Superyachts, Humility and Plumbing with John Leonida - Episode 23

In Episode 23 of The Legal Genie Podcast, your host, Lara Quie is in conversation with John Leonida. Until his retirement from law in 2020, John was a partner at Clyde & Co in London, where he specialized in international shipping and marine work and established a niche area, which he branded the "Superyacht Group."

His clients were either shipping entrepreneurs, operators in the oil support industry or high net worth individuals, builders, and designers of some of the world's most luxurious superyachts. In September 2020, John joined LP Squared Limited to provide board level advice to owners, builders, family offices, and superyacht stakeholders on the more commercial and strategic aspects of the superyacht industry.

He is currently undertaking a PhD in maritime history on the culture and social impact of yachts and superyachts between 1918 and 2018. 

In this episode, John discusses his upbringing, his career, how he eventually moved into a legal career, and what he feels are crucial values lawyers should have.

Growing up in a working-class family, he initially embarked on an economics degree, before making the cross over to a legal career where he eventually settled in the maritime practice at Clyde & Co where he stayed for 23 years. 

John discusses the difficulties he faced as a junior lawyer with extensive experience in the finance space which sparked tensions over disagreements with more senior lawyers. Despite this, his previous experience in personal relations benefited him.

He eventually made the superyacht practice his own, getting an accelerated bump to partnership as a result of the firm’s trust in him. John goes on to talk about some of the common problems he faced in the industry, especially whilst dealing with such high-value clientele. 

John then moves on to his retirement the previous year. He discusses the reasons surrounding his retirement and comments and how some lawyers face difficulties in retirement as their legal profession made up such an integral part of their identity. 

He talks about how the profession has changed over his years in practice as well as some of the traditional values in the legal industry that have taken a backseat in recent years.

John concludes by raising three points he feels are important for all lawyers. 

The first, espoused by his former mentor, was to always be humble. 

The second, is a rich vocabulary, something that John feels is fundamental to convey your understanding of the law to your clients. John mentions some tips he has given trainees before that have helped with their drafting of the law. 

Finally, a potential shocker to some, the understanding that lawyers are the “plumbers” of the world of commerce and should play the facilitative role in the background.

I hope you enjoy this episode!

You can connect with Jo

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Transcript

The Legal Genie Podcast Episode 23 with John Leonida on Superyachts, Humility, and Plumbing

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:31] Hello, and thank you for joining me, Lara Quie, for the Legal Genie Podcast. 

[00:00:36] Following my career as a corporate lawyer at Dentons and DLA Piper, I reinvented myself as an entrepreneur. And then as Asia Pacific Head of Business Development at Duane Morris. 

[00:00:48] After a life event introduced me to the world of executive coaching, I set up my own consultancy, where I coach lawyers, leaders, and founders on how to design their [00:01:00] best life. 

[00:01:01] I coach on building one's book of business, personal branding, LinkedIn skills, growing self-confidence and how to get to the next level. 

[00:01:10] If you are looking for someone with whom to share your challenges and who can help you move forward, if you are stuck, then reach out to me through my website at www.laraqassociates.com. 

[00:01:22] This podcast is intended to give you an insight into the lives and careers of movers and shakers in the legal industry. 

[00:01:30] I ask my guests to share their best advice with you that I hope you will find helpful in your legal journey. 

[00:01:37] Please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts to help us reach more people who may find it helpful. 

[00:01:43] I hope that you will enjoy the conversation. 

[00:01:48] Lara Quie: Hello and welcome to Episode 23 of the Legal Genie Podcast with me, your host, Lara Quie. Today, I'm excited to be in conversation with John Leonida. Until his [00:02:00] retirement from law in 2020, John was a partner at Clyde & Co in London, where he specialized in international shipping and marine work and established a niche area, which he branded the "Superyacht Group."

[00:02:13] His clients were either shipping entrepreneurs, operators in the oil support industry or high net worth individuals, builders, and designers of some of the world's most luxurious superyachts. In September 2020, John joined LP Squared Limited to provide board level advice to owners, builders, family offices, and superyacht stakeholders on the more commercial and strategic aspects of the superyacht industry.

[00:02:38] He is currently undertaking a PhD in maritime history on the culture and social impact of yachts and super yachts between 1918 and 2018. Welcome to the podcast, John. 

[00:02:53] John Leonida: Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Lara. It's an absolute pleasure to be on this side of the microphone for once.[00:03:00] 

[00:03:00] Lara Quie: Absolutely. We are here to talk about your incredible legal career and all the exciting things that you have done, but it's always good to start at the beginning. So, if you could tell me a little bit about your family backgrounds and where you grew up.

