Always an easy target?

Luke Johnson’s weekly The entrepreneur column in the FT’s Business Life section is always a good read: trenchant views and punches rarely pulled. His attack on the legal profession three weeks ago was no exception, and it made for somewhat uneasy reading. For a flavour of the tone of the piece, read on,

But somehow lawyers have risen to such exalted status that many of them appear to believe they are a breed apart, not subject to the same standards of decency and fair dealing to which the rest of us in commerce attempt to adhere.

It also attracted more attention than many of his pieces do, and not just in the way of on-line comments on Ft.com, but a post in Legal Week’s Editor’s Blog (“great knock-about stuff”), tweets on Twitter, and no doubt much more elsewhere. By and large the comments fell into two categories: those violently disagreeing (mainly lawyers) and those violently agreeing (everyone else). No surprises there then, although reading some of the comments I can only supposes that they were drafted in green ink.

I read the piece on my way to an all parties meeting in London, on a corporate transaction that was, and remains, slightly sticky. In one of those lulls that seem to characterise any corporate deal, usually an opportunity to discuss cricket, rugby, football, racing – in fact anything but the deal itself, the conversation turned to the column. It turned out that the lead corporate finance adviser on the seller’s side (a director of a Top 4 accountancy practice so glasshouses and stones came to mind) had read out choice extracts to his clients and their lawyers before we had arrived. Nothing like putting the lawyers in their place.

But although there is some truth in what Luke Johnson wrote, and no one likes a mirror held up to them, he misses a very important point. The profession is only too well aware of the issues, and by and large lawyers are taking steps to get things right. Luke Johnson had an unhappy experience, and these are still all too common, but law firms know that experiences like that lose clients, and if nothing else one consequence of the overlawyering he describes is competition.

And while the attitudes he so pungently describes were commonplace 20 years ago, and the experiences of clients reflected this, clients today expect something very different, as does our regulator. Within law firms there is a recognition that change is not something we can or should avoid. Similarly, although there are lawyers who still fit the stereotype he portrays (and not all of them are my generation), for every one of them, there will be many more who understand that the game has changed.

The boys are back

Saturday afternoon in Yarner Wood: bright sunshine and Pied Flycatchers. Summer is starting.

Yarner Wood is our local patch, and we visit the reserve throughout the year. But our first visit in April is always special, as we wonder whether the Pied Flycatchers are back. It was no different last weekend. The car park was unusually full (we later met the guided tour) and the weather not warm. Some years leaf break will have started; this year the oaks were still bare branched.

At the hide very little, but Caroline suddenly fixed on a male Pied Flycatcher. This was the only bird we saw from the hide, although there was birdsong in the treetops. We took our usual route, along and up, and as we reached Flycatcher Alley, nest boxes every other tree, we heard and then saw more Pied Flycatchers. All male, and in the course of the afternoon about eight in all. Reading the Warden’s notes later, they have been back at Yarner since 8 April.

And as well as the Pied Flycatchers, a Raven high over the wood, a Bullfinch, Greater Spotted Woodpeckers drumming, and all the usual suspects: Chiffchaffs, Great, Blue and Coal Tits, Blackbirds, Wrens, Robins, Nuthatches and Treecreepers. Time stands still in Yarner Wood and by the time we left it was well past six o’clock.

The next day we were having a birthday tea with my mother-in-law. Her garden was alive with bird song, and she knows Summer is back because the Swallows, who have been nesting in her garage for the past 15 or so years, have returned. We stood and watched them, a fast glide and down below the lintel and up and out of sight.

All we need now are the Swifts.

Rumsfeld’s Rules

Donald Rumsfeld’s Rules (Advice on government, business and life) may have been around for a while, but I only found them today, courtesy of a link in one of Kevin O’Keefe’s tweets and Rick Klau’s weblog. As Rick Klau comments, “They are, put simply, brilliant”. Read them: this is the link.

I particularly enjoyed this one,

Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers. They get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.

Some 30 years ago, I was the gofer to one of the corporate partners in the firm that then employed me. We were advising a merchant bank, in turn advising the independent directors of ATV. It was (or seems) a very long time ago, but I have two vivid memories of that particular transaction.

The first was the appearance, very late one night, of the irrepressible Lew Grade. He, and his cigar, came through the double doors that led off into the Executive Suite at the top of the building. He just wanted to know that we were all being looked after; and as he left, he executed a couple of steps just to let us know that he was still a hoofer at heart.

My second memory, and this was triggered by reading Rumsfeld’s advice about lawyers, was of Robert Holmes à Court walking unannounced into an all parties meeting: clients, merchant bankers, stockbrokers, accountants and a fair number of lawyers. His Bell Group had just emerged as a buyer. Holmes à Court looked at the suits sitting round the table: there were probably some 20 plus people in the room, and he slowly worked round the table, asking everyone who they were, who they were with, and what they were doing. Depending upon the answer given it was either a “You may leave now” or “You may stay”. All very courteous but nonetheless there was steel in his eyes.

I was one of the last he got to.

“Well, what are you doing?”

“Taking the notes.”

“You had better stay”

And stay I did. Holmes à Court was himself originally a lawyer, and had a very well-developed sense of who and what was needed.

Easter running

Spring has crept up on us this year. The last week has not been warm, and we seem to have had more than our share of rain, with only a little sun.

The house this Easter weekend has been full of running: not us but the girls (or at least three of them). The Great West Run, Exeter’s half-marathon, is a month away and all three are going to be home to run for Cancer Research: if you want to sponsor them you’ll find their page on Just Giving.

A savage downpour yesterday morning saw two of them pounding the track round Mardon Down. This morning was more ambitious: just shy of ten miles from the Hennock Reservoirs home. I dropped them at 9.00 and they were home as the Church clock struck 11.00. They are all pleased with how today has gone, but to beat two hours on 2 May will be tough.

We walked part of their route this morning on Friday, starting at the Trenchford car park and taking the road round to Tottiford then up to the county road, sharp right down to Kennick, across the dam and back along the road. Five miles of easy walking (although gumboots weren’t the best choice of footwear), and the chance to see Spring here: Swallows and House Martins over Trenchford, the first we have seen this year, and the earliest we have seen them in the 13 years we have lived here.

And just so we know Spring is indeed here, we heard the unmistakeable tapping of death watch beetle in the shutters in the study. This, I hope, is the last part of the house which is still home to them.

Playing the football card

What is it about Labour politicians and football? Is it the need to demonstrate their ‘man of the people’ credentials, and that they are in touch with, and true to, their roots (whatever these may), or is it that they are just like any other politician, and think they know best about everything?

Whether it was Harold Wilson and the 1996 World Cup, or Tony Blair telling us that he used to watch Newcastle United as a boy (even if his hero Jackie Milburn had hung up his boots quite a few years before), over the years no Labour politician has been able to resist playing the football card.

The latest to do so is Mike O’Brien, the health minister.

O’Brien chose Twitter as the medium, and what he offered in his 140 characters was “The sacking of Terry is crass. Capello has bowed to tabloid pressure. Infidelity is bad but I saw no signs of fatigue in his football”. Having looked at his tweets, the one about Terry is possibly the most interesting unless you are one of O’Brien’s constituents (although glass houses and stones comes to mind, as I don’t think many of mine would pass Tammy Erickson’s test “Are you fun to follow on Twitter?”: see her HBR article). But why tweet about it all?

And why the strange linkage between infidelity and fatigue? Is there something he knows as health minister he isn’t telling us!