I’m one of three brothers. My middle brother David has just retired as partner of Eversheds. Ever since we were young lads he wanted to be a lawyer, so I had that echo going on.
I chose economics, accountancy, politics and law at A-Level. I really enjoyed the politics but also found the law a lot more interesting than the accountancy. I decided off the back of that to do law at uni and that carried on into a career. I believed I’d be a lawyer for no more than two or three years, and use it as a stepping stone to go into business.
As a young lawyer I did a lot of IPO work and worked for a guy called Richard Smerdon. We went to one of the investment banks in London and were slightly late for the meeting. There were two sets of investment bankers and a Magic Circle set of lawyers. We went into the room and they all introduced themselves with double-barrelled surnames. Richard, quick as anything, said: ‘I’m Richard Smerd-Smerdon and this is my colleague, Simon Bes-Beswick.’ Nobody blinked!
My inspirations were four corporate partners at Osborne Clarke when I joined – Richard Smerdon, John Davis, Chris Curling and Jeremy Simon. They were the beating heart of the corporate group. Four very different characters. Fantastic role models. More than anything, they created opportunities and as a young lawyer they said: ‘Here you go, Simon, get on with it.’ They trusted me and let me move forward in a supportive environment.
They were deadly serious about the business but they wanted to have fun and weren’t so serious about themselves. I was incredibly lucky I came into the law working with people who were successful, doing well, wanted me to succeed and were willing to support me. Hopefully there are people who have worked for me and come through in the same environment.
They all introduced themselves with double-barrelled surnames. Richard said: ‘I’m Richard Smerd-Smerdon and this is my colleague, Simon Bes-Beswick.ʼ
The senior partner of Osborne Clarke had a habit at about 6 o’clock on a Friday evening of walking the corridors and booming in an old Etonian voice: ‘Simon! It’s time to go home!’ Invariably as a corporate lawyer on a Friday night, you’re just getting started. It would always make me smile as you’d have these Magic Circle lawyers on the other side, thinking: ‘Oh no! My opposition’s going home for the weekend!’ Often, I played cricket in the corridors. Between drafting documents you’d face a few balls, usually smashing someone’s precious photo of their wife or kids.
I was doing a buyout and the seller was the infamous Robert Maxwell. The negotiations were largely between Maxwell, his investment banker, and the investment banker representing our side. One Saturday my investment banker, a New Yorker, said he had to go back on a flight to New York because he’d got a school reunion, he’d be back the next day but told me not to worry, everything was covered off. About nine o’clock that night, Maxwell comes walking in, saying: ‘Oi, you – you’re the lawyer for the other side aren’t you? We’ve got to close this deal tonight.’ I was a three-year qualified lawyer, sat opposite a guy who was subsequently known as a tyrant. He was interesting to deal with and his approach was different. It was a very short and truncated process, as opposed to lawyer-to-lawyer dealings. It gave me an experience of the investment banker role, a good experience at the time.
My biggest achievement is to have taken the firm to where it is today. If you go back to when I took over in 2003, revenue has increased over six times, profit has increased enormously, we’ve just hit 2,000 people. All of that increased but the culture’s the same. What’s really great is when I go to various international jurisdictions and people say our culture is collaborative, can-do and supportive. You believe it’s special but you don’t truly know, because I’ve worked here all my career.
The firm had grown enormously before I took over and it had just come through a couple of tough years. Les [Perrin, former managing partner] was a big-picture guy, big on growth and what the firm needed was someone to come in and say: ‘OK, we’re here and we’ve got to sort this out and take it forward.’ In a way I take the ‘steady hand’ assessment as a compliment. The business needed reassuring, steadying and setting on a path based on the kind of experience we’d come through.
People describe me as future-focused, flexible and adaptable. It is a profession but it needs to be run as a business. Hopefully, I’ve always brought that focus to it. Osborne Clarke has been run as a business since the early ʻ90s, so I’ve benefited in that the partners understand that it needs to be run that way.
I’m very determined, ambitious, demanding, but fair and fun to work with. I’m keen to get a diverse viewpoint. Law firms aren’t the most diverse places in town and I appreciate that, but I try to get a viewpoint from lots of different angles. But I learned over time to appreciate when you can’t take everybody with you, when you’ve just got to make a call. When I started I would naturally try to drive to a collective solution and be collaborative and consensual with everyone.
When we speak to the young lawyers, there are two other things I talk about. One is their ability to be flexible and adaptable, because the world is changing. They cannot think a purely academic approach is going to work. They’ve got to work with technology and online solutions. It’s not being a coder. It’s having a really good understanding of the tools, providing the advice and the service and working with them.
I’m a great believer in the shift we’re seeing at the moment towards online service delivery and client self-service. In the future, you as the client will come onto the OC portal and it’s all there for you. You just need to know where to go and our job is to put it there. Pricing will have to change and it won’t happen over night, but law firms will move towards a subscription model as an obvious pricing mechanism. That’s the direction of travel.
The impact of coronavirus will be long-lasting. It has opened the eyes of many people to doing things differently. It has legitimised working from home. People now accept you can operate that way and function really well. It’s also made us appreciate how valuable it is to have people in the office. It’s a seismic shift for the good and it will impact the law for decades. Working from home it’s quite difficult to be creative, to bounce things around. To get to those creative moments, you need people in the office.
I continue as CEO till the end of June and will work on a couple of projects in the nine months that follow. I’m also looking to get other roles and I’ve recently been appointed chair of the offshore law firm Collas Crill. I’m keen to get two or three other roles but I want them not to be competitive with OC. A few months ago I created a CV for the first time in 35 years and I’ve been out chatting to people about potential roles. When you meet people who are 75 and still have a twinkle in their eye and something to say, they’re generally busy people. I really enjoy my skiing during the winter and it would be wonderful to have a bit more time to be able to ski and do other things.
Robert Maxwell comes in, saying: ‘Oi, you – you’re the lawyer for the other side aren’t you? We’ve got to close this deal tonight.’
I had a couple of years on the West Coast in California, we’ve got some offices out there and I came back to be the managing partner. In a perfect world we would have been out there for five or six years, but the managing partner job doesn’t come up very often! In California it is nice that everyone is serious about business but they are informal and relaxed. I enjoyed that working environment. In the UK market you’ve got a fight going on between the accountants, the lawyers and the investment bankers as to who’s really core to the clients. In California it’s the lawyers. I like that side of it.
Lockdown has enabled me to catch up on TV series I hadn’t watched at all. In normal times, I catch the news, the odd programme, a bit of sport on TV and that’s it, I don’t have time for anything else. I caught up on all of Killing Eve, watched The Serpent, The Queen’s Gambit and Call My Agent. I consume thrillers like no-one’s business. Very one-dimensional – thriller after thriller after thriller. At the moment I’m reading a fantastic book called I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. My favourite film is a very old one: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
I was a lawyer, a partner, a head of department, went to the US, UK managing partner, international CEO: all in one firm. It’s been a fantastic set of experiences and really enjoyable. Change is what excites me so whenever something happens that makes the world change, that’s when it gets interesting. You wouldn’t wish the pandemic on anybody but the change that’s going to result from it is great and opportunities will abound for those that can embrace it.
Simon Beswick was international chief executive of Osborne Clarke from 2012 and stepped down on 1 July.