I don’t take anything for granted. I’ve been lucky, had some good breaks and people have invested time in me.
I can’t sing or dance. My partner thinks I’m like Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when I dance. That’s one reason I went into law. I fancied doing something City-based. I didn’t know what. I came out with my degree and thought: what do I want to do? I applied for a law summer scheme to see what it was like and that was it.
Everyone talks about culture and it’s a bunch of bullshit, generally. Law firms are simple. If there’s a partner, if you have a client, let’s get on with it. If everyone works together and there isn’t an elbows out/’this is mine, this is yours’ culture – that is what you need.
Ashurst was a great place and the people there were genuinely great. Ashurst was a place where the brand was great, but it wasn’t Magic Circle so you had to fight for stuff. The deals it had showed it was punching high above its weight. It was entrepreneurial because it had to be. They didn’t take themselves too seriously. A fun place to work.
Everyone who walks into a law firm looks at somebody and thinks: ‘I’m going to be like them.’ Steven Fox is someone I always looked up to tremendously because he was always himself. He didn’t fit into a particular mould or stereotype and was northern. It was brilliant. For him it was very simple: the clients are our friends or the people who you want to work with. If you converse with them like that, chances are they will want to work with you.
When I first went to Ashurst, my Dad said to me: ‘Who’s the most important person you’re going to meet today?’ I said: ‘It’ll be the senior partners.’ And he said: ‘It’ll be the guy that cleans your bin or serves your food.’ He said that because you treat everyone the same. You don’t put people through hierarchies based on where they are. That was the best piece of advice I’ve ever had, certainly in law.
On the William Hill/Playtech deal, I think I left the office three times in eight months. That was around five years ago when I first made partner.
They used to have four pods at Ashurst. Those pods were always full for about two months solid. There was one night around November/December four years ago when it started snowing around half-nine. All the trains went down – a couple of the older partners couldn’t get home. I tried to book a pod and couldn’t find anything. You ended up sleeping across the desks. We were properly grumpy.
Everyone talks about culture and it’s a bunch of bullshit, generally. Law firms are simple.
Everyone who comes into law is smart, is driven and wants to succeed. There are different ways of how you achieve that success and how you measure it. For me, it’s never been about the individuals. It’s about how well the firm’s doing. I don’t care what I’m doing, but I’m ambitious about the firm.
There aren’t factions or little groups here. It’s very light on management. We don’t have heads of corporate or heads of vision or anything like that. It’s hard to do that when a firm isn’t doing very well, then management comes in, but we don’t do it because we don’t need to. Profit speaks for itself.
Never change the way you are to fit in somewhere. Always be yourself. People think in order to succeed they need to fit into a certain form or do a certain thing. You’ve got to play the game to a degree, but as long as you do it within certain boundaries, don’t be afraid to innovate, don’t be afraid to suggest something. If you do that, it’s amazing how much backing you get.
The key is learning to switch off. I’ve never been stressed about work. No-one’s died. If I mess something up then someone’s lost some money. Sure, professional pride and all that, but a bit of perspective. Most things can be corrected.
There’s been challenges for the legal market for a while. You look back – there were ten, 12, 15 brands with very solid names and very solid spaces. Over the last 15 years, there’s a hell of a lot more competition. You’ve really noticed that over the last five to ten years. If you had said that to someone back then they would have said ‘…what?’
It’s not about the money. For me it never has been. It’s being the best that I can be and that was on a platform that offered US capabilities. It’s an easy excuse for a law firm to say a partner has left for the money. For most people who leave a law firm, the money is very rarely the primary factor.
When you join Gibson, you go to the US and you meet people for about three or four days in each office. The thing that struck me was that everyone was excited about London. It was seen to be a massive thing for the firm. That for me was the sell.
As I get older I’m getting better at finding other things in life I enjoy doing, rather than just focusing on your career. It’s not easy, but as you get older you find that time.
One of the huge things I’ve enjoyed is cooking. Having people around and having huge dinner parties is quite amusing, particularly because none of them can cook.
I’ve thought about going in-house a couple of times, but nothing serious. When I was considering leaving Ashurst, I thought a lot about what I really wanted to do. But I don’t have much talent so I can’t do much else – options were limited. I’ve still got a lot more that I want to achieve and it is about building the best law firm we can. We’ve still got so much more we want to do, so I can’t see myself leaving any time soon.
I was told to change my [northern] accent half a dozen times, particularly early in my career. Best thing I did was ignore it. Coming here and talking to US people, my accent can be a challenge. They say: ‘Speak English!’ ‘Well I am speaking English and you’re trying to speak my language!’ That’s the stock response. Always goes down very well. It’s an acquired taste, but it’s who I am.
I was told to change my accent half a dozen times, particularly early in my career. Best thing I did was ignore it.
Youley [White & Case partner Richard Youle] was the year beneath me at school. I played a lot of football with him. Woody [Linklaters partner Alex Woodward] was in my brother’s band. I can’t remember the name of it, but it was bloody awful. They used to practise in Mum and Dad’s front room and they were crap. Thought they were some type of Take That thing. It was just hideous. Solid Air they were called. But Woody’s a nice lad. With those guys, we are all down to earth and don’t take ourselves too seriously.
My brother’s an author, he writes books. He’s the talented one.
Charlie [Geffen]’s someone who never sits still. Charlie has ten ideas: eight of them are genius, two of them are bloody awful and he follows each one with equal vigour. He’s always thinking laterally and always on the go. So driven. That shows in his PE practice. He’s always revered in that way. You’ve always got to filter some of his ideas; he hasn’t gotten away with the mad ones here because I can say ‘no’.
In that journey moving from a US firm to be seen as a full-service UK and US firm, we’ve still got areas to cover – high yield, regulatory. It’s about getting high-quality additions in to get that bench strength. If you’ve got 20 to 25 corporate partners working across the piece, that’s when you know you’ve got real size.
Here we don’t take five partners to keep two, we take five to keep five. So you want everyone to succeed; you don’t get that star culture.
The reaction to my long hair has been mixed. There are definitely more focused people like Mark Sperotto and Nigel Stacey who aren’t that keen. But frankly, when you’re as ugly as them, who cares?
I’m pleased with where I am right now. It’s unexpected, but I’ve enjoyed it. The main thing’s enjoying it. Enjoy what you do and life is easy.
Jonny Earle is a corporate partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk