Breaking the mould: An alternative route to law firm partner
A chat with one of the county’s leading legal figures reveals an inspirational career journey for anyone who thinks you need to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to rise to the top in law.
Dear readers,
Ahead of another full members edition tomorrow we’ve chosen to profile one of the county’s leading legal figures - and keep the paywall off.
Why?
One of the best parts of Raikes is that we are supported by some incredible businesses that are willing, if we ask nicely, to grant us access to their teams.
And at this time of year with so many beginning their final year of school, college or university (or who have already graduated) and wondering what next, inspirational tales can really help.
As the story below suggests, those career choices are often constrained by our own expectations and backgrounds - so much so that many never even think a role in a professional services firm as a lawyer, an accountant, an architect, etc, could even be possible. Think of all that wasted talent!
Stories that break that mould and speak of other pathways, where people don’t just enter a profession they might never have been expected to, but also rise into the senior ranks, can help light the way for others.
Of course, it takes the right firm - one that looks for talent first - in order to make the dream come true. Which is why we spoke to Chris Wills of Willans.
Oh, and before that article we throw in a short lead from our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire Series, which tracks the fortunes of the county’s biggest firms by turnover.
Today it’s the turn of the incredible Renishaw.
Please send us your stories/ideas about companies/people/issues you think we should write about. Email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.
Top 100: Record revenue for Renishaw
Engineering and tech supremo Renishaw has predicted it will turn in growth figures in the single percentage figures later this year, better than its just declared 0.4 per cent rise in revenue for its financial year just gone.
Which makes those most recent, just published set of results for the year ending 30 June 2024 sound mildly disappointing. If that is the impression we’ve given, then please read on and let us change your mind.
As small as the increase in revenue sounds, it actually represents as rise from £688.6 million in 2023 to £691.3 million this year and a new record for the business - boosted, apparently, by a ‘strong final quarter’.
Had exchange rates stayed constant the figure would have been even higher - the firm estimates it would have enjoyed a 3.7 per cent rise instead and an additional £25.4 million in revenue.
Will Lee, chief executive of the Wotton-under-Edge headquartered firm, said: “The progress we’ve made against our three key strategic focus areas this year gives me confidence in our organic growth strategy, and we continue to invest for long-term success.
“The start of FY2025 has seen continuing improvement in demand for our encoder products from the semiconductor manufacturing sector, primarily in the APAC region.
“This, together with a range of growth opportunities that we are pursuing, especially for metrology and additive manufacturing systems, means that we are expecting to achieve solid revenue growth in the year ahead.”
Investment in research and development increased six per cent in the year to £106.8 million. Renishaw employs an estimated 5,000 employees in 36 countries.
You can read all out Top 100 stories in our Reports & Deals channel, which is sponsored by Gloucestershire accountants Randall & Payne. Raikes is a reader-supported publication, meaning its is made possible by our paying members, founding partners and sponsors. Most of our Top 100 stories are paywalled for members eyes only. If you like what we do, please do consider joining them to help make Raikes sustainable.
* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you upgrade to paid, you’ll be part of this community interest company too. In an era when local journalism is all but gone, we are dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire, to championing the county, in particular its businesses, charities, education and training providers, to defending it, challenging those who need to be held to account and to helping create an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you will be able to see past the paywalls on our second and third email editions of the week, that lock all our archive after two weeks and lock our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire, the series that follows the financial fortunes of our biggest firms by turnover. You will be able to comment on our stories too. You’ll be helping make this CIC sustainable. Please do join us.
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Breaking the mould: An alternative route to law firm partner
A chat with one of the county’s leading legal figures reveals an inspirational career journey for anyone who thinks you need to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to rise to the top in law.
By Andrew Merrell
At a time when school leavers, students and graduates are pondering hard just what to do with their working lives, it would be interesting to know how many of those ambitions are shaped by their backgrounds.
A City of London Socio-Economic Diversity Taskforce study published in 2022, the first report of its kind to focus on socio-economic diversity, found 64 per cent of those who went into the legal profession and climbed its ranks had family with a professional background.