[00:03:14] John Leonida: I'm by heritage from Cyprus. My parents arrived from Cyprus in 1960 settling in Southeast London, which was unusual at the time, because most Cypriots settled in north London, where there was a cabal of Cypriots there. So, we settled in Southeast London, away from the bulk of the Cypriot community and settled with my mother's uncle who ran a fish and chip shop in Surrey Docks.

[00:03:41] And I mention that it's quite important that the Surrey Docks is part of my heritage because it was part of the dock side trading part of London in the 1960s. A Stone's throw away from Greenwich and my early childhood was very much surrounded by [00:04:00] dockers. It was visits to the maritime museum in Greenwich. I remember in particular, in July, 1967 being taken by one of my uncles to the old Royal Naval college and where I'm now doing my PhD to witness the arrival of Francis Chichester and to watch him be knighted by her majesty and I was in the crowd and remember the little yacht sailing up The Thames and seeing the Queen lower the sword on his shoulders to knight him and being petrified that she was about to behead him. And I say that because at the time my uncle was reading to me, "Alice in Wonderland" and so I was slightly taken aback, but the water and the sea and the Cutty Sark, which I used to visit on so many occasions as a child was a huge part of my, life.

[00:04:50] But we were very much sort of a working-class family, no history of university or, no history of lawyering except the uncle who took me to the [00:05:00] Gypsy Moth and often the Cutty Sark my uncle, Evagorous, became a barrister. And that kind of influenced my direction, not immediately.

[00:05:08] Because when I ended up going to university and went to Sussex, I read economics and on graduation I joined the Foreign Office became an economist and worked there for four or five years. And then I pivoted as a lot of people did in the 1980s to PR and I had the GTI and the Filo Fax and the wine bars and that whole 1980s very loud ties and big shoulders.

[00:05:32] And that's what I did. But there was something in me that still wanted to do the law and on my way, I picked up a master's in politically economics, and then I started a law degree studying in the evening at, the University of Westminster. And then I took redundancy from where I was working and finished off my law degree.

[00:05:55] And I did the very first iteration of the legal practice [00:06:00] course and at the ripe old age of 34 having trained at Wedlake Bell in the West End, I qualified as a solicitor. I joined Watson Farley Williams to do banking and finance. And unfortunately, that didn't work out for me.

[00:06:15] Either the firm was wrong for me, or I was wrong with the firm. And then I pivoted to Clyde & Co and that's, where my Clyde & Co story starts back in September 1997. There we are. That's my potted life story, 

[00:06:29] Lara Quie: That's brilliant. You've gone through everything there in such an expeditious manner, but it's so interesting actually, that you mentioned your Cypriot heritage and the way that obviously as an islander originally that love of the sea and the obsession with boats and all of that wonderful lifestyle and the fresh air and the excitement. It's very vivid the image that you give in terms of that time with your family. You mentioned how you did your studies in law, and then [00:07:00] you ended up starting in banking and finance.

[00:07:03] Was that because the firm that you ended up with in the early days didn't have a shipping department, and you didn't realize that you would actually love shipping as much as you did?

[00:07:14] John Leonida: I had undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in economics. And because I was an economist by training there was a natural tendency, not just by myself, but those who were looking after my career to push me in the finance commercial space, because I probably understood the banking world, the finance world, probably more than any lawyer that I worked with what was interesting when I was working with the partners that I was. And remember I was a mature student. I wasn't a 23-year-old, a 22-year-old greenhorn straight out of university. At the time that I started my training contract I had conducted several trade missions and research trips to India. I had negotiated and [00:08:00] worked with the Indian ministry of commerce.

[00:08:02] I'd worked on big product launches in a multinational company. So I wasn't your regular trainee which in a sense caused a little bit of tension because I didn't accept everything my supervising partners were telling me because often not that I knew better that I was trained to question and trained to stress test whatever was being said to me. And that sometimes caused the tension, but because I had that, finance training. If you will. I was inevitably put into that banking space and when I eventually joined Clyde & Co it was to do ship finance with the emphasis on the finance because of the, banking training.

[00:08:50] I'd had both at Wedlakes and at Watson, Farley and Williams. And it was only later that my deep passion for [00:09:00] ships later translated into developing the practice area that I developed. 

[00:09:05] Lara Quie: I see. Yes, that totally makes sense. The shipping finance aspect. As a trainee, I had a seat in asset finance, which I really enjoyed actually, which is all about ships and aircraft finance, sale and lease backs and things like that.

