Plum - SJ Berwin UK Graduates

SLOWE
YOU WANT
TO BE
A LAWYER?
DESCRIBED BY LEGAL
DIRECTORIES AS “TENACIOUS” AND
“HAVING GRAVITAS TO DEAL WITH
THE HEAVYWEIGHT SLOGS”,
RICHARD SLOWE HAS HAD A
VARIED CAREER. HAVING FIRST
QUALIFIED AS A SOLICITOR, HE
THEN CROSSED OVER TO THE BAR,
BEFORE JOINING SJ BERWIN IN
1990 AS HEAD OF THE ADVOCACY
GROUP. HE THEN BECAME THE
FIRST SOLICITOR ADVOCATE TO
APPEAR IN THE HIGH COURT.
WILL LAWRENCE AND
VICTORIA KEENAN MOVED
IN TO FIND OUT WHAT
PEARLS OF WISDOM HIS
TIME WITH SJ BERWIN HAS
YIELDED OVER THE YEARS.
Your CV says you are a commercial
strategy specialist. What does this
mean exactly?
I like fighting wars, not battles. I
prefer thinking things through at the
strategic level; deciding the best
course of action and watching things
pan out. You get a great sense of
progress without the nitty-gritty of
the detail.
Did you always want to be a lawyer?
I wanted to be a ski instructor or a
gigolo but wasn’t up to it! I suppose I
fell into law to some degree. My father
was a lawyer and so, when my elder
brother went into property, it was
assumed that I would go into law.
What made you choose SJ Berwin
after practising at the bar and being
head of chambers for 14 years?
I had done a lot of work at the bar
with SJ Berwin and I liked what I saw.
I looked around at other firms (big
and small), but SJ Berwin had this
entrepreneurial feel to it; it was
young, dynamic and moving up in
the world. There was a feeling of
excitement about the place.
Having been at the firm since it was
much smaller how do you think it
has evolved over the years?
The firm has changed with age, as
everything does; youth turns to
middle age. The firm is much larger
now, and it’s harder to be as
entrepreneurial when you’re bigger.
It’s not like you can meet with five
partners in a room and make a
decision about the future of the
practice; more people need to be
involved in decisions, and this takes
longer. Still dynamic and relatively
young, yes, but it’s a grown-up
business now.
Is it true that you had a night out
with Catherine Zeta-Jones?
The firm was instructed by OK! in the
House of Lords. OK! had bought the
rights to the CZ-J wedding photos
but rival magazine Hello! published
them first having taken them
surreptitiously during the ceremony.
We were on a no-win-no-fee
conditional fee agreement. We lost
outright on the part of the case we
thought we would win and just
scraped home on the part we
thought we would lose! So in the end
we won what was a very exciting
case that was right at the forefront of
the developing law on the right to
privacy. After all that I deserved an
evening with CZ-J as my bonus but I
am not telling whether I got it or my
partners will want their share!
AFTER
ALL THAT
I DESERVED
AN EVENING
WITH CATHERINE
ZETA-JONES
AS MY BONUS
You must have been involved in
some amusing cases over the years.
They were nearly all amusing to me
even if not to my clients. I acted for
the man who broke into Buckingham
Palace and sat on the Queen’s bed
and I acted for mercenaries who
sent guns to Sierra Leone. It was all
fun right to the end. My very last
case at the bar was all about a
Bentley known as “Old Number
One”, so called because in 1929 it
entered the Le Mans race and
because its engine capacity of 6
litres was the largest in the field it
was assigned the race number of
No.1. It was in the process of being
sold to my client Scimitar for £10
million (that’s the company that used
to make the Robin Reliant three
wheelers), only it had had so many
repairs done over the years that
Scimitar didn’t believe it was the
original anymore. The question the
court had to decide was: when is
a rebuilt car a new car? Well,
unfortunately, we lost the case.
Scimitar went bust and the vendor ran
off to South Africa with the proceeds
before his bank could get them!
What is the biggest trainee mistake
you can recall?
I was in the High Court and the
judge took issue with my pupil’s
notes. He said he couldn’t read them
and told me to ask my pupil to read
them out. I turned around to my
pupil, only to find him fast asleep
and snoring. He’s now a successful
QC in Leeds.
What qualities do you think make
a good trainee?
The power of analysis and a logical
mind. It’s really the ability to look at
a situation critically and form an
opinion on a solution. All too often
trainees give all the reasons why
something can’t be done, without a
solution. Excellent trainees have the
courage to stand up and say ‘we
should do it this way’. Although I will
always ask for a trainee’s opinion,
sometimes you have to make your
opinion known to others.
Is there any advice you have
for applicants?
Passion. When I started I used to have
to wear a bowler hat and a stiff collar.
Things are a little more relaxed in
terms of dress now, but the hours are
not. I only used to work from 9:30am to
5:30pm with a good hour for lunch for
a game of snooker. The hours people
work now are longer across the City.
So if I have any advice it is that you
must have a passion for the law or you
won’t enjoy it.
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