Apparently, that’s nearly double the proportion (37 per cent) of the UK population.
It’s probably not a finding that will come as any great shock. In vaguely related news, speaking on BBC Radio 4 just last month, Peaky Blinders and Star Wars writer Steven Knight, who has a home in Gloucestershire, claimed people from working-class backgrounds started their careers “20 years behind anyone else”.
In terms of the legal profession that would make the chances of becoming a partner before 50 at the earliest a difficult prospect, even if you can get a foot in the door.
Just where to put Chris Wills, a partner in the corporate and commercial team at Cheltenham law firm Willans LLP, in that mix will become clearer.
For like all these surveys, and all the impressions we form of things about which we don’t know enough, the conclusions might be generally true, but they’re too black and white to capture those who write a very different story.
Wills is writing one of those.
And we think his journey will be inspirational and encouraging for those who deep down question whether their background would affect their ability to work in the legal profession and to become that expert that others depend on, let alone a partner.
“I went to a fee-paying school,” said Wills, in the friendly, matter of fact way with which he talks.
He grew up in Cornwall, in Liskeard, and attended Truro School. Today a full-boarder at that school will pay £11,000-plus for a single term.
Just the kind of place you might expect to cultivate a healthy crop of future leaders, destined for a boardroom of their choosing.
The difference was that in Wills’ case, his family didn’t pay a penny for him to attend. They wouldn't have been able to afford access to such a world.
“I went to a normal Church of England Primary school and sat the 11-plus exam, got in and then found I also had an offer of a place at Truro School on a scholarship,” he recalls, still sounding pleasantly surprised at the happy accident, now he stops to think back.
“We were the ones whose blazers bought a size too big with the sleeves rolled up and let down as we progressed through the years and got bigger,” he said, smiling at the recollection, acknowledging that despite the cloak of disguise a uniform gives you it is somewhat wafer thin.
His parents were from what he described as a “humble background; not pushy in any way, they just wanted their children to be happy,” said Wills, who has a habit of finding something to smile about.
“I think I was just quite a driven child, and they were thoroughly supportive.”
Why on earth law? What gave him, a working-class lad from Liskeard, the drive to aspire to become a solicitor when most of his peers who joined him across the great social divide were probably just content on surviving the potential trauma of public school until they could escape post GCSE.
“We had a careers programme called Kudos and when I answered all the questions it told me I wanted to be a solicitor, in fact, a barrister.
“Then a friend’s dad said what you want to be is a corporate lawyer, that’s where all the fun happens. And from then on, I wanted to be a corporate lawyer,” he said, as if it was that simple.
So, after GCSE and A-Level he headed for Cardiff University to study law.
Post university is when the family connections, the old boys’ network, can come into its own.
“The usual route for the well-connected and well-briefed might be to apply to the magic circle law firms (editor’s note: the five leading UK-headquartered law firms) for a training contract that pays for your LPC (Legal Practice Course), but I never wanted to head for the bright lights of a big city.
“I think my route has been more about working with people, and about grabbing the opportunities as they arose.”
It was a risk to return to Cornwall where his options would suddenly shrink, but it felt right. It was still home, and besides, he had a single week’s work experience at a law firm back home in Truro!
You can imagine he made a good impression, but all good things come to an end and after extending that working-for-free period for as long as he could, he decided to leave. Then, he had a chance conversation with one of the partners.
“I was literally walking across the car park with my box of possessions, and he was in his car and we talked. I ended up staying.”
It was to be a life-changing moment. Another situation in which he had used his own initiative, against the odds, to work to his advantage.
“I had heard about a scheme called ‘unlocking Cornish potential’ which existed to encourage graduates to stay in Cornwall.
“I contacted them to see if the firm could get some funds to help me and they said ‘yes’ and from then on I badgered the firm to give me a training contract.
“Two and a half years later I was qualified.”
The law firm was also a perfect fit for Wills to pursue his ambition of becoming a corporate lawyer.
“It was about 50 people and business focused, and they did some private client work too. I was exposed to a good standard and variety of work and was even running some transactions of my own - like helping a couple sell their business. I was also getting into renewable energy.”
