Think of Clifford Chance and think of the world’s largest law firm, £1 million-a-year partners and revenue last year of £1.3 billion. But these days the “magic circle” giant rings less obvious bells — with, for instance, death-row cases and other pro bono work, public inquiries and social welfare.

The firm will be advising the tribunal of inquiry opening on July 7 and chaired by Lord Cullen, the Scottish judge, into the position of the Chief Justice of Gibraltar, Derek Schofield, presently suspended from office. Heading the legal team is Michael Smyth.

He has been described as the acceptable face of corporate law — or the social conscience of the City law firms. Either way, Smyth, 51, enjoys an enviable position as head of public policy at Clifford Chance, with power to deploy some of its high earnings to the wider community.

That lucky position is not lost on him. A commercial litigator with a background in media, public law and inquiries, he was the obvious choice for the post when Richard Thomas left in 2002 to become the Information Commissioner. “I have been lucky in that I was early into the public law space . . . and it’s one I’ve been very happy to stay in. But like any lawyer, I would be the first to admit I owe a lot to luck and serendipity.”

His client workload spans a mix of media work, “crisis management” for large corporations whose work, he says, is under scrutiny and likely to “become more intense”, one-off public inquiries and regulatory and human rights work. He was the supervising partner at the Deepcut (army deaths) Review in 2006 and for Lord Hutton’s inquiry in 2003 into the death of Dr David Kelly. What gives the job its edge is that he has a roving brief in the firm as a “partner at large”, advising on public policy, pro bono and on political affairs that affect the firm.

Others are in the field but Smyth says his portfolio is not replicated exactly — probably because of his personality. He accepts that he is “entrepreneurial”, seeking out his opportunities in what some might see as an “unlawyerly” way, using a “degree of opportunism that might otherwise be described as hard work”.

It has paid off. Clifford Chance has appointed a full-time pro bono lawyer, Tom Dunn, to manage what is now a pro bono practice. The value of pro bono work by the firm in 2006-07 was more than £10 million, with 54 per cent of lawyers taking part. On top of this, four lawyers are seconded each year to Liberty, the human rights group, and 16 to Law for All, the country’s largest not-for-profit law firm that operates from London and East Anglia. “Several hundred of our lawyers attend and support law clinics in deprived parts of London each week — a huge logistical undertaking.”

This is a model for the big law firms, Smyth believes: providing social welfare law where needed. But he detects a worrying trend, in pro bono, towards “trophy” work, international assignments that may win awards but “does not mean the provision of free legal services to poor people”. The first has not yet squeezed out the other and Clifford Chance, too, does both. But he says: “I am clear, as are the other partners, that our first duty is to provide a legal resource to local communities at a time when that provision is increasingly threadbare.”

Public policy, in Smyth’s case, also means human rights. He identified early the nexus of human rights laws with business at a time when “that struck corporate lawyers as strange”, he says. “Every lawyer needs to know about it.” It led to his book Business and the Human Rights Act 2000. “I don’t see that you can be an M&A partner at a ‘magic circle’ firm and not know about the ‘fair trial’ aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights or about the right to property in Article 1, Protocol 1.” He won the first declaration of incompatibly under the Act in a commercial credit case.

Smyth is a networker, with contacts across political parties, big business and the profession. Geoffrey Howe, former managing partner of the firm, led the way in “showing clients our expertise in how to handle that part of life where law and business bump up against politics and government”. But Smyth is baffled why “London-headquartered firms that aspire to have a global footprint are slow to establish a government relations capacity”. It is an area that lawyers can do well and furthermore, he adds, is “immune from commoditisation”.

It is a role he does well — so well that it has coalesced with his natural love of politics so that, he admits, his day job embraces interests that would otherwise be his hinterland. When not at work, he lives in Wimbledon with his lawyer wife (Joyce Young, who runs a niche tax and trusts practice) and two children. A home in his native Northern Ireland is an escape.

The past ten years have been good for corporate lawyers: for the next, he wants to build on their public role. With their “opulent buildings and ambition they have an opportunity, if it does not sound too pompous, to provide a public space for discourse”. The City law firm should become a “liberal — in the Enlightenment sense — institution”. With Smyth, Clifford Chance looks certain to lead the pack.

Key facts

Born Belfast 1957; went to Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Clare College, Cambridge; solicitor 1982; partner Clifford Chance 1990; Chairman Public Concern at Work 2001

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