what other jobs I could do if I weren’t a lawyer. They said: ‘Dad, you’d love to be a singer because you walk round the house singing along to the radio.’ I said: ‘Yeah, but there’s a bit of a talent shortfall!’
Getting a phone call to say that I’d been made partner was a pretty good moment. I called various members of my family to tell them, but unless you’ve worked in accountancy or law, you don’t really know what it is to be a partner. I told my dad and he said: ‘Alright, what does that mean?’ He’s a doctor and he asked if it was like becoming a consultant. I was like: ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ My sister is a lawyer and was like: ‘Holy shit! That’s amazing!’
I’m a naïve optimist. It all looks bleak and I’m always seeing the positive. Maybe it doesn’t come out that way. I’m always driving my wife absolutely mad! My sister always brings me down a bit. In a good way, not bursting
my bubble.
There’s three things you need to be a successful lawyer. You need to be true to yourself, because ultimately, you’ll get found out if you’re pretending to be something you’re not. You also need to be able to leave work at work, which I learnt from my mum. It’s the single greatest skill to learn. And then you’ve got to be lucky. There’s a big temptation for people to beat themselves up when luck doesn’t come their way. Take control of what you can and the rest of it will just fall where it falls.
Everyone thinks that to be an M&A lawyer you’ve got to be super aggressive. It’s not true at all. You can still be a fantastic negotiator by being a nice person. You don’t have to be a dick about the whole thing.
I ran the corporate team with another partner for the last five years. All the way through Covid. Our leadership strategy was: ‘If you’ve got an idea, come and tell us.’ We don’t have a monopoly on being right. To think that we, as partners, can plan something that only impacts associates without their contribution seems a bit bananas to me. This job is hard enough as it is. It sucks a lot out of you and takes a lot of your time. The last thing you should be doing, as somebody in leadership, is making anything more difficult.
Covid was the worst time, workwise. There was so much work, and it was all the bad bits of work with none of the good bits. Any job is going to be bad in that scenario. I’ve always been lucky that I can take work and just stick it in a box in my head and forget about it – go and do family stuff – then come back and unpack it. Not many people can do that. People have their own coping strategies, whether it’s going out and playing sport, going to the theatre or whatever. When you couldn’t do that, things just cascaded on top of people.
I’m not the smartest person in the building, not by a long way. I’m clearly not stupid, but I’m not the best lawyer in our team. I’m good at a lot of the other things that you need – client relations, thinking strategically, problem solving. I hope I’m approachable, and people feel that they can come to me and ask me anything, professionally or personally.
When I was doing my litigation seat in Edinburgh, we had limited rights of audience. When I got to court I realised I’d taken a gown from a partner who was enormous – about 6’5”. I put it on and it was down at my feet. The Sheriff was sniggering as I looked like I had got dressed in my dad’s clothes. When I got back to the office, someone had called ahead and everyone was laughing!
I turned down a secondment to our Orange County office. I regret missing out on that. It would have been amazing, living in Southern California for six months, but I turned it down because my wife was eight months pregnant with our first kid. I think both my mum and my mother-in-law would have killed me! But I regret not having time in Southern California to become a tanned Adonis as opposed to a pasty Scotsman!
I went back to Edinburgh to give a talk to students. When I was there, being a lawyer meant going to one of the big Scottish firms. You didn’t realise you could go to a Magic Circle firm, let alone a US firm. One of my personal ambitions is to make people more aware of that. Nobody needs to be deluged with Edinburgh and Glasgow graduates, but it shouldn’t be just the London universities, or Oxford and Cambridge that get the first shot at all the training contracts.
I read an incredible book recently – When Breath Becomes Air. It was about this guy who had a PhD in English literature and then decided that he really wanted to get to know humanity and become a doctor. He became a fantastic neurosurgeon and then he got diagnosed with terminal cancer. Hearing all the strategies he put in place around empathising with patients, and seeing it from the other side, it was an amazing book.
There’s three things you need to be a successful lawyer. You need to be true to yourself, you also need to be able to leave work at work, and then you’ve got to be lucky.
The best TV show recently has been Ted Lasso. It was so unexpectedly brilliant, as it had the capacity to just be so awful. I also love a David Attenborough, of which there are gazillions.
I got asked my favourite film when I started my training contract. I said Zoolander. I watched it again recently and it still cracks me up! It’s incredibly clever and there’s some amazing cameos.
There used to be a thing about people from Scotland saying they love Braveheart. I didn’t really like the film. It’s completely cheesy. I’ll probably be lynched next time I go home for saying that!
I like enjoying myself. I’m not some sort of hedonistic party person, but this job can take up so much of your time that you’ve got to make the most of your downtime. For me, that is spending time with my kids and my family. Other than that, it’s playing sport, running around chasing balls like a dog. I’m going to sound like an absolute idiot.
Robbie McLaren is global vice chair of Latham & Watkins’ healthcare and life sciences industry group and former co-chair of the London corporate department.
Portrait: Juan Trujillo