My mother was always convinced I was going to be a barrister. She used to watch TV dramas involving barristers. My father, a much more practical man, was desperately trying to convince me I should do a subject that was useful. So I went into the law and really enjoyed it.
I started at Edwards Geldard, one of the ‘big four’ in Cardiff. I joined the IP group because I loved the tech side. Contentious and non-contentious surrounding tech: being paid to do what I enjoyed seemed amazing.
As a two-year qualified I would come down to London and do litigation in which all the other parties were represented by partners from big firms. I would never have got that experience and responsibility in a London environment.
Head of litigation Adrian Heale taught me the benefit of keeping things simple when you are explaining them. He would say litigation comprises four boxes: statements of case, disclosure, witness statements and trial. I have always kept it in my head when I speak to clients and colleagues.
In the late nineties, the dot-com boom was picking up speed and there was a big move of people into London. A headhunter asked me to come down for an interview with a firm that was building up its IP, tech and commercial operations. I was four-years qualified. I liked the people I interviewed with. Why not give it a go?
The day I arrived at Ashurst I was introduced to an associate who handed me a job to settle a piece of litigation. It involved drafting the settlement agreement, a press release, a consent order and all the correspondence on it. In Cardiff, I would have had a couple of days at least just to think about it. I had to do it the same day. The quality of the work and the clients weren’t that different, but there was a palpable shift in speed – less easy to go play badminton at 6pm. It was a shock!
A corporate partner like Chris Ashworth could walk into a deal room with no knowledge of what a deal was about and say: ‘What’s the problem?’ Thirty people in the room – bankers, partners, associates. Someone would go: ‘Well, there is an indemnity issue.’ He’d just say: ‘Why don’t we do that?’ And everyone would go: ‘Yeah, that would work!’ And he’d walk out again. That left a strong impression about knowing your craft well enough that you don’t get bogged down with all the clutter around it.
There was a surprise when I resigned from Ashurst in 2006. I had been a partner for three years and not many resign at that stage, but it didn’t feel like the best base for my clients. You had this big machine that was driven to achieve a certain rate in a certain way. The business wasn’t as focused on IP, tech and commercial as I wanted it to be.
I told Ashurst’s senior partner: ‘I have to work twice as hard for half the credit.’ I resigned.
I remember telling then senior partner Geoffrey Green: ‘I have to work twice as hard to get half the credit and I have to work twice as hard to get half the support, and that’s no basis to carry on.’ He agreed. Terribly nice and supportive.
RPC had a big IP reputation a decade before I joined, but sadly a partner had died early and it had withered. When I came in there were a few people doing bits and pieces, but it wasn’t combined as a group. Managing partner Jonathan Watmough had the vision and had been looking for years to find someone to lead it.
I work with a number of football teams and players. There is a very strange dynamic in sport: you have the money, but most people in it are passionate about it, so you get a weird tension between real passion and major money drivers. The process won’t be as clear or precise as if you were dealing with an engineering company.
I’m not much into football. More of a boxing and athletics fan. My father supported Bristol Rovers all his life. He would come back from Bristol and we would be like: ‘How did they do?’ ‘They lost again.’ Every time for 20 years! They can’t have lost every time, otherwise they would have been kicked out of all the leagues, but it became a recurring joke. That put me off.
I’ve dealt with Mike Ashley [majority owner of Sports Direct and owner of Newcastle United] for 14 years. I’ve had a good working relationship with that group. Challenging but good. If you believe everything you read in the press, you wouldn’t recognise the person you meet in the flesh.
It’s like when you are involved in a court case and read a press report on it and think: is it really the same case? The media will take a piece they are interested in, which is fair enough, and drive the story down that piece. A lot of coverage has agendas.
Retail will survive. High-street retail has just got to morph. There will always be a store on your high street and quite often they will be department stores. But some are stuck in the 1970s and 1980s: the signage, the entrance, the look of it… That won’t work in the modern age. But then when you move beyond that cosmetic look, you get to the important bits: how are you getting stock in, at what price, is it competitive with the web, are you responsive to what customers want, do you have a good database, are you marketing properly? That’s the real battle.
I’ve dealt with Mike Ashley for 14 years. If you believe everything you read in the press, you wouldn’t recognise the person you meet in the flesh.
I get more satisfaction from seeing a new iPhone in a store. The question is how you stop me then going online and buying it there because it’s cheaper. And the High Street Select Committee evidence was very clear: taxation is steered towards the benefit of online businesses.
I come into work every day happy. How many people can say that? In-house you may get closer connection to the business and often more responsibility at junior level. But what I have always liked about private practice is real variety.
I learn from everybody I work with: small tech businesses that have very creative people I admire, people running multibillion-pound businesses. Try to conceive of how you could get in a position in your lifetime where you have created sufficient value that it could run your family for a millennium without working. It blows my mind.
The biggest thing I get from clients is how to think in a different way. Lawyers commonly will have a certain way of thinking about things.
Sometimes there is a lot of pressure: you have to win the litigation or the regulatory enquiry. You can’t afford not to. It’s a relentless attention to detail, pushing on and encouraging people to push on. And if you’re passionate, you’re not just leaving it in the office when you finish work, you keep on thinking: could I have done it better? It’s obsessive. But I am naturally good at taking it to the level where I can be productive and then stop worrying. I don’t lie awake at night. Ever. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be here.
My wife and I have two children and own a cat, three dogs, numerous rabbits and a tortoise in a village in East Sussex. It is an antidote to working in London. Here it is lively, a lot going on, but I drive home, look up and the sky is filled with stars. It’s a good vibe.
I go to a lot of legal tech conferences. There is a lot of talk, but not as much use of tech as people know there should be. Out of 20 people in a room, you will get one or two who say they have a proper content management system. It’s like talking about driverless or electric cars ten years ago: you sit there thinking, if it’s ever going to happen it’s going to take ages. I don’t think clients are bullish enough at demanding law firms have that in place. The average law firm is still focused on the year-to-year rather than the five or ten-year horizon you need to focus on. But that investment is bound to become essential.
I never regret not becoming a barrister. When I see the good guys performing, it takes my breath away: the speed they think, particularly if they are in a Court of Appeal and have got top minds firing questions at them in real time. I don’t think I’d be good enough. But it’s a solitary existence and I love working with people here. I’m really glad I didn’t take my mother’s advice.
Jeremy Drew is head of commercial at RPC
marco.cillario@legalease.co.uk