Gillian Hall, Senior Partner, Watson Burton
by WIN Admin — published in Press Releases
THE announcement of a senior partner at a Northern law firm rarely makes a notable claim on history. And in many ways the newest incumbent of the top job at 199-year- old Newcastle firm Watson Burton is very much what you may expect.
They are ambitious, fearsomely bright, popular, no nonsense and widely respected. But in one respect the diminutive figure smiling across a desk at the firm’s modern city centre offices is most unusual.
Surprising as it may seem, Gillian Hall is the only woman to have made it to the leading role at a full service law firm in the whole of the North of England.
And while she is modest, jovial and quietly spoken you don’t get to break the mould in a highly competitive business like corporate law without being pretty tough. Hall exudes an understated strength of character and is aware of her achievement.
I suppose I have always been a role model for women. When I started as an equity partner at Watson Burton in 1988 there was only one other female partner in the city, Catherine Wood, who is now at Sintons,” she says.
“That there are now more female partners must have had something to do with people seeing us and realising they could do it.”
Hall, who has headed the firm’s corporate team for 18 years, said that she had never felt her career had been held back by prejudice because of her gender.
“Of course, when I started here you couldn’t go in the Northern Counties Club or certain golf clubs, but I really believe the North East and this firm in particular is a meritocracy,” she adds.
Hers is a strength of personality which has its roots in growing up on a farm in North Tyneside. The 49-year-old says she had her first lessons in corporate wheeling and dealing from her father.
“When he took his wool to market once a year he would always wear scruffy clothes to make himself look poor. That was ingrained into me,” she says, looking smart in a cream suit.
“As a farmer’s daughter I spent my early life submerged in business and, if someone would pay the right price for what we produced, then we would have money to live on for the rest of the year. Doing deals was part and parcel of my early life.”
Hall went on to study classics and history at A-level and went on to become the first in her family to go to university, and she did it in style and took a first class degree at Cambridge.
Like most ambitious and bright young Oxbridge law graduates she headed to London. But while she enjoyed her two years at respected City firm Lovell White King she wasn’t overly fond of London and happily returned to the North East.
“When I cross the Tyne, I know I’ve come home. I could have stayed in London and probably become a partner there by now but I like being in the North East and always have done. This is a firm I really care about and it’s a huge honour to become senior partner,” she says.
An interview over lunch with then senior partner David Foster at Watson Burton and she was sold on the idea of a return.
“I interviewed a few firms and Watson Burton impressed me the most.” However this first marriage proved to be something of a Taylor/Burton affair with Hall departing after six months only to return a few months later.
She recounts: “I was thinking ‘this is real easy’ and I wanted to go into industry.” She soon landed a job with North East engineering giant NEI which saw her handling huge engineering contracts all over the world. But after a few months she says she realised: “It just wasn’t for me, it lacked the variety of a private practice law firm.”
She was welcomed back to Watson Burton’s corporate finance team with a target of becoming a partner within three years and did so in 1988.
Watson Burton, one of the region’s oldest law firms will celebrate its 200th anniversary next year. It was primarily developed by lawyer and philanthropist Robert Spence Watson, whose involvement with the firm started in the 1860s and lasted for over 50 years.
But the old firm has not stood still. Watson Burton was formerly based in Pilgrim Street, then Collingwood Street before moving into new premises at St James Gate in the city in 2004.
Since then it has opened office in Leeds and more recently another in the “Gherkin” building in the City of London, both of which are continuing to be successful and, Hall stresses, that despite scepticism in rival firms, will continue to stay open.
Hall has a strong sense of the firm’s heritage and believes Robert Spence Watson would be impressed with how the practice has progressed.
“We still have some of the clients Robert Spence Watson brought into the firm, the electricity board – in its latest incarnation – the Miners Colliery Managers Association and Parsons Brinckerhoff.
“If we’ve got them still then, he would be thinking, we must be doing something right. He would certainly be impressed by the new offices and the offices in Leeds and London. I think he would be very proud.”
However Hall will be Watson Burton’s third senior partner since its most recent move into new offices. Her mentor David Foster was replaced by the well-known, sports car driving, Andrew Hoyle as senior partner in 1996 after 16 years at the helm, with Hoyle stepping down 10 years later to be replaced by the genial and unassuming construction specialist Rob Langley, who left last month to become a partner at rival Newcastle firm Muckle LLP.
Hall, who lives with her academic husband Richard Whitaker and their son David, 13, in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, aims to become higher profile than her predecessor.
“In many ways Watson Burton has been hiding its light under a bushel in the last few years and I want to change that. I am already quite well known in the business community and now I am determined to get out there,” she smiles.
Hall is a member of the CBI regional council and sits on the board that helps distribute Government grants to North East business.
She now faces the challenge of heading a firm in a tough environment for professional services. Watson Burton saw its revenues slide to £19m in the 12 months to August 2009, from £22m a year earlier, and cut 55 of its 300 staff last summer.
“It’s been a rough 18 months for all professional services firms, and part of my role is to say the past is over and this is the future. We have a new Government and we are going into a big review of the public services. I believe there are opportunities for the private sector. I am cautiously optimistic,” she says.
“The firm has had the same strategy for the last three to four years. That strategy is to operate as a business and develop the new markets in Leeds and London, bringing some of the high-quality work back to Newcastle.
“But I think our mistake is that we have not made that strategy clear to the local market. We were maybe a little too focussed in other areas.
“Rob did a good job but he was not as active in the local market as I want to be. We want to reconnect locally.
“We will continue to have a presence in Leeds and London and we want to maintain and develop upon our existing good quality clients and lawyers.”
Source: Peter McCusker, The Journal