As the six readers of this blog will be aware, I would seriously like to know why nobody wants a City solicitor on their board. Our firms are some of the most successful in the world – particularly internationally – but very few of us get a good job when we retire from practice in our 50s. Former senior partners are not represented on the board of the Financial Services Authority or the Court of the Bank of England. In the Us, each of the five commissioners of the SEC is a lawyer.
Last month I chaired a seminar at Oxford University’s Said Business School, sponsored by the City of London Law Society, which tried to answer these questions. We enjoyed a brisk and candid debate, but what we heard was uncomfortable for solicitors. It echoed what chairmen and CEOs had already told me. They did 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’.
