Slaughter and May

Who’s laughing now?

Independent-minded Slaughters has never been one to tamper with a winning formula. Its determination to do things its own way rather than follow trends might be interpreted as arrogant or conservative, but one of our interviewees had a more thoughtful interpretation: “It makes decisions carefully because it doesn’t want to go back on them.” During the boom times, Slaughters’ magic circle stablemates opened offices across the globe, joining (and topping) the lists of the world’s highest-grossing firms. Slaughters faced derision for not following suit, but as managing partner Chris Saul told us: “If we went truly global, we would give up the kind of partnership we have and that is very precious to us.” The relatively small, all-equity partnership “has grown up together,” keeping its values solid and its profits high.

Our interviewees backed Saul to the hilt. “The best way to do business is to cut out all the rubbish – not by taking over smaller firms, sticking your name above the door and not training them up to the same standard you expect.” Indeed, nowadays Slaughters’ conservatism looks like a real strength: a lean operation leaves it flexible and so far it has avoided the massive layoffs humbling its competitors. Aside from having to freeze salaries, the firm has found itself quite well insulated. “I think it’s pretty much business as usual,” shrugged one trainee. We heard the corporate groups aren’t as busy as they once were, but “litigation and finance are really busy” and “credit crunch-related work has occupied huge teams of people.”

Big business

So what counts as business as usual? Generally, taking the lead on some of the country’s biggest and most complex instructions. A quick glance at Chambers UK will show you all the areas in which Slaughters comes top or is highly ranked. In reality, “probably 75 to 80% of our work is corporate or finance,” estimated a trainee. The firm received several instructions in 2008 that would have made headlines had adverse market conditions not intervened – namely, BA’s proposed mergers with Qantas and Iberia, and the attempted buyout of Rio Tinto Ltd (valued at AUS$44.8bn) and Rio Tinto plc (£63.79bn) by BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest mining company. That would have been one of the largest hostile takeovers of all time, but the firm just had to content itself with helping Italian energy company Eni secure a 57% stake in Belgian company Distrigas. Banks get a look in too, with the likes of Banco Santander and Commonwealth Bank of Australia instructing. Other top clients include General Electric, Unilever, Diageo and Marks & Spencer. The UK government has become a bigger client than ever. The firm advised the Treasury on the recapitalisations of Lloyds TSB, HBOS and RBS (involving £37bn investment between them) and BERR (now BIS) regarding the recommended offer by EDF to acquire British Energy Group. It was reported in March 2009 that since the start of the credit crunch Slaughters had totted up £22m in billable work for Whitehall.

The dispute resolution team has also been busy. The Lawyer identified two of its cases as worthy of being labelled a top-ten court battle of 2009 – the judicial review actions brought against Northern Rock and the ongoing test case by the OFT against eight major current account providers, in which Slaughters is representing Nationwide. Lawyers also acted for Toys ‘R’ Us in relation to an accounting fraud by an employee, and handled matters for other clients including Porsche and Royal Mail.

Such impressive clients and deals aren’t unusual for the magic circle. What is more unique is a generalist approach that means “all groups do a huge variety of work,” even if some focus more heavily than others on certain areas. Big instructors always have a main contact at the firm to whom they go first for a wide range of matters, which means apart from a few partners, lawyers rarely specialise in one area alone and might even be “doing something for the first time even eight or nine years into their career.” It’s “very good for the vast majority of people,” although interviewees accepted it might not suit those with very particular interests: “If someone wants to be a derivatives lawyer, of course a different system would be better, as then they can go and do derivatives work for as long as they can master the boredom.”

All trainees spend six months in corporate, with virtually all adding another six there or in financing. The remaining seats can be chosen from a collection of “specialist” options. Bar one or two grumbles, “most people broadly get what they ask for.”

NPB? OMG!

“Slaughters likes to say it doesn’t ever do anything standard,” and that’s most evident in its flagship corporate groups. First off, there are four main groups, each named for the initials of the partner that heads them. So there’s NPB for Nigel Boardman and SJC for Stephen Cooke. Confusingly, the name of the group changes when its partner head moves on: one recruit told us the group they were in “has been called three different things in the last five years.” All of them cover a wide range of corporate-commercial matters but have entirely separate client lists. There is “a tiny bit of rivalry” between them, and we heard a lot of boasting that NPB was “the corporate powerhouse with big-name lawyers” and “the best-run group in Slaughters,” where “you turn up and there’s a file with everything you need to know.”

Which group you join is down to the luck of the draw but fairly “menial” admin tasks are always going to be part of your time in corporate. However, “the positives far outweigh that. You’re really seeing the firm operate at the highest level” and good-quality tasks always seem to pop up. Typical responsibilities include the analysis of contractual relationships, drafting board minutes and small documents, arranging client meetings and plenty of academic research points. In financing, Slaughters’ other major practice area, “there’s a bigger spread of work and more responsibility.” That translates into “a lot of drafting and a lot of document production.” Research tasks are common, like comparing precedents in corporations’ bond programme guarantees. “What I’ve said in research notes has shaped the way our deals have been handled,” bragged one trainee.

Contrary to the broad corporate experience, “in litigation you can be pigeonholed into one thing for a few months.” Competition is “one team, half in the UK, half in Belgium,” and either your first or second three months in the seat can be spent in Brussels. The regular work in here is “academic-y research, producing notes on fine points of law, drafting… that sort of thing.” Of course there’s also “a fair share of admin tasks that aren’t glamorous but have to be done.” Other seats include IP, real estate, financial regulation and employment.