[00:09:21] But it's interesting that you ended up at Clyde & Co for 23 years, so you must have loved it. And tell me a bit more about being in ship finance, but how you managed to develop this whole concept of the superyacht practice. 

[00:09:38] John Leonida: It's both exciting and also a sad story if, you will. When I joined Clyde & Co I was in a department led by a brilliant lawyer called Simon Poland. Simon was quite tall, very handsome in that kind of James Bond kind of way. Very humble, a very [00:10:00] intelligent man. And he taught me everything there was to know about ship sale and purchase and ship finance in its traditional way.

[00:10:09] But he was not a marketing person. He was very much that old school that you were a solicitor and work came in through the front door. And that's the way the law was for him. Whereas I've worked in public relations and had a solid training in marketing and PR, and that was hugely influential in the way that I approached work.

[00:10:33] Now, what happened was that a Saudi gentlemen came into the office and wanted to buy a Sunseeker Predator 80, which is an 80 foot day boat, a speed boat, if you will. And I was the most junior member of the department and no one else wanted to touch this. This was a small value deal and people said, oh, just give it to Leonida. And I, was given the contract and I looked at it[00:11:00] and I'd been using the Norwegian sale form, which is a very, I mean, I recently described the Norwegian sale form has been very much a round head of a document. It's very, Cromwellian very sturdy, very solid.

[00:11:13] You knew what you got. And I described the sale purchase contract for the yacht, which is still in use, rather cavalier and foppish. And it is. It's all about doing the deal and it's light on a lot of detail. So, I took some of the elements of the Norwegian sale form and plugged it straight into this yacht sale and purchase document.

[00:11:36] And those amendments that I made back in 1998 are now market standard. Every yacht sale and purchase uses a version of drafting I did back in 1998. And what I did kind of shocked the yacht brokers who were involved in the deal. There were two yacht brokers a guy called Mark Hilpern and a guy called Nick Baker.  Sadly, both of them are no longer with us.

[00:11:59] [00:12:00] And Mark was scared by what I'd done, but thought that, you know what, this is probably the way forward. And he started giving me lots of work. And I kind of got to know the yacht world. Now, around this time, Simon, my supervising partner who was around 49 years old and decided to take sabbatical and he went with his family to India.

[00:12:20] And when he was at the Taj he collapsed and sadly we lost Simon within a year just shy of his 50th birthday. And it was a shock to all of us. And I remember his Memorial, at the huge church by Kew Gardens in West London and it was packed beyond belief. He was university friends with Clive Anderson. He gave a eulogy as, did a number of very high, profile celebrities who all knew him. And the wonderful thing about Simon is that he never said that he knew these kinds of people. And he was very low key, but there was so much [00:13:00] love shown to him.

[00:13:00] And what was important about what I learned in his death was the importance of being humble. There was no bragging. It was all about the fact that he knew these people. He knew them as friends. They weren't tokens that you could trade, which was a lesson I learned much later on when my client base included very important people, but it was that and when Simon died, I didn't have a supervising partner. We went into a minor meltdown, and I turned around to the people in the department and said, look, I think yachts might be the way forward for me. Cause it was right at the time when banks were pulling out of ship finance there was a crash in the commercial shipping market.

[00:13:43] So I, drafted a business plan and I said to the firm, "look, if you give me a budget, I can go and do some marketing." And Clyde & Co said, yeah, go for it. And I was barely three years qualified. And they gave me a business development budget because that's the [00:14:00] kind of firm Clydes were at the time.

[00:14:01] They were very agile. I think we had two overseas offices at the time. And to cut a very long story short three or four years later, I think I was barely six years qualified or seven years qualified. I joined the partnership on the basis of the development of this new practice area in superyachts. 

[00:14:20] Lara Quie: It's an amazing story. And so important how the mentor that you had in Simon and the values that he espoused, and his humility rubbed off on you at a time when you were just about to be involved in a world of the super-rich, super famous high net worth people. So, it's quite interesting how that kept you grounded because if you were very star struck and carried away by that and tried to emulate them and get caught up in that world, it could have been quite a different story perhaps.

[00:14:58] John Leonida: Absolutely, and I've seen it many times [00:15:00] within the superyacht world, of people being if not star struck, certainly struck by the wealth that is there. And people forgetting that it is not your wealth. Forgetting that we're there to do a job. The fact that it has lots and lots of zeros attached to it, and the people that we deal with live these insane lives.

