Why do so few solicitors get a good job after they retire? While we are in full-time practice, it is obviously difficult to do anything outside of the firm – particularly given the potential for conflict – but we leave private practice quite early in our lives, and what do we do then?
‘Not a lot’ seems to be the answer. How many City solicitors have retired from practice to make a real impact outside the law? Anthony Salz, Edward Walker-Arnott, Garry Hart, Robert Finch, Vanni Treves, Janet Gaymer – we could name others, but not many. Of course there are well-known businessmen and politicians who used to be solicitors – but they left practice years ago. Our former senior partners are not represented on the board of the Financial Services Authority, the Takeover Panel or the Court of the Bank of England. Compare that with the situation in the US.
One experienced headhunter told me that throughout her career she had never been asked for a lawyer to fill a board vacancy. Why not? We are good at management. English solicitors’ firms are some of the most successful in the world. But there seems to be a general feeling that, with the possible exception of the managing and senior partners at our leading firms, solicitors do not add value and may even be counterproductive.
I have heard a number of explanations for this. It is said that with the growth of high-quality in-house counsel, solicitors find it more difficult to form relationships with the people at the top. Chairmen and chief executives I have spoken to have been quite negative. They do not like the lawyer’s mindset: ‘Prepared to debate, but not prepared to agree’; ‘never prepared to be wrong’; ‘just a craft industry’; ‘don’t give me a lawyer – I’m in enough trouble already’.
Lawyers are risk-averse, and this puts some of us off joining a board. But the risk of personal liability from being a director of a company which is run in accordance with modern governance ideas is vanishingly small and it seems odd that those who have been exposed to personal liability for the acts of their partners all their working lives are not prepared to accept that limited liability is an attraction. And, of course, public sector jobs will carry immunity or a government indemnity.
We should try to do something about this, for the sake of ourselves, our profession and our firms. There are obvious benefits for each of us personally in changing the way solicitors are regarded and, although I know there are other views, I believe that a certain amount of time spent by senior practising solicitors on outside interests while they are in practice not only fits them better for life after the firm, but also increases their effectiveness as lawyers. One partner at a leading firm told me that if he had to spend his retirement on the golf course he would shoot himself.
Of course there is the conflict problem – but there are many opportunities which are unlikely to give rise to conflict and which do not take up too much time: for example, charities and mini-quangos like NHS boards. Solicitors can learn a great deal from appointments like these. I learned a lot from being a state school governor.
While I am senior warden and (next year) master of the City of London Solicitors Company, I intend to spend some time doing something about this. On the demand side, I will be talking to institutions about the desirability of having someone with practical legal training (i.e. a solicitor) on the board. On the supply side, we need to learn new skills. There are ways of acquiring these. I recommend a programme called ‘What Next’ at Oxford University’s Said Business School.
We are a stubborn and opinionated lot and many of us may not be prepared to join a club that does not like us. But that is the wrong way to look at it – we need to change our ways and then industry and public service will find we have a lot to offer.
Bill Knight retired as senior partner of Simmons & Simmons in 2001. He is now chairman of the Financial Reporting Review Panel, deputy chairman of council at Lloyd’s of London and a gambling commissioner.