A Slaughters training contract can be quite an intense experience. “People have to be prepared to be independent here,” we heard, and because “there’s not always time for people to explain exactly what they want” you have to “anticipate what they might ask you next.” Your experience of a seat can very much depend on the partner with whom you’re sitting. Some will give you all your work themselves, while others will display a more hands-off attitude. Some are “quite eccentric” and “some are real stars – you need to be careful around them.” “There are characters among them,” explained a trainee knowingly. While this means you should make sure you’ve attempted to solve a problem before you take it to a partner, the firm’s strong sense of hierarchy means they’ll rarely be the first person you ask for help.

Don’t judge a brochure by its cover

Pre-eminence generates assumptions. One of the most long-standing is the idea that Slaughters is a bad firm to choose if you want to go overseas. Its current recruitment brochure tackles this preconception, showing no fewer than five double-page spreads of trainees in exotic locales, gazing intrepidly into the middle distance. Some interviewees acknowledged that “the pictures in the brochure aren’t perhaps as warranted as they’d like them to be.” So what’s the truth of the matter? Around 17 to 20 people (mostly fourth seaters) go overseas at each rotation and Slaughters can send them to ‘best friend’ firms beyond the reach of most competitors – Scandinavia and New Zealand, for example. Wherever they go, recruits get rent-free accommodation and a salary top-up. That also holds true for postings to Slaughters’ own international offices in Brussels (part of a competition seat), Paris (mostly finance) and Hong Kong (commercial). All in all, “it’s an injustice to think you can’t go away on secondment here.”

Another assumption common to the magic circle is one of round-the-clock working. It’s just not true, say Slaughters trainees. “It’s certainly true that if you come here you’ll be working pretty long hours,” they conceded, “but not all the time. As a trainee it’s considered late past 6pm or 7pm,” and if there’s no work it’s acknowledged that “there’s nothing to be gained by staying late.” Part of the reason for this is Slaughters’ lack of billing targets (although recruits do have diary monitors). We can well believe “it’s great not to have to worry about doing X number of hours,” but where’s the motivation if no one’s standing behind you with a stopwatch? “If you’re a trainee and there’s a big transaction going on,” one clarified, “the last thing you want to do is go home at 5.30pm and miss a crucial part of it.”

Violet tendencies

There is (yet another) enduring perception that to get into Slaughter and May you have to have been born to the same purple that bathes its gorgeous website. Referring to everyone administratively by their initials is “like something you’d expect to see on a cricket scoreboard or a dormitory,” but this is Bunhill Row, not Brideshead. “The impression I get is that people think Slaughters is stuck up,” worried one interviewee. “That’s totally wrong.” Granted, people can be direct, and “it’s certainly a ‘no bullshit’ culture,” with “very little rubbish business jargon – if you can say it in two words, say it in two words,” but “arrogance is massively frowned upon.”

It’s true there’s a heavy Oxbridge contingent among those who make it through the famously no-nonsense application process (“there’s no psychometric test… or testing your ability to shout at one another”). However, “the overriding thing is meritocracy” and Slaughters does select from a wide range of backgrounds. One interviewee who’d attended a state school and gone on to a less prestigious university said: “I thought those kinds of things would put the firm off hiring me but they didn’t appear to be an issue.” Ultimately, it wants “straight-A students who are diverse and different.” It’s difficult to find many unifying characteristics, although we heard a few suggestions. “There is a kind of seriousness in a lot of people,” said one recruit. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have a joke or that people go around scowling all day, but people want to achieve and produce excellent work.” Still, there’s a mix of personalities: “You get the quiet ones, the loud ones, the ones who say inappropriate things, the ones who’re always smiling. It’s the same as any schoolyard, except none of them dress badly.” And yet it would be a mistake to assume that every applicant is right for the firm. Leaving aside superb grades, the ideal Slaughters trainee is someone with plenty of self-confidence and little need for hand holding.

With so many trainees arriving each year, “people tend to socialise within their intake.” “The budget for trainee stuff got slashed a couple of years ago,” but there are summer parties and departmental Christmas dos to look forward to, as well as regular pints at the Artillery Arms – unfortunately abbreviated to “the AA.” Those of a sporting bent will find subsidised netball, hockey, tennis, squash, volleyball and football societies. Partners are “obsessed” with cricket and matches are “very keenly contested.” If not at the crease, you’ll quite likely run into fellow trainees at the “very cheap and good” staff restaurant, where steak is cooked to order for £4.50.

In any given qualification year there is an expectation that most who want a job will find one waiting for them. It’s a strong testament to Slaughters’ overall health that retention was predicted to be high even in a recession year, although sources acknowledged it might be “tempting fate” to say so and admitted they might have less control than usual over exactly which department they qualified into. “People aren’t as nervous as they are at other firms,” said second-years when we rang them; “it’s pretty good for morale.” In the end, 72 of the 79 qualifiers were retained in 2009 – 91%, which is about average for Slaughters. It’s even more impressive when you find out that four of the seven who didn’t stay were moving on because they wanted to leave either London or the law.

And finally...

The reasons to apply here are obvious and mostly boil down to quality and reputation. Trainees tell us that “any ambitious and talented person should consider working at Slaughter and May.” We’d add that you have to be pretty confident to boot.