[00:15:24] And I've often been into the homes of these people when we're negotiating deals and yes, the homes are spectacular. But you have to to look past that. And just do your job. Sometimes some of these individuals think that because of their wealth, they're entitled to a different type of law.

[00:15:45] The law doesn't apply to them in the way that it applies to everyone else. And that's not the case. And I I have fallen out with clients over the years who, by dint of their wealth, believe that their behaviour [00:16:00] gives them a free pass to do something different.

[00:16:03] And when they, strike bad deals and they think, well I'm wealthy, We can make it right. Sorry, but you've struck a bad deal. And however much you shout at me. However much you, bang the table. It is still a bad deal that is legally unsound. And a lot of that happens and you have to take a step back away from that.

[00:16:26] And the ethos that Simon Poland instilled in me of focusing on and respecting the law and the law comes first is the most important thing that you can teach anyone. Yes, there is all the frippery and there's the fun, and I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't glamorous because it was, and I went to amazing parties. 

[00:16:49] Lara Quie: I can imagine certainly when I've been to Monaco the casino and seen all the yachts and everything, there's definitely such an air of glamor and [00:17:00] excitement. So I'm very intrigued by these luxury yachts in terms of design, tell me about some of the interesting things that some clients incorporated onto their superyacht,

[00:17:14] John Leonida: Let's take a minor step back. We get caught up in the excesses and we think super yachts is a new thing and it's not, I mean, if, you go back to the restoration of Charles the second, that was the first superyacht. That was a Royal palace on water.

[00:17:31] When Charles II came back from the Netherlands and the Dutch gave him a fast pursuit vessel which they decked out as a royal palace for the king to return to England. And that fast patrol vessel was called a "jacht" with a "J" which is the origin of the word yacht.

[00:17:50] So you could say there have been 68 Royal yachts since the restoration of Charles II. And you can say that very first one was resplendent with [00:18:00] extreme things because it was a palace on the water. In the years that I've been working in super yachts, it turns on how big the yacht is, how small it is and how the owner is going to use it.

[00:18:12] And there has been some yachts I've been involved in where the owner is obsessed with fitness and they have a fully working gym. When I was a superyacht design judge, I remember going on one yacht, which had the most spectacular spa.

[00:18:27] I mean, just the biggest spa I've been in, not just a float, but a shore. It was absolutely huge. It had every possible treatment room, every possible variation of a theme of a hammam. It had one of those cryo chambers, which you go into for 30 seconds and you, jump out, it had a snow room on board.

[00:18:48] It's literally a room which generates snow. So, you rush out of the sauna into the snow and then back into the sauna on board a yacht. Those are the extreme things. But [00:19:00] let's not focus on those things. These are a personal expression of self. That's what a superyacht is. And the owners are not homogeneous. I mean, you have the, those owners build sailing yachts, huge sailing yachts, which are 60, 70, 80, sometimes longer than that, meters in length. And they have a passion for sailing, and they have a different approach to their yachting experience.

[00:19:27] Yes, it's comfortable yes. It will be luxurious in a way that a super luxurious home is, but it's all about the sailing. Whereas with the motor yacht owner is often about being onboard with the family. It's about going to far flung places going to the Arctic or the Antarctic global sailing.

[00:19:50] And then sometimes it's a small fun boat that you sail up and down around the Cote d'Azur or around the coast of Italy for swimming in coves. And yes, [00:20:00] there are some yachts that have had tennis courts on board. There's one yacht that I went on board that had an IMAX cinema on board.

[00:20:07] And it's not the, yes, those things exist, and they exist on land, but people think, wow, it's on a boat. Well, they exist on land. And what often these yachts are, the stately homes of the sea. And that's what they are. They are grand houses on the water. And perhaps I've become immune to some of the extreme elements but if you do have a phenomenal home cinema room at home and you like your films. Why wouldn't you have, if you have the space, a home cinema on board your, superyacht? 

[00:20:42] Lara Quie: Indeed. I mean, obviously, and if you were Roger Federer, of course you'd have a tennis court on board as well. But what I'm wondering is with the design and all of these kinds of things, it must take a very long time to build these incredible yachts as [00:21:00] well.

[00:21:00] John Leonida: Oh, I mean, typically if you're going completely bespoke where you're commissioning, not just the style of the yacht, but the naval architecture as well. You could be talking something between 48 and 72 months to build such a thing from initial scratch on a piece of paper to you taking delivery of a yacht. You can foreshorten that time frame to 36 months if you pick up a yacht where it's built on a pre-existing platform and you're doing the styling, it can be also 36 months, if you're tweaking someone else's styling. So a lot of yards build semi production yachts, where the thing that you do is you mess around with the interior.

