My mum got me my first job at Essex County Council in PR. The first exam I ever failed was a PR diploma! It wasn’t for me. I’m not a sales person.
I did an A-Level in law to see if I enjoyed it. I did. Keeping my options open, I applied for the CPE at the College of Law and I also applied to be a teacher.
I went travelling with both options to think about. I decided not to become a teacher. This was during the Thatcher years and all my friends who were teachers were fed up and felt undervalued; de-professionalised. I qualified for a discretionary grant to study law because I’d worked for three years at the council.
I had the law course to come back to and over the New Year I just decided to go to South America with some Australians for six months. People didn’t travel so much in those days. When we went to Machu Picchu first thing in the morning, there were no other tourists. It was so amazingly different from Europe, especially the Andean countries. Peru is probably my favourite. I would like to do more travelling like that.
I wanted to be a criminal lawyer but I had no experience at all. I knew I was never going to be a banking lawyer; nothing documents-based. It was always going to be a people subject. When I went to study law, everyone said: ‘It’s going to be the worst two years of your life! It’s so hard!’ I really enjoyed it.
I had no idea that firms like Clifford Chance existed. When I started law school, and I was a few years older than most of the other students, they asked where I was doing my articles. It was two years away so I had no idea. I only then realised you were supposed to apply early. I looked at general practices but those which did crime. I applied to Lewis Silkin, Penningtons and Kingsley Napley. KN accepted me and they gave me a bursary for the second year of my LPC so I came here.
The policeman that morning said: ‘I would be careful if I were you because it’s Mrs X as magistrate and she doesn’t like granting bail!’ So when the Crown said it had no objections to bail she said: ‘Well I do!’
One of my standout matters was a murder case. Tim Barnes QC phoned me. A chap who was painting his house had asked him, if he was a lawyer, would he look at his stepdad’s papers because he was in prison. Tim read them and was worried about it so he asked me to help. It was a man who had been convicted of murdering an elderly lady in Herne Bay. There were some unusual aspects to it. We appealed and re-appealed and had absolutely no luck at all.
Tim said: ‘Well, I think we’ve reached the end of the road.’ I said we should try the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which had just come into existence. I said we should make a human rights argument because if someone is convicted, not just of murder but of any offence, doesn’t admit it and is a ‘lifer’, they don’t come out of prison. Part of rehabilitation is coming to terms with your offending. The CCRC turned us down so we threatened to JR them and they accepted that. We had legal aid to bring an appeal. The man was acquitted and came out of prison after 13 years. This was before Tony Blair put a limit on compensation for miscarriages of justice, but we got him three quarters of a million pounds. That was probably the one case in my life where I know that I personally made a difference to the outcome. That was very rewarding. That was all pro bono. We’ve got the margin to do that because compared with criminal legal aid firms we’re more profitable.
I had a moment when I was only about three-and-a-half minutes qualified! We used to do quite a lot of our own advocacy in those days. I was co-defending with someone else at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court. My client was a solicitor and his brother was a professional. The policeman that morning said: ‘I would be careful if I were you because it’s Mrs X as magistrate and she doesn’t like granting bail!’ So when the Crown said it had no objections to bail she said: ‘Well I do!’ The chap I was co-defending with and I did our best. We were both very inexperienced and they were both remanded into custody. I’d left the client in the dock that morning saying: ‘See you in half an hour!’ and saw him next in the cells. I couldn’t bear to make the bail application at the Old Bailey and was completely out of my depth. Stephen Pollard, who used to work for the Crown Prosecution Service, made the application for me that afternoon, with me sitting behind him.
Bail is obviously my weakness. There was another incident when I was a lot more qualified in Bow Street. Robert Roscoe, a really nice chap, leaned over to me and said: ‘Your client will still be taken down to the cells because the court hasn’t taken the surety.’ It hadn’t crossed my mind that would be the case because I didn’t go to court very often and I didn’t know the procedure. Again, my client hadn’t been warned that he would be spending a bit of time in the cells! I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the cells below Bow Street Magistrates Court? Very Rumpole of the Bailey.
