Nigel Shepherd is a former partner and national head of Family Law at Mills & Reeve, retiring as a consultant at the firm in October 2024.

He was national Chair of Resolution 1995–1997 and again 2016–2018, the only person to have held that role twice and was given lifetime membership of Resolution in 2018. He received the John Cornwell Award at the Family Law Awards 2019 and Lifetime Achievement Award from Manchester Law Society in 2022, recognising his contribution to family law particularly in relation to his campaigning work on no fault divorce.

Jo: Nigel, it’s an honour to be able to sit down with you to talk about your life and career. Going right back at the beginning, you started your training contract in 1979. I’m interested to understand your journey into law.

Nigel: I did my A levels and didn’t do very well; I was fast-streamed at school and I think it would have been better if I’d just been in the normal stream and not taken everything a year early and probably would have been better if I’d worked a bit harder! In those days if you got A levels you were guaranteed a job, but it’s very much different now. That’s one of the things that’s changed enormously.

So I took a year out because I was too young to go to university and I started work at a bank in the City, Lloyds Bank International on Queen Victoria Street, and doing an evening course for the banking exams with an idea that I might then go into banking as a career. One of the modules was law and as I was doing that, I enjoyed it and the person teaching it said ‘I think you’ve got a bit of a flair for this, why don’t you consider doing it?’ So I thought I’d give it a go, but with rather dismal A levels I knew that getting in to do law was going to be problematic. I ended up going for an interview at Manchester Polytechnic, now Manchester Met, and they were offering a new course, law and a language, of course quite common now. I ended up doing law and German and got a 2(1). It’s a bit of a lesson; it’s much harder nowadays to get anywhere if you don’t get good A levels, but I found a route in that way, which was great.

Jo: As an aside I was going to ask you Nigel, you’ve become a native Mancunian. Did you stay there from when you went to Manchester Poly?

Nigel: Yes. I met my wife Sandra in the first 6 weeks of starting my studies there. We’re coming up to 50 years together next year. She’s from Lancashire and I think the idea of moving too far south was anathema to her, and I loved it up here. So yes, I came and stayed.

Jo: You started out, I understand, doing crime or spending part of the time doing crime at the beginning of your career. Tell us a little bit about that. I know one of our editors mentioned the ‘chicken nicker’ story…

Nigel: I did my articles in a small High Street practice, with two partners, and so you basically did everything and there wasn’t this sort of rotation or seats. But from the word go I always had a bent for litigation rather than conveyancing or probate. Contentious rather than non-contentious work always floated my boat. And when I qualified, I got a job doing mainly criminal work, but it was a mixture of everything.

And so the chicken nicker… well, I had this client that came in, Fred, and he had been charged with stealing a frozen chicken from the Co-op in New Mills in Derbyshire, which was where we had one of our offices. Fred told me he hadn’t done it. He said he’d just forgotten to pay as he was distracted by putting his umbrella in his bag (along with said chicken). I knew enough about mens rea and thought that this was a solid defence. So I said we’ll rock up at the Magistrates’ Court in New Mills and plead not guilty.

Come the day I arrived at court with Fred, feeling confident, in my three-piece suit and with my briefcase, thinking this is a slam dunk. But as soon as we got into court, the usher shouted loudly, ‘hey up, chicken nicker’s in!’. At that point I looked at Fred’s antecedents for the first time and it transpired that he had seven previous convictions, all for stealing frozen chickens from the Co-op in New Mills. I’d had no idea he had a penchant for pinching poultry. Anyway, we ran the trial and in my mind, my cross-examination was fantastic and on the basis of the prosecution evidence it was clear as day that the verdict should be not guilty. You can imagine my shock and disappointment when the Chairman of the Magistrates said ‘guilty’. Fred simply said, ‘fair enough’.

And then we went on to the plea in mitigation and he’d told me he was treasurer of the over-60s club in New Mills, which I pointed out was a problem – first, the role of treasurer isn’t normally associated with habitual stealers of frozen poultry and, secondly, he was only 58. Anyway, he got a fine and it was all over, but it was a lesson in the importance of preparation!

Jo: Absolutely, preparation is key, but a good day for Bernard Matthews, I guess, that Fred didn’t get away with stealing another frozen chicken.

And at what stage did you decide that crime wasn’t where you wanted to focus your attention and that family law was where you wanted to specialise?

Nigel: I’d always done family and eventually I got a bit disillusioned with the criminal work. The clients changed and I felt increasingly that the work we were doing wasn’t being appreciated in the same way as before. It was becoming more and more difficult to balance things and there were the pressures on legal aid and pay rates and things like that. So I started doing more and more family work before focusing exclusively on that from about the early 1990s. I made a tough decision to leave the firm I was at in Stockport and went into the centre of Manchester and at that point I was recruited as a partner purely to do family law.

Jo: I’d like to segue into your reflections on how the profession has changed during the lifetime of your career, because I know one of the things we talked about was people becoming increasingly specialised.

Nigel: It’s changed enormously. More people were general practitioners when I started out and legal aid meant that we could help people with a wide range of problems. High Street practices were central to the help the public could get with a very wide range of legal issues. The High Street remains important in large areas of the country of course and those of us in large firms and with the luxury of specialising mustn’t forget that, but we now have through consolidation and for other reasons far more large firms and larger family teams.

I think the law has become that much more complex, and even within family law now, you’ll find people that will only do children or they will only do money and you’ve got more and more specialisms that we simply didn’t have when I was starting out, like the issues facing modern families (e.g. surrogacy) etc. The issues facing modern families weren’t really on the radar then so I think that’s changed a lot.