[00:21:45] And you just hire an interior designer to redo the interior and that can foreshorten the period, but typically it's about 36 to 48 months from you signing a contract to a yacht being delivered. [00:22:00] 

[00:22:00] Lara Quie: And so in the second hand yacht market did you have a lot of disputes in relation to seaworthiness and things like that? 

[00:22:10] John Leonida: It does happen, and it turns on whether yacht can be rejected or not rejected because the, process is, as follows. You see that you like optically. You will sign a contract based on a price that you believe that your is worth and you put down a 10% deposit, then you take the boat on a sea trial, typically about four hours.

[00:22:32] And at that point you can actually go you know what? I don't like the way that it moves in the water. I don't like the way it feels. I'm going to step away from this contract now, and everyone drops hands, walks away, deposit recovered. If after that sea trial you go, yep, I want to proceed. Then you have the condition survey, and the condition survey is there for you to understand what you are buying.

[00:22:56] And essentially, it's a buyer beware contract or what you see [00:23:00] is what you get. But there is a presumption when you sign a sale and purchase contract that the yacht is essentially seaworthy. And there's nothing that goes to its operational integrity. You accept, if it's a second boat, it's going to need some work.

[00:23:15] It's like buying a house it's going to need some work. But if you buy a house and you do a survey and you find there is something fundamentally wrong with the foundations, you're going to pull out or you're going to renegotiate the price. And the contract standard sale and purchase contract has that kind of language.

[00:23:34] But if anything goes to its operational integrity as certified by the buyer's surveyor then there is a mechanism that you renegotiate the price. You can compel the owner to fix it before the boat is sold or if you can't reach an agreement you, pull out of the contract now, pulling out of the contract is a big deal.

[00:23:56] And there are often disputes as to whether what the [00:24:00] surveyor claims to be something that goes to the operational integrity actually goes to the operational integrity. And there is sometimes, and I've seen it on many occasions that, that post-condition survey process is used as a method of renegotiating the price.

[00:24:19] And there is a tension between sellers going, I know there's nothing wrong with this boat but I've had this boat on the market for say 18 months and I want to sell it. I'm going to concede this. Not because I actually believe there's anything wrong with the boat, but because I want to sell the boat and buyers, some buyers know that.

[00:24:39] So you, have a contract where you have an agreed price, but that agreed price is not necessarily the agreed price because there's a mechanism to renegotiate it, which was never the intention when these contracts were originally conceived, but it's there. 

[00:24:56] Lara Quie: So it's a little bit like buying a house, right?

[00:24:59] Because you [00:25:00] get your survey and then at that point you often will renegotiate the price and get a better deal. And you look at how long they've had it on the market and you look at what's going on and the survey and all of those kinds of things. So, I suppose it's similar, but it definitely the seaworthiness at the end of the day, when you're buying goods, they have to be fit for purpose and a boat is a boat. Like it has to float and keep you dry. And if it's going to sink, then obviously that's not going to be. Yeah. 

[00:25:32] John Leonida: Is, I mean I often described it to my clients as being floating real estate. And and essentially that's, what it is and what has always, surprised me when I was, in private practice is the number of people willing to sign a contract to buy something that they're going to spend 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million on without taking legal advice.

[00:25:53] Because if you're going to buy an apartment worth a fraction of that, you'd say, oh, speak to my [00:26:00] lawyers, but in the superyacht world, the number of times that I used to get a contract that had already been signed that had been drafted by the in house teams at the yacht brokerage houses or had been drafted by or reviewed by the prospective buyer's in-house legal team with no maritime experience whatsoever. But because it's a yacht and it's arguably a toy and it's a thing of pleasure, it's for holidays. They didn't take it seriously. And they would send me a pre-signed contract and you'd go, "what do you expect me to do with this. You've already signed it?" And they expect us to manage the process after the sale and that's what we'd do.

[00:26:44] And then it's without naming clients or particular yachts, I remember one occasion I was presented with such a contract, and I said, "this contract has lots of bear traps in it. And it will go wrong if X, Y and Z happens" [00:27:00] and of course, X, Y, and Z did happen. It went wrong. And suddenly it was my fault.

[00:27:05] Because, they said, well, you should have managed your way out, but you couldn't manage your way out of it because you were dealing with something that was already And, it's quite bizarre just how often people will enter into contracts to do with boats, to do super yachts with no specialist legal advice because they don't appreciate the importance of what they're buying.

