My mother is Irish and my father English. They were first-generation immigrants. I was born a year after my mother’s arrival in Australia.
Perth was a fantastic place to grow up. We were close to the ocean. A very outdoors environment – you’d cycle to school. Fantastic as a child.
Doing my degree, I wasn’t taken by law. When I started practising, I became interested. I quickly realised the only thing I would be any good at would be litigating – didn’t get the same buzz out of transactional work.
Perth was a small place for the legal community. Only one law school at the time. I started in a very small boutique. It soon got into a three-way merger with Gadens. I started off in what I thought would be the right environment for me – a small firm – but ended up in a much bigger one, which I had no control over.
I worked for a guy called Rick Cullen, who had a really interesting practice: his family has a large winery in Western Australia and he would get me involved in projects that involved his family affairs. He sent me to negotiate tender documents for the audit of the Mindibungu Aboriginal Corporation. I was flown to the north of Western Australia in a single-prop plane to meet the communities and try to put together a package of documents so the respective accountancy practices could tender for their work. An interesting experience for a young lawyer to navigate through all that negotiation.
I moved to Sydney and worked at Phillips Fox [now part of DLA Piper]. Moving to the eastern seaboard for a passionate Western Australian was like an Italian moving from Sicily to Milan. It took a year to get used to a different style of working: more aggressive, working extraordinarily long hours. People talk about London being high pressure, but Sydney is incredibly high pressure. Going there for three years before London was important for me.
I am nervous to meet the alleged architect of a large fraud in his sick bed. The doctor emerges to suggest we may wish to take the shoe covers off our heads.
That time a lot of London firms were coming to Sydney. There had been a longstanding practice of recruitment of transactional lawyers, but a couple had started to look for litigators. I did a series of video interviews with Baker McKenzie. They made an offer.
I had been married a few years, but we didn’t have children at the time. Like a lot of Australians I thought it would be nice to see London and work in England for two or three years, and make an assessment. Here I am 18 years later.
Australians are known for plain speaking and that’s good. There was a straightforward interaction between you and your partner: he would just tell you what to do and you would just do it as quickly as you could. When I first came to London it took me a while to understand – and I don’t think I have ever fully understood – a communication style which is not as direct.
I landed in London and pretty much immediately [Bakers partner] Andrew Keltie got me involved in a case with Hewlett-Packard, which ultimately got into the Court of Appeal. I’ll always be very grateful for that.
John Leadley was also very good in terms of finding opportunities to get involved in interesting cases. I acted for one of the defendants in the Equitable Life case – an incredible introduction to the High Court and to almost any procedural device you could expect in English law litigation.
I was incredibly fortunate because there was such a great group of people in that litigation team at Bakers. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. I am still friends with a lot of people I met there.
Richard Marsh was the head of litigation here at Taylor Wessing and said there was a great opportunity to expand the litigation practice. In 2006, I was coming into a platform that gave me the opportunity to create a team and build. Richard has always been someone I could seek counsel from.
One of the most interesting cases I was involved in was Madoff, working with the trustee of the Madoff estate – a lot of interesting personalities involved. We worked with a fantastic team at BakerHostetler in the US. We had evidence given by one of the brothers from the prison. The trial lawyers in the US are very interesting. Dave Sheehan, the main lead advocate for the Madoff estate, was a very seasoned trial lawyer. You learn a lot from the way he would identify issues and drive them forward. You see how the US approach could be so effective and how those trial lawyers had the ability to distil huge quantities of data in an enormous case.
Two or three years ago, I travelled to an Asian city with an associate learning the ropes. We are taken to interview an incarcerated witness who has been taken ill in a hospital. I am nervous to meet the alleged architect of a large fraud in his sick bed. A doctor emerges and points to a box of plastic covers. We place these on our heads and wait. The doctor re-emerges only to laugh and suggest we may wish to take the shoe covers off our heads.
When I started, seeing a barrister was like visiting an oracle: you would simply listen to the QC, take note of what they said and walk away. It has now changed enormously. We look for counsel that have the skill to work just as a member of our team.
Sometimes you don’t need to interrogate opportunities, you just have to take them.
Complex problems are better resolved by collective thought and there is always going to be the cleverest person in the room: you’d hope it is the QC and it usually is. You have to be realistic about that. Just occasionally you would add something in some aspects of the law or the commercial objectives of the clients.
The least enjoyable aspect of the profession is lawyers taking points without any constructive outcome in mind. You lose the appetite for that type after a while.
I have struggled with work-life balance. Having three children lessens that imbalance. I spend a lot of spare time with my children’s sport and academic endeavours – less on the academic endeavours than the sport bit.
I had had the advantage of being on the board and felt Taylor Wessing was going in the right direction. There was an opportunity to put together a great team [as managing partner]. It was a fantastic opportunity on a personal level.
I really enjoy my job as managing partner. This is the sort of organisation that proceeds by consensus osmosis: people collectively form a view and then proceed. One of my better strengths is I can navigate through difference of opinion and bring people into the same line.
Empathy has become very important for people who run an organisation. You need to understand the motivations of people.
What’s interesting about Taylor Wessing is that we have hugely engaging clients in technology, pharmaceutical, financial services and real estate, but we also have the private wealth aspect. I would do a big case like Madoff or another huge project for a fund, but then I would always have on my desk some case for an ultra-high-net-worth [individual], which is financially and emotionally very important to them. The dynamic is different; their investment in the case is different. There are firms which have technology and firms which have private wealth, but it’s unusual to have both in one organisation.
Often the rainmakers have very diverse, colourful interests – art, cinema, cycling – which inform their conversation and thinking so that they are creative. Not random creativity, but applied creativity. Creativity is absolutely central at Taylor Wessing, because we work for a lot of the creative industries. The monetisation of creativity is a big point for us.
Sometimes you don’t need to interrogate opportunities, you just have to take them. Moving to Sydney, moving to London, running for managing partner at Taylor Wessing… if I had done an analysis of each of those moves, I may not have made them. If it feels like the right decision, yes, you should interrogate it, but it’s remarkable how often that instinct is correct.
marco.cillario@legalease.co.uk
Shane Gleghorn is UK managing partner of Taylor Wessing