It turned out he was getting involved in the early days of renewables and wind energy and building experience that would make him, in time, a go-to person for this kind of work.
When a big client had nearly been convinced by a third party that he needed a big London lawyer to go with a big London accountant to handle his business Wills bravely convinced him it was a waste of his money – which meant he then had to make absolutely sure he delivered for that client too.
He did that, and it led to more doors opening and inevitable links into the marine industry which is so much a part of Cornish life.
It was another one of the building blocks on which Wills’ rise and rise has been built.
There was a move to another law firm in Cornwall, being set up by one of the partners he had previously worked for. He handled the sale of numerous stores to the Co-operative Group, advised a leisure client on a sale to a US-headquartered private equity group and as well as the continued marine work he also acted for an overseas developer on a joint venture to develop solar projects in Spain.
And then there came a day he had not planned for or expected. While looking through the Law Gazette, not even looking for a job, he saw an advert for a certain law firm in Cheltenham.
“It had got to the stage where I had some very good referrals and made some really good relationships.
“I had always believed, I think, that people do business with people they like. The name of the firm is irrelevant. It is about the client being comfortable with the team.
“I could see Willans was a firm that practiced that kind of approach.”
In 2022 Willans celebrated 75 years in business. Under the current leadership of managing partner Bridget Redmond, it has grown significantly to around 120 staff, 17 of whom are partners.
Willans liked what it saw too. Wills got the job.
That move to Gloucestershire came in 2018, and Wills is now part of a corporate and commercial team that also includes Helen Howes (pictured below), Kym Fletcher and Isabel Murton.
A testimonial on that team featured in the Legal 500, an independent guide to the profession, says it “works exceptionally well together so that if anyone is unavailable, answers can still be given. It feels as though they know their clients well and take the time to understand their specific business.”.
Wills is described in one testimonial in the guide as “providing an exceptional service”.
“He takes a good overall managing interest in our account to ensure all of his colleagues support us,” it states.
Explaining the decision to make the move north to Gloucestershire a little more, he said: “I wanted to be somewhere I could make a difference, somewhere I thought I could have a degree of influence, a degree of independence, do things properly, and this was part of the opportunity Willans offered.”
In typical Wills style he appears to have proceeded undaunted and positively in his new role, which he had to build from the ground up.
“For the first six months I didn’t have much work to do, so I went out and got to know all the other professionals in the town and networked, and from there I started to build relationships that have been the rock of the work that has followed and continues to come my way,” he said.
As his name spread he was also drafted into the likes of local enterprise partnership GFirst LEP’s business members’ group, the powerful local enterprise partnership now part of Gloucestershire County Council.
“The best quality work is from referral relationships. That has always been a focus.
“What I have learned is that you need to be extremely adaptable and willing to communicate and deal with people to the best of your ability.
“Clients will also communicate via email, but they will want to meet you as well and that is half the fun.
“And I think having that partner-led approach that we have works well. Clients get to deal directly with you and get to know your team and trust them too. It can be vital at the beginning of transactions and that approach suits me. I enjoy it.”
Which probably explains why some of his earlier clients, those involved in the wind turbines way back when, are still with him and you can also see that means a lot to him too.
And as for Gloucestershire, he’s thoroughly enjoying it and its infinite variety of businesses, reeling off a lengthy list of the sectors he’s become familiar with, from engineering and aerospace to tech, and IT.
“I think we live in a different economy now. From about November 2020 things have actually been quite strong. I have often wondered why when we had some gloomy predictions.
“I think people are more willing to keep going now; we have such variety in our economy, and willingness to work together.”
Does he still enjoy it, despite the responsibility, the inevitable long hours that will come with getting some work over the line? Was it the right move?
“I was once working on a big deal. I thought we had it pretty much there and told everyone else to go home. I tidied things up and I think we exchanged the contracts at about 1.30 in the morning. All done.
“As I was leaving I remembered it was the morning of my birthday too,” he said, smiling at the memory – as if there could not have been a better present to himself – and with a whole new day ahead to enjoy too.