[00:27:29] It is a ship. It is buying a piece of floating real estate that has its own rules, its own regulations and its own processes in the buying and selling thereof. It is not like buying a car. And the mistake often people think is that because it's a piece of transport, they think it's like buying a car.

[00:27:48] It's not, it's like buying your apartment or buying your house and has to be treated with the same amount of respect.

[00:27:54] Lara Quie: Yes, and one aspect of owning a boat is about flagging, [00:28:00] right? And having the port of origin or whatever you call it. I don't quite understand the flagging. Can you tell me a bit about why you would want to be flagged in say, Gibraltar or Panama? What's all that about? 

[00:28:12] John Leonida: Let me sort of come to the defence of Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a red ensign flag, it's a British flag. Much if you register it in London, it's not a flag of convenience.

[00:28:25] It's part of the red ensign group. But yes, there are flags like the Marshall Islands, Panama, Liberia and the thing that differentiates flags is the degree of state intervention in the monitoring and the regulation of those flags. For example, there are some flag states which delegate everything to private companies to monitor.

[00:28:47] And they take a very much on laissez-faire approach to the flag state. Whereas there are some flags like the UK, the main registers which are closed you have what we call open registers and then the [00:29:00] real closed registers, open registers have no requirement for being a national of that country.

[00:29:05] So anyone could register there. And then you have the closed registers where you need to be either a national or have a corporate vehicle set up in that country, but in the superyacht space, the thing that determines what flag you choose is the experience that flag state typically has with super yachts in terms of its surveyors, its regulations It's about having an easy life.

[00:29:32] If a particular flag state has a poor reputation when it comes to its relationship towards yachts, you're more likely to be boarded by port state control. If the flag state is known to take a very laissez-faire approach to the monitoring of a particular type of vessel.

[00:29:53] If it's, for example, like the Cayman Islands, the Caymans are renowned to being experts [00:30:00] in superyachts. You're less likely to get boarded if there's a Cayman flag because the industry knows that they've got excellent surveyors who monitor the construction and the operation of their yachts.

[00:30:13] So you tend to go for a flag state, which has a serious approach to yachting. So, flag states like Malta. Any of the red ensign group. Those are go-to flags. And then there are people who will flag because they are nationals of that country, and they want to fly their nation's maritime flag, and there we are. 

[00:30:33] Lara Quie: Yeah, it's fascinating. You were at Clyde & Co for 23 years and you took essentially early retirement. I mean you're still a spring chicken. Tell me about the thought process and [00:30:46] what [00:30:46] must've been a very difficult decision.

[00:30:49] John Leonida: It was. This year I turned 59. I was 58 when I retired from the law. I haven't retired from life or work but I retired from the law. It was a [00:31:00] realization in my own mind that in my remaining years and. Let's be realistic about it, unless I live to be 120, I'm towards the end of my, if not my actual life, my professional life.

[00:31:13] And I wanted to do something different before I hung up my quill, shut down my laptop, because it's as I said, right at the beginning I've done lots of different things in my life. I was in my mid-thirties when I became a lawyer and being a lawyer did not define me.

[00:31:30] It was a remarkably easy to do because when I stopped being a lawyer, I didn't stop being me. And I've known lots of lawyers who have retired and have been somewhat lost because their whole identity came from their status that came from their profession.

[00:31:48] And I've never felt that perhaps because I came to the law late and I had done other things for me being a lawyer was the intellectual exercise [00:32:00] of being a lawyer and the environment that I was working in. And when that stopped, it didn't stop exciting me, but I went through this process where I re-evaluated what I wanted to do in my life and what I wanted to achieve and what I wanted to achieve was not consistent with remaining in private practice. The demands of going out there and winning new deals, winning new clients, negotiating new contracts I've been doing that successfully for many years.

[00:32:33] Would it add any more to my personal wellbeing if I continue to do that over the coming years? And the conclusion that I came to was no. And I re-evaluated what I wanted to do with my life and hugely important in that is I write creatively as well as do my academic work.

[00:32:54] And I spoke to a very dear friend of mine who's a mindfulness [00:33:00] coach and also a superyacht journalist who's a very dear friend of mine and ran this course called unlock your creative spirit and part of that was to revaluate where you are in your life. And that course kind of happened at the right time for me. And I did that over a number of weeks and it kind of solidified the decision that I was tending towards to step back from private practice and do something new. And it was the right thing for me to do because we, get so caught up in becoming a partner of a law firm and once you've become a partner in a law firm, a firm the size of Clyde and that the pinnacle of your existence and it's, daring to think there is another possibility. And I dared and I don't regret for one minute and it's, almost been a year since I stepped down from the partnership. I don't [00:34:00] regret for one minute stepping away from that. 

