Maurice Turnor Gardner’s senior partner on a decade in the City, John McDonnell and being Allen & Overy’s first female partner
Lawyer to the super rich Clare Maurice has a disarmingly simple view of the world.
“Life doesn’t change really, people are born, get married, make money and die,” she says.
The senior partner of private wealth boutique Maurice Turnor Gardner is reflecting on the ten years since she led a breakaway from Allen & Overy to launch the firm.
While life goes on, the political and economic climate for the firm’s wealthy clients has morphed dramatically between 2009 and 2019.
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Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who has made his disdain for the rich clear, said last week that Labour’s economic policies would mark a “revolution” if the party took power.
“In 2009 we weren’t contemplating a left wing government,” Maurice says. “The front page of Morning Wire this morning [30 April] was a bit alarming with Mr McDonnell saying we want revolution, not evolution.”
Maurice says her firm’s clients have either already got their money outside the UK or are prepared to take a long-term view on a Jeremy Corbyn-led country.
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“I was talking to a client the other day who just shrugged his shoulders and more-or-less said: ‘We’ve been around for a long time, governments come and go and we’ll just have to cope with it if it happens.’”
Maurice is no stranger to economic and political turbulence. She founded her firm in May 2009 following a financial crisis-era restructuring at Allen & Overy which involved a 10 per cent cut to its workforce and a decision to stop focusing on non-core areas such as private wealth.
Despite opening at such an inauspicious time, the firm has thrived; from 23-strong at launch, there are now 50 employees. Unusually among law firms, the firm’s 10-strong partnership is majority female.
“We are pretty well all women,” Maurice says, “the boys are the one’s going ‘what about me?’” she jokes.
The situation is a stark reversal from when Maurice was appointed as Allen & Overy’s first female partner in 1985.
“It was extraordinary at the time because suddenly Allen & Overy looked as if it was coming into the 20th century. It was hugely welcomed, the women in the firm went ‘wow – we can do it.’”
The attitude to women in the City in that era is exemplified by her initial interview at Allen & Overy in 1975.
Maurice asked the partner presiding over the interview whether it would be a problem if she got a 2.2 in her degree rather than a 2.1.
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“He said: ‘No, the only problem I had was I was a woman!’ she recalls.
More than 30 years later A&O’s partnership remains just 18 per cent female, which is not an atypical ratio at leading City firms.
Maurice says the 24/7 service expected from partners sits badly with the demands of family life.
“It’s a big tension and I don’t know how we are ever going to solve that,” she says.
Looking back at the firm’s trajectory, Maurice starts to say that they have been lucky, before correcting herself.
“When I was appointed as the first woman partner at Allen & Overy, I remember saying to John [Rink – then managing partner], ‘I’m so lucky, I was in the right place at the right time,’ and he said, ‘you make your own luck.’”
“That is a piece of advice I would give to younger partners: look for the opportunities and that will contribute to making your own luck,” she says.