░░ The Archive ░░
All dispatches
10 issues
The Lawyer We Once Were
Most lawyers begin their careers wanting to make a difference. Defending the innocent. Holding power to account. Then they discover Cravath newly-qualified salaries. Suddenly they're restructuring Argentine debt (again) with the rectitude of a Renaissance tax collector.
The Crisis Counsel
Armed men seizing your gold mine is generally considered bad for business. Especially when the government stops answering the phone and local police discover an unexpected commitment to non-intervention. That's when Tim gets called.
The End of Useful Inefficiency
Most junior lawyers add very little value. In the past, trainees carried documents to court, acting as highly overpaid couriers. Today, the tasks look different but the commercial impact is the same. And that's okay.
Navigating by the Stars, Not the Shoreline
We don't often associate lawyers with the buccaneering spirit of the likes of Aubrey or Cochrane. If anything, they're trained to keep well clear of the lee shore, carefully noting the shoals and sandbanks that may spell trouble. Risk is treated as something to be quietly skirted. However, that’s precisely where opportunity sits.
Koalas, Jungle Walks and the Art of Finding Your Niche
Fancy spending your day cuddling a koala? To be clear, this is not a metaphor or part of a bring your pet to work wellbeing scheme. The general counsel in question works at a zoo. She does do legal work. But she also has the more serious task of defending her shoe laces from a determined waddle of penguins.
One Lawyer Per Case. Please.
Litigation loves a relay race. One team builds the case, another delivers it, a third explains what just happened. Everyone gets a turn. Clients, it seems, prefer a single address for the invoice.
Sorting Hats, Christmas Ashes (not cricket) and Other Tales From a Life in Law
Every morning, somewhere across London, 15 partners wake up, pour themselves a coffee and wonder how best they can ruin Colin's career. Not out of malice, you understand. Nothing so dramatic. More in the spirit of healthy professional competition. Imagine that feeling of beating Sheffield United 5–0 at Hillsborough.
The Pursuit of a Life Less Ordinary
There are two types of lawyers in this world: those who planned it and those who wandered in after a degree in medieval basket-weaving. Or so we’re led to believe...
Roman Law to Fintech Fixer: A Modern Legal Odyssey
There is something faintly reassuring about a lawyer with the humility to admit that he was once “a rubbish corporate lawyer.” Martin, now a partner advising on financial services regulatory, payments and crypto, arrived at law less by divine calling than by a pragmatic assessment of London rents and the unappealing salaries in journalism.
Forget TikTok - Here’s How Lawyers Really Build Careers
There’s a myth about the legal profession: that it’s populated entirely by dazzling intellects, gliding effortlessly to partnership, pausing only occasionally to win a case or draft something incomprehensible. This, we are told, is success. It is also, according to Peter Jackson (not that one, sadly no hobbits involved), largely nonsense.