[00:34:02] Lara Quie: And over that time of being a partner at Clyde & Co you must have witnessed how law firms as a whole have changed in terms of even when I was in practice, I really noticed that switch to the concentration on billables, targets, collections, utilization, and it was all focused on the money and not so much on the client and integrity and a lot of the things that drew us to law in the first place. Did you feel very differently about how your role as a partner had changed over more than a decade? 

[00:34:42] John Leonida: I mean, absolutely. When I was elevated to the partnership I was, I think partner number 60 at the firm. Not historically, but at the time we were 60 partners at Clydes. They, by the time I retired, we were in the high four hundreds if not into the five hundreds. So, we [00:35:00] were very, different from the time I joined the partnership to time I retired from the partnership. And I think if Clyde & Co had remained a small firm, which we were, I mean, we had, at the time I joined the partnership, a handful of overseas offices and we were very much a niche insurance shipping firm. But we stopped being that kind of firm during the lifetime of my tenure as a partnership.

[00:35:26] I mean, we, opened offices all over the world. We became the biggest practice in the Middle East. We have countless offices in the USA in all points of the globe. We knew the firm was that we were a massive business. And as a huge business you have lots of mouths to feed.

[00:35:48] You have lots of costs that go with that. You couldn't continue to run the firm like sort of a small club as we did. When I first [00:36:00] joined the partnership, it was a multinational business with hundreds of millions of Pounds or Dollars or Euros going through our coffers. Dealing with blue chip clients all over the world.

[00:36:14] And the economic discipline required to run a business like that inevitably leads to that kind of financial oversight, which is not what people of my generation joined the law to do. And although personally, I didn't like it. It was inevitable. But it's also part of a British culture this is antipathy towards money. There's this British antipathy towards finance. And that is very deep rooted in the British psyche, more so than our American colleagues and this kind of antipathy towards financial oversight. It's not because we hate money it's because [00:37:00] culturally the British have always had this thing of not talking about money. And it's something that is certainly part of my cultural upbringing, but there we are. 

[00:37:11] Lara Quie: Yes, it's always regarded as vulgar because the aristocracy had money and they weren't really sure where it came from. So they didn't really need to think about it very much. And that's always been the difference culturally between America and the UK in terms of that focus on money.

[00:37:30] But the truth is that law firms are about money. They are a business and billing by the hour. And all of those kinds of things mean there becomes an inevitable focus on money. And it's, hard to deal with, I think for, many lawyers who regard it as a noble profession, especially when it comes to criminal law and defence and everyone's right to be defended. 

[00:37:54] But it's very interesting when you think about the younger people joining the profession. So, you [00:38:00] must have had some junior lawyers who you mentored and what do you think about their attitudes and the future of law as it stands today? 

[00:38:10] John Leonida: I've mentored and had as trainees some absolutely fabulous young lawyers in my time.

[00:38:17] And I'm proud to say that a number of my former trainees have gone on not just to become equity partners at Clydes but to become senior equity partners and I was immensely proud of the journey that they, followed. And what was interesting about all of those that succeeded was that they didn't take the profession for granted.

[00:38:40] There was always something different. They didn't come in thinking that they were masters of the universe. The first day they came in. They all came in wanting to learn, wanting to challenge themselves. And those who succeeded all of them without question [00:39:00] struggled and failed at some point within their training contract, but they learned and moved on from that.

[00:39:07] I think part of the problem that we have with the current cohort of young lawyers, and it's been happening over the last five or 10 years. And I don't blame them per se, but I blame the education system that has evolved where a lot of the young lawyers that come in to become trainees have come out of universities, where everything is given to them.

[00:39:30] It's all about passing the exams as opposed to understanding the law and understanding the world around them. They're very talented and very well qualified but their broader knowledge has diminished over time. In my opinion. I remember one young lawyer who was in my department whose legal drafting left me uninspired.

[00:39:54] And I said to that lawyer, "when's the last time you read a book? And they [00:40:00] hadn't read a book of note of literature since they were 16. And I gave them a short reading list. I said, at least read these books because the richer your, grasp of the English language, the better your drafting will be.