Stephen Pollard has been a mentor of mine. He rescued me that day! He is very good at supporting people but also pushing them outside their comfort zone. I’m quite an introverted person but he would say: ‘Yes, but you’ve still got to do that.’ He’s a partner at WilmerHale now. We’ve always been very good friends. When he was still at KN and I’d become managing partner, he was the person I could tell anything to. More recently, Stephen Parkinson replaced Stephen Pollard after he left as my main man at the
firm. If things were tough, he’s someone I could go to and I knew the advice would be good.
David Napley and Mr Kingsley were both alive and working when I joined. Mr Kingsley was a horrible person who just shouted at trainees the whole time. But David Napley was very charismatic and a very able advocate and litigator. He did more civil litigation than criminal but criminal tends to be the more high-profile work. He was a huge introduction to good client care. People associate David Napley with the gold Rolls-Royce, defending Jeremy Bamber, Jeremy Thorpe and annoying the Bar because he did a lot of his own advocacy. He was actually a very empathetic person. I didn’t know until a lot later that Kingsley and Napley didn’t get on very well but I did observe that they used to dance around each other in the corridors. They were very different.
People associate David Napley with the gold Rolls-Royce, defending Jeremy Bamber, Jeremy Thorpe and annoying the Bar because he did a lot of his own advocacy. He was actually a very empathetic person.
I learned a lot about how not to do things. There was a lot of non-decision making in professional practices. I remember there was someone that clearly was not earning their place as a partner. When I got involved in management, first as a partner and then as a joint-managing partner, I asked their boss what he was going to do about it. He said: ‘Well, she’s retiring in seven years’ time!’ If you let people behave however they like and every time there’s a difficult conversation the partners disappear and shut the door behind them, what does that say? Our firm had a history of never getting rid of anyone. When I became managing partner we did part company with some people. I hated it. I knew and liked these people. One of them said: ‘Thank you for doing that so nicely. I wish someone had done it years ago.’
My first management job in the criminal department was managing the secretaries. Even the more decisive partners did not like talking to the secretaries, so I volunteered. I’ve been a temp secretary so I did know what it was like from their perspective. It was like being hit by a hurricane of fury!
My management style is based on seeing what goes wrong when people don’t talk to each other. Things build up because managers don’t want to have the difficult conversations. People didn’t see it as their jobs to manage their people and certainly not their secretaries. Their job was to do the law. Listen and then do something about it, even if people don’t get the answer they wanted. One year I had to explain to everyone why we were not having a bonus. We needed to keep PEP at the level it had been for the last two years because if it dropped, that could damage the talent pipeline. It’s a hard message to give but you get credit for being brave enough to say it.
We’re all West Ham United supporters in our family and season ticket holders. I go with my husband and sister. I’m a friend of the Royal Opera House. I don’t know anything about opera or ballet but I really love them. I did an English degree so I’ve always been into theatre. My husband, Rick, is a writer so we’ve got a lot of shared interests. I go jogging. I go to the gym… or I used to go to the gym! I do a lot of walking. We’ve got a house in Wales, in St Davids, and the walks there are lovely.
I’m my husband’s anti-muse, I’m afraid! He was very successful till he met me. He was one of the writers on Taggart before I knew him. He ‘killed’ Taggart apparently and wrote Pie in the Sky. My husband’s style of writing is cosy thrillers, like Raymond Chandler. We got separated in the first lockdown. He was in Wales and I stayed in London because I had no idea how long lockdown would last. He started a book because I wasn’t there!
During lockdown I enjoyed having weekends with nothing to do. I got a treadmill to go under my desk. The other day I ruined a meeting because it started speaking to me. I got these messages saying: ‘Linda, that’s quite noisy!’ I spent the second lockdown in Wales with my dad and Rick. I went through a lot of Morse and we re-watched Six Feet Under.
Whatever you’re worrying about tonight, you’ll have forgotten about in six months’ time. Don’t over-worry. Don’t be a perfectionist, be pragmatic. Don’t over-promise. We can give the best advice but we can’t wave a magic wand.
Linda Woolley has been managing partner of Kingsley Napley since 2007
Photographer: Brendan Lea