Throughout school, science seemed to be the direction I was heading in. I did the undergraduate piece and went on to the doctorate. I loved both actually, particularly the doctorate. We were doing some really cutting-edge physics, like trying to detect a new particle for the first time, that sort of thing.
There were elements of being a physicist and doing experiments that were really exciting. When you felt you’re on the verge of discovering something really new, it’s hard to describe the high that comes with that. It’s also hard to describe the low when the experiment fails and the result slips through your fingers.
After about three years I could see that it was falling into a pattern, which I still enjoyed, but I also felt that I had probably got enough out of it; that I should go off and try other things.
I liked the idea of law from the little I knew of it at the time. What appealed to me was that there’s a lot more interaction with people, you get to work in teams more. Perhaps surprisingly, there’s also a lot more nuance and complexity about it than science, more grey areas, which I felt would be interesting. As well as law paying more, quite frankly.
I responded to an advert. All it said was: ‘Have you ever thought of becoming a lawyer?’ and then the phone number. It was like something from The Matrix.
When I first started at Bristows there were lots of lawyers who all responded to the same recruitment advert. It was in the back of New Scientist, in the small ads. All it said was: ‘Have you ever thought of becoming a lawyer?’ and then the phone number. No mention of Bristows anywhere. It was like something from The Matrix. You phoned that number, not knowing what was happening, and you got put through to Bristows.
I arrived in the mid-90s with a physics PhD thinking I might be a bit special. Then I got here and there were lots of people with science qualifications, including PhDs!
For the first couple of years I was a patent litigator. In 1997/98 the world wide web had just started and was really taking off. I really wanted to get involved in that. I ended up going in-house at IBM. Within a month or two I was their global data protection lawyer, and that’s where my love of data protection really started to develop.
People always talk about private practice and in-house as if they’re very different things. And in some ways, they are. Obviously, when I was at IBM I considered myself to be an in-house lawyer. But oddly, when I came back to Bristows, for a long while I still considered myself to be more of an in-house lawyer, mainly because I like to give practical advice, but also because in some ways the Bristows proposition is quite different to that of many other law firms, particularly culturally.
After seven years at IBM I became aware of the opportunity to come back to Bristows as a partner and head of IT and technology. It was daunting at the time. The thing about going from in-house to private practice is, you may get to take your client with you, but at IBM that’s never the case. I arrived with no clients at all, just lots of enthusiasm.
I tell myself, and it may not be true, that although back in the day, data protection wasn’t cool, now it’s really cool. Describing yourself as a data protection lawyer used to be socially unacceptable! But now, all businesses are trying to re-engineer themselves and transform based on data, and people are more concerned and interested in what happens to their data.
When I returned to the firm in 2003, we didn’t have machine learning and AI, we didn’t have social media, or adtech or big data. As a technology lawyer, you’re just constantly having to get to grips with new technology. And just when you think you understand it, it changes or something new comes along, which keeps it interesting. On the other hand, a lot of the laws that we’re applying have been around for ages. We’re continually really taking old laws that we know and think we understand and trying to bend them or stretch them in new situations.
The thing I did my PhD in is ancient history now. It’s really behind the curve. Also the technology that I’m looking at these days has nothing to do with my PhD. However, it is to do with data and software and databases. I don’t pretend to understand all that. But if somebody on the client side can take the trouble to explain it to me, I usually get it pretty quickly. The techy background has become more of a skill rather than knowledge.
I try to be pragmatic. It’s about figuring out what the client wants, getting there as quickly as we can and just being sensible. If they have a new product, they just want to bring it to market and they want it to comply with the law. We will do our best to advise them on how they can comply, rather than giving them a load of reasons or a long memo telling them it’s the end of the world if they don’t do what we’re proposing, because it never is. All the legal stuff – the rigour that goes with it – it’s in there, but it’s behind the scenes. It informs what we tell the client rather than us just regurgitating the law.
We have a lot of tech sector clients. They don’t want a memo. Quite often, they don’t even want a long email, they just want us to give them ‘the top-level domain’, as they would say. We have to be nimble and work that way. We’re quite often all in the same document at the same time on Google Docs, us and the client, hammering away. It’s very, very collaborative.
This is not a firm where you get a file, give it to an associate and never look at it until you’re right at the end or sending the bill out. We’re much more involved than that as partners and like to roll your sleeves up. I hope people who work with me would say: ‘He knows what he’s talking about and is a nice guy.’
A couple of years ago the Information Commissioner announced that it was going to fine British Airways for a security breach. The fine was going to be £183m, which was about 200 times bigger than any other fine ever in the UK. My crew got involved and we got the fine reduced by 90%, which was a huge result for the company. I was really pleased about that piece of work. It’s certainly up there as a highlight.
Covid was really difficult. Looking after a team isn’t just about doing appraisals and stuff like that, it’s about being there for them, having an open door and just treating everyone as people, caring and understanding that people have things going on in their lives. Covid deprived us of some of the natural means of keeping an eye on people. I didn’t just bump into people anymore, I didn’t walk past their door, they didn’t walk past mine. When you’re trying to look after 20 or so people, even making ten-minute calls every day can be almost overwhelming. The thing that made it more acute was that you take away the means of communication but then also, you’re having to deal with more, because people are going through a hard time themselves.
There is new technology all the time. We’ve had quite a push on the metaverse. There is a still a question as to what that will look like. There are elements there which will be huge. I haven’t got any of those Ray-Ban glasses that can video people, but that augmented reality side of technology, I think that’s what we’ll see first, ahead of the fully immersive VR metaverse.
When you’re trying to look after 20 people, even making ten-minute calls every day can be almost overwhelming.
Until a few years ago I did a lot of kung fu. Although I may not look the part now! That was a really intense period of my life. For ten years I would be training about 12 hours a week. That was a big release in terms of stress.
I’ve got three daughters who keep me busy and try my patience! One is 23, one is 21 and one is 13. I was called out of retirement for the last one!
I do a lot of reading, and usually nothing to do with the law. I’m a big fan of Rachel Joyce. Big fan of Dan Rhodes. I only really read fiction, but very widely.
I’m a massive Belle and Sebastian fan. They are really my go-to. Their first album, Tigermilk, is my favourite.
Mark Watts is a technology partner and former joint managing partner at Bristows