Mike Pullen was born under a wandering star. The leading international trade lawyer grew up in a family of fairground people, attending school — until he was 12 — only for three months in winter.

At 16 Pullen lied about his age and worked as a driver at Kellingley colliery, near Pontefract, West Yorkshire. “I was sitting in a tipper truck and reading The Economist and Marxism Today,” recalled Pullen, 49, now partner in charge of competition and trade at DLA Piper.

Then came the miners’ strike. “You couldn’t get a job without crossing a picket line. I thought: ‘There’s better things than this’.”

So began his quest for education and a career that has led to him advising countries on dealing with the EU and World Trade Organisation. It also takes him to Iraq , where he stays with a local family. “I get on well in the Middle East because I come from a tribal society,” said Pullen, who didn’t live in a building until he was 26.

He also works on high-profile investigations: “I don’t do anything apart from contentious stuff.”

It is the spirit of adventure that led him into an African cave to confront a leopard that had been preying on calves. Pullen shot it from 18 inches.

His experience arguing with local councils over sites for the family fair drew Pullen to the law. After an Open University course, he read law at Lancaster University. A three-month exchange to the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands extended to nine. He took a master’s in Brussels.

He is frank about the hurdle of class. “I was told: ‘you should become a criminal barrister because criminals will like you. You’ll never get into the City with your accent.’” But he did.

“When I came up for an equity partnership someone who didn’t like me said: ‘Would Mike Pullen pass the Savoy Grill test?’ One of our partners, a peer, said: ‘I don’t know but I take him to the House of Lords every week’.”

A lack of role models curbs social mobility, he said. “If you wanted to be controversial, you would say the most disadvantaged minority is the white working class male. They’ve no role models, apart from drug dealers and footballers.”

Determination is the answer. “The reason for my success is people telling me I couldn’t get it.”

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