Lords of the 'magic circle': where are they now?

“I’m planning to get another job — but not law, something else. It’s the first time I will have applied for a job in 34 years. My CV looks very dull: joined Slaughter and May 1974, left 2008.” These self-deprecating words come from Tim Clark, who steps down at the end of April aged 57 after seven very successful years as Slaughter’s senior partner: the firm’s most recent annual profits per partner breached the £2 million mark.

“It’s very truthful,” says Janet Gaymer, the country’s best-known employment lawyer and until 2006, senior partner at Simmons & Simmons. “Lawyers would be very impressed by a CV such as his, but I’m not sure a non-lawyer would.”

Unlike judges who can stay on until 70 (including part-timers after last week’s tribunal ruling), lawyers “retire” at their peak — usually their mid-50s. Although age discrimination laws may change all that, the first challenge — by the former Freshfields partner Peter Bloxham — bit the dust.

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So what do lawyers do for a second career, midlife? Alongside Gaymer, now Commissioner for Public Appointments, the names of Salz, Hart, Treves, Finch, Knight and Howe stand out as City lawyers who have made their mark elsewhere. But they are exceptions. Few in the elite club of former senior or managing partners from City firms go on to make an impact outside the law. Completely absent from the boards of the Takeover Panel, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England, there are only 19 qualified solicitors (of more than 2,000 directors) sitting as non-executive directors of FTSE 250 companies. So why is this the case?

“Lawyers are not terribly popular,” explains Anthony Salz, former senior partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, “because there’s an assumption that, as a result of their training, they tend to see all the risks rather than the commercial opportunities. I find that odd with people like Tim Clark and Guy Beringer, who have a lot of strategic and commercial experience, particularly in handling people. That’s relevant in any business.”

Post Freshfields, Salz achieved distinction as acting chairman of the BBC and vice-chairman of Rothschilds. “For someone like Anthony, I don’t think he has done well enough,” says Bill Knight, Gaymer’s predecessor as Simmons & Simmons’ senior partner. “BBC great; Rothschilds great. But why isn’t he on the board of a FTSE 100 company? He’s about the best we’ve got.”

Now president of the City of London Law Society, Knight wants to prevent “a great deal of unhappiness and boredom” among distinguished lawyers who are forced to retire in their fifties. “What are they going to do, play golf? Do me a favour.” He believes passionately that there should be more lawyers in the boardroom: “The individual experience of senior partners provides a lot: they can assimilate vast amounts of information, they’ve been in many people’s crises, in takeovers, in listings, they know when times are rough people trust them. They’ve had a lifetime of behaving with discretion and common sense. They tell the truth. When the going gets rough, people like lawyers around because they’re grounded to the bedrock of what’s real.”

Yet despite these attributes, he argues that “the law is an extremely intensive and blinkered profession. As Burke said: legal education sharpens the mind by narrowing it. That’s not what’s wanted in the boardroom. Lawyers have to change their mindsets and change themselves.”

To succeed in the world outside, argues Guy Beringer — at 52, just retired as senior partner of Allen & Overy — you need to rebrand yourself. He points to Geoffrey Howe, former managing partner at Clifford Chance: “He’s someone who has gone out there and done it, rebranded himself as a businessman, not a lawyer. He did that first as chairman of Railtrack and then moved on to become chairman of Nationwide.”

Salz believes “it’s not that easy to go from being an adviser to a member of a board”. Training, he suggests, is helpful. According to Gaymer: “Lawyers often don’t think about what they’re going to do next until months before they depart from private practice. They leave it too late when it comes to moving into another sector.” She argues that they “need to be thinking two years out”.

“We were made partners in our firms on the basis of our legal abilities,” Salz says. “As senior partners we’re in a role for which we have no specific training whatsoever. It’s tricky to go from being a fully engaged leader of a business to a role where you are less involved in making change happen. After more than 30 years in one firm, it obviously takes some time getting used to a different environment.”

To make themselves more marketable, Knight suggests that lawyers get more board experience. “Because of conflicts,” he explains, “most firms will not permit that while they are in practice. But in the charitable, not-for-profit and public sector, people are more receptive, barriers to entry are far lower.”

Schools, for example, are delighted to have a lawyer’s skill available at no cost. “It sounds ridiculous, but in their forties, lawyers should be thinking about becoming a governor of a primary school.”

Beringer argues that it is only in the past ten years that law firms have developed into complex businesses with the relevant skills to transfer. “The market is still adapting,” he says.

“Historically, law firms were much smaller than their clients.” In future, he predicts, “senior lawyers should be viewed as businessmen and women rather than lawyers. With the prospect of a businessman with legal skills, boardrooms will react differently.”

And Gaymer’s advice to lawyers on how to position themselves for a seat in the best boardrooms? “Start early. Ask yourself what it is you have to offer a discerning employer and try to stop being a lawyer.”

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