 |
 |
|
01-October-2007
How did I get here: John McWilliams - Head of Commercial Recoveries
How did I get here?
A question I often ask myself and, to be truthful, I am not sure of the answer!
I did not at any stage set out to be a Solicitor. My first love was horses. I started riding when I was 4 and loved it. Naturally I wanted to become a jockey. I left school when I was 18 without picking up my A-levels and worked as a pupil trainer at Toby Baldings in Hampshire for 2 years. It soon became clear that I was too heavy and, damn it, not quite good enough to become a jockey. I decided that I would become a trainer.
There then followed a year course at West Oxfordshire Technical College, learning some of the science behind racehorse. I also got 5 City and Guilds in agricultural subjects such as Beef Production.
At the end of the course, I was lucky enough to get a position working for one of the best trainers in the States but I was not to start for 6 months and I was broke. To keep body and soul together I got a job through a friend working for Sally Chipperfield’s Circus as an animal handler. This was one of the more surreal periods of my life as I handled all kinds of animals including the big cats. Part of the job was to drive animals to film locations, as Sally had contracts to supply animals for filming. The producers would automatically employ me as an extra to handle the animals, as they thought I knew them for years rather than having just picked them up for a zoo friend of Sally’s an hour before!
In the States, I worked for Neil Drysdale for a year on the West Coast. He had some of the best horses in America and won a 2 Breeders Cup races whilst I was learning from him. I then moved to Kentucky where I was an assistant Stud manager for a year before returning to England for family reasons.
After this, I was an Assistant trainer for Con Horgan (we won the Ebor!) and Brooke Sanders, for a year each. This brings me to the late eighties where it became clear there was going to be a recession and I decided to get out of racing for good.
I knew that I wanted to do a degree but had no idea what to do it in. My A-levels were in the sciences and over 10 years old, I had no talent for languages and not much idea of anything else. My younger brother had done a law degree and I decided to give that a shot. I was very lucky and basically “blagged” my way into college.
I still had no intention of becoming a Solicitor but signed up for the professional exams for something to do once I got the degree. It was only when I had got my professional exam that it dawned on me that there was very little else that I was qualified to do!
In a time when articles were virtually impossible to come by, I was lucky to get articles in a small firm in the West End and, on completing my articles, to get a job working for the Institute of Chartered accountants in the Square Mile.
I then worked for a Legal 500 in Torquay, before moving to a small Commercial Litigation specialist in Liverpool for about 8 years.
I then came back to Leeds and took up a position as Head of Department at Levi’s.
How did I get here – I’m still not entirely sure.
ENDS
About Levi Solicitors LLP Disclaimer |
