This Special Report contains candid interviews with managing and senior partners of law firms large and small, from Europe and the City to the high street and Africa.

We do not hear enough about running law firms from those who do the job. Here they talk frankly, free from jargon and management-speak, about their careers and what their role is really like. The interviews will cover everything from their first jobs to becoming a partner and reveal their key pieces of advice for all current and aspiring senior partners.

Most lawyers have to manage others at some point in their careers and anyone with management responsibilities in a law firm of any size will gain something from the hard-won experience of these leaders.

The report features interviews with, among others, Edward Braham (Freshfields, Bruckhaus Deringer), Kathleen Russ (Travers Smith), James Palmer (Herbert Smith Freehills), Rafael Fontana (Cuatrecasas), and Olayemi Anyanechi (Sefton Fross), providing readers with a variety of perspectives on running a law firm.

By lawyers, for lawyers, this report from senior members of the profession tells personal stories about their pathways to the law and gives their views on clients, management, the role of lawyers in society and the issues of the day. It will provide lasting and critical insights into the profession at this time of change and disruption.

This short and well-constructed book is described by its publishers as a special report. It is a collection of 10 interviews with managing and senior partners from leading firms from Europe and beyond...The contributions are from a diverse group of lawyers, many of whom have been with their firms for their whole career. They seem approachable, committed and passionate about the law. Written in the shadow of Covid, the contributors share their experience of leadership.
David Pickup
The Law Society Gazette

Bill Knight
Former senior partner, Simmons & Simmons
[email protected]

Bill Knight worked for Simmons & Simmons for 35 years – from articled clerk to senior partner. Before he became senior partner he was in charge of the firm’s Hong Kong Office and corporate department and chaired the Law Society’s Company Law Committee. He is the author of The Acquisition of Private Companies and Business Assets, which ran to seven editions.
Since leaving the firm in 2001, Bill has been president of the City of London Law Society, deputy chairman of Lloyd’s of London, chair of the Financial Reporting Review Panel and a gambling commissioner. He was a specialist adviser to the Treasury Select Committee on the enquiry into the failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland and in 2016 was awarded the OBE for services to financial regulation.
Bill is now a professional photographer, specialising in portraits, opera and the theatre, twice a winner in the “Portrait of Britain” photographic competition and with two portraits in the National Portrait Gallery. His website is www.knightsight.uk.