Human Rights Act could be needed by any of us one day

First, the Human Rights Act 1998 – it isn’t popular with the tabloids but who can be sure he or she won’t need its protection some day? Those who would water it down should be careful what they wish for.

Secondly the introduction of Alternative Business Structures, which opens up the profession to external funding and will accelerate changes in the way legal services are delivered.

What law would you like to see changed?

Government procurement rules are too weighted in favour of the big boys.

I’d like to see local SMEs and charities get more of a look in when services such as social care and (soon) health care are outsourced by the public sector. 

Price is important but so is a healthy society and it shouldn’t be so difficult to set up procurements which help nurture local enterprises.

Also any regulations which are so vague or extensive that you can never be sure that you are compliant, and the regulator becomes far too powerful – there is something almost Stalinist about it.

What is the most exciting work you’ve ever done?

Selling part of a South American gas field to Enron (read The Smartest Guys in the Room).

Who in the legal world do you most admire?

Shami Chakrabarti (who has been the Director of Liberty, formerly The National Council for Civil Liberties, since September 2003) is making a good job of an important role. We are still a free society but ubiquitous CCTV and the collection of huge amounts of data do make me wonder where it is all going. Hopefully people like Liberty will wake us up if we start to sleep walk into 1984.

What advice would you give someone starting out in the profession?

The profession is going through its “big bang” and will change massively and consolidate. 

You need to embrace that, and ignore out-of-date portrayals of legal life. The career structures of the past are just that.