[00:40:16] And I think that's, part of an understanding of the law that the law isn't just about understanding what the law says. It's the ability to interpret and communicate that law to others. And you can only do that if your vocabulary is rich, if your vocabulary is solid, if your vocabulary enables you to engage with your audience, and if you can't engage with your audience, you can't begin to draft something.

[00:40:50] Which explains things. I remember when I was at school, we learnt specifically the art of precis. I remember when I did my O' Level [00:41:00] English in 1979 that we had English language courses where we had this book and on the front cover of the book was, it was a cartoon and there were two characters on it.

[00:41:11] And then one was saying, “You, Sir, are a perpetrator of terminological ineptitudes”, and the other bubble said, “Ah, you mean I'm a liar.” And for me, that is the essence of the law to take something seemingly impenetrable and dilute it into something accessible and if, there are young lawyers listening to this who want to take anything away from this, it is put down your legal textbooks and pick up Jane Austen, pick up Charles Dickens, pick up Kingsley Amis and read literature because only through literature, will you grasp that command of the language.

[00:41:53] Lara Quie: That's very important. I felt that because I did my degree in French and German, that really [00:42:00] helped me so much when it came to the use of the English language as well. And the precision that you need when it comes to the law and that whole campaign for plain English and writing things in, a simple way, especially for clients is so important.

[00:42:15] And yet, so many lawyers unfortunately, are extremely pompous and want to show off and don't feel that they can demonstrate their intellectual capabilities by using plain English. But the reality is that to make something concise and precise is an art. It is a skill, and it is that whole idea of being organized in your thoughts and writing things so that everybody can understand and there is no ambiguity. But I'm very conscious of time, John. So perhaps one more nugget of wisdom for younger lawyers. What would you like to share? 

[00:42:52] John Leonida: Something, I always used to say to my young lawyers was for them to get out of the mindset that we are as lawyers, [00:43:00] something special that we are commanders of the universe.

[00:43:04] And what I always used to say to them is that we are merely plumbers, all we are doing is putting together the pipe work to make sure that business flows easily and making sure all the joints are tight and that we are nothing more than plumbers. And it used to shock young lawyers.

[00:43:24] I think it's still probably would shock young lawyers that I reduced the profession to that of plumbing, but plumbing is also a profession it's hugely important. Imagine your house without plumbing. It goes on in the background and it's unseen, but the moment it doesn't work, you know about it. And that's essentially what we are. We are the world of commerce's plumbers. And that's when we are. 

[00:43:49] Lara Quie: That's true. We're facilitators. And I know that if there's a blocked loo, I'd rather have a plumber than a lawyer, that's for sure. 

[00:43:59] John Leonida: And it [00:44:00] also teaches humility. And I go back to Simon Poland here that we, should be in the background.

[00:44:07] We shouldn't be, you know sort of elevating and saying, look how important I am. Cause we're not. We're not particularly important. Now, I have a particular social media profile within the superyacht world. I still do. And I, comment on the industry but what I've never done is brag about the deals I've worked on.

[00:44:29] I've never done that. And that's important. It's fine to be a commentator to engage with the industry and to show that you understand the industry you work in. But it's equally important that you don't elevate by association.

[00:44:45] I've seen that happen far too often with people who close big deals and then they announce them look at what I've done. And the problem with that of course, is that if you don't announce another one and another one people look you up on the internet and say they haven't done [00:45:00] anything for 10 years.

[00:45:02] The last thing they announced with this big deal, they did 10 years previously. Just be quiet and just get on with doing the job that you were doing. And if you're good at what you do good old fashioned word of mouth work will find you. 

[00:45:18] Lara Quie: And on that note, thank you, John. So if anybody would like to reach out to you, where would they connect?

[00:45:26] John Leonida: I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Insta as well. I have a fairly sort of curious Insta instant account. But it's there and people do reach out to me on Insta, but also LinkedIn and also if people want to send me an email, I'm at John.Leonida@LPsquared.co. And there we are. Lara, thank you very much for inviting me to visit your magic lamp, the Legal Genie that you are.

[00:45:50] Lara Quie: Thank you, John. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. 

[00:45:53] John Leonida: What most people don't appreciate is that we've been sitting inside the magic lamp that Lara resides in. 

[00:45:58] Lara Quie: Very [00:46:00] true. Thank you.

[00:46:02] Thank you for listening to this episode of the Legal Genie Podcast. If you found the content at all valuable, please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts. It helps other people in the legal industry find the show. And don't forget to share this with anyone you think would benefit from listening to it as well. Until next time, have a magical week ahead.