HOWZAT

A meeting with one of Freshfields' recruitment partners, Guy Whalley, convinced him to join the firm. "He was a marvellous bloke," Rawlinson recalls. "He was like David Niven without the moustache. Dressed in the most striking fashion, terribly debonair. I thought, 'Gosh, I would like to be like that.' He was my caricature of what a City solicitor ought to be."

Rawlinson joined at an opportune moment in Freshfield's history, as a group of aggressive young partners led by Salz and Gavin Darlington were transforming it from a staid adviser to the Bank of England into a corporate powerhouse.

Not long after he qualified, Rawlinson found himself in the middle of one the most notorious deals of the 80s: Guinness's £2.6 billion bid for Distillers. A "share support" scandal would lead, in 1990, to Guinness chairman Ernest Saunders being convicted of false accounting, theft and conspiracy, but for Rawlinson (who keeps on his shelf a black and white group photograph of all the advisers who worked on the deal) it was an invaluable education.

"I was quite a young lawyer at the time," he says. "I probably understood about 60 to 70 percent of what went on. But because somebody had to go through all the files and reconstruct everything for the regulators, I had to really get to grips with what went on. I learned the 30 to 40 per cent I'd missed the first time around."

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Rawlinson was made a partner in 1990. "I'll always remember it," he says. "It was a great day."

But it was more recently that he advised on his most important deals. Two involved P&O, the cruise line, one of his first big clients: a trans-Atlantic tie-up with Carnival in 2001; and the bidding war between Dubai Ports World and Port of Singapore in 2006.

More famously, Rawlinson helped Manchester United try to fend off the hostile advances of the Glazer family in 2005. A United fan since boyhood, he secured the role through sheer moxie. He phoned the club’s chief executive David Gill out of the blue after two Irish investors had purchased a 29 per cent stake. “This will put you in play,” Rawlinson told him. “I’ll give you some free legal advice.”

Rawlinson says he still loves the red-blooded excitement of doing deals; and having only just entered his sixth decade, he very likely still has a lot of years left at the top — yet he is considering retiring early.

"In my typically anal lawyer fashion, I'm thinking ahead now about what to do next," he says. "I can't see myself doing nothing. I'll watch more cricket and probably play more golf, but I'm going to need something just to channel my energies a bit."

Rawlinson talks often and fondly about his sons, trips with his brother to Nepal, climbing in Scotland. His screen-saver is a photograph from a family trip to Macchu Picchu in Peru. On the wall above his desk is mounted a vest from a cross-country skiing event he entered in support of Habitat for Humanity. Now he wants to devote all his time to life outside the law.

He reaches for a brochure under a pile of books. "I'm quite seriously looking at doing something with these guys," he says. The brochure is for a childrens' charity called Youth At Risk. "I'd like to do something with charities, something to do with kids and sport. I'm lucky in that I should be able to do something and not get paid a lot of money for doing it."

Displaying a hitherto unseen political side, Rawlinson says he is growing increasingly concerned about the levels of crime in England. "Kids get into a hell of a mess and do some pretty stupid things, and I don't think there's enough leadership in terms of what are good values, good behaviours."

So when will he leave? His wife wants him to retire in the next two or three years, Rawlinson says, but he has not set a date.

"I want to retire when I want to retire, not when the firm wants me to retire. I don't want to be booted out as an old has-been. I want to retire still married to my first wife, and I want to retire with my kids having thought that I've been a good dad. Those are the things driving me."

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