I do feel that a broad idea about how things work in other disciplines in other spheres actually informs your practice and with increased specialisation I think we’ve lost some of that. But you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Also different is that the knowledge that many clients have is vastly greater than it was even 20 years ago. It used to be that you nearly always knew more than your client. But now you know that they’re able to look online, they’re able to find out much more about it. The nature of our advice and the pressures on how we practise have changed. We used to be thrown in at the deep end much more than those at the beginning of their careers are now. The regulatory framework and the greater knowledge of many clients including about their rights as consumers and their expectations when it comes to the service they receive from professionals means we’re much more risk averse. There’s less scope for making mistakes and I think understandably people are much more protected at an earlier stage now. Firms have to balance giving people responsibility against that risk for the business.

Also legal aid was available and things have been hugely different since that was largely scrapped in 2013. That, along with the huge advances in the use of technology, are probably the biggest changes in the way that we can help people.

Jo: Another thing I wanted to pick up on, Nigel, in the spirit of how things have changed in recent years is the emphasis on employee well-being and the increased focus on that. I’m particularly interested to hear your thoughts as I think you’ve been quite open in discussing with people periods of difficulty that you’ve had in the past and how you’ve had to manage that during your career.

Nigel: I mean it’s hugely better now in terms of the understanding of the importance of well-being and the pressures of the job. The job was always pressurised, but I think it’s a lot more pressurised now than it was. You used to have time because we didn’t have emails. We didn’t have mobile phones. Basically in my early days, you sent a letter and you had 3 or 4 days go by with nothing happening unless somebody picked up the phone.

Jo: And I remember I also used to panic if you got a fax in, you thought, gosh, this must be really urgent because somebody is sending a fax rather than just a letter in the DX!

Nigel: Well, yes, and fax was the new kid on the block for me, after telex. So I mean, I’m not that ancient, but really it has changed enormously and so the focus on well-being is absolutely crucial.

I’ve had two periods of kind of burnout or depression, both caused by intense periods of work. The first time was when I stepped down as Resolution chair for the first time in 1997, when I’d basically worked at a fever pitch for a couple of years and running my practice 5 days a week without any concessions for the work that I was doing for Resolution. And we didn’t have the Resolution staff team then that we have now, and when it stopped and something wasn’t coming across my desk all the time from Resolution, it was like a guillotine. And I didn’t know what had hit me. I felt that was the end of my career. Genuinely, I thought it’s never going to get better because that’s the way you are if you’re in that trough. You didn’t talk about it and the support professionally wasn’t there and it felt like there was a stigma.

The second time it happened also followed a period of intensive work in the early days after our family teams’ move to Mills & Reeve in 2008, but the difference in the way it was dealt with was enormous. I knew what was happening. I knew that I had to ask for help and I got it. I appreciate that I may have been fortunate being in that firm and know that many others may not have the same experience, but I am sure that the development in our profession’s understanding of mental health and well-being even in the decade between my two episodes was a significant factor and clearly since then this understanding has moved on even more. The support structure is much greater, so that’s a real change in the right direction.

My only word of caution is that some stress is normal. I wouldn’t want the focus on well-being to mean that normal stress suddenly becomes perceived as being worse than it is. It’s important to talk about it, but it’s also important to recognise that you’ll come through it with that support. And there’s a difference between stress and depression and burnout. The key is to manage the stress so it doesn’t turn into something more. And again, talking to people and getting support is all part of that. So we’re in a much better place now.

Jo: That’s incredibly open and honest of you to share in that way and something I’m sure people reading this will find really helpful. If I may, looking back to the first period you’ve described in, I think 1997, what support do you wish you had had then that perhaps is more available now?

Nigel: There were a couple of people, including my former principal, who were brilliant, you know, and I was able to go and talk to them, but I didn’t feel able to talk to anybody in my firm at the time more widely about it. And I don’t think that’s gone completely, although now many firms have got employee assistance schemes or similar arrangements so there’s an external helpline number that you can call if you don’t feel that you can share with your line manager.

But Mills & Reeve is an incredibly supportive environment; it is a great place to be in terms of well-being and many other firms have the same commitment to their people. You can talk to people without thinking you’re going be treated as some kind of pariah and that that’s the end of your career. So the first time I was hit with depression I really, really thought that it was never going to get better, that the whole stigma would follow me around forever and it didn’t. And of course, that’s the lesson that you learn. And you know, I think that support is one of the biggest changes for the better that we’ve had, as long as you don’t catastrophise things that don’t need catastrophising and give yourself time. Talk to people if you’re feeling a bit rough, but manage it as best you can.

Jo: That’s all good advice. And in the spirit of good advice, for any young family lawyers reading this interview now, who are just starting out in their careers, what advice would you give them?

Nigel: It’s always very difficult because it can sound a bit patronising. I think everybody has to find their own way. A couple of things occur to me though, and the first is, push yourself. Don’t sit in a comfort zone. Volunteer for things: join Resolution; join the FLBA; join both if you’re qualified for both, but volunteer for things and take yourself out of that comfort zone. I think that way you do expand your horizons. Our work is very intense and it would be very easy to sit there and just do the job. Find something outside the day job that enthuses you and get that more rounded experience. And the other thing is that we’re rightly keen on teamwork and there’s a focus on that and it’s far better than it used to be. We don’t want people sitting there and grabbing all the work and keeping it all to themselves, but what I would say is be a little bit selfish, because at the end of the day you are responsible for what happens in your career despite all the help. Be a team player but find your own niche and make sure that people know about it. I know ‘selfishness’ sounds rather counterintuitive in our collaborative world, but the reality is people notice what you do if you do it, not if you give it to somebody else to do!

Jo: Yes. The other thing I often say to young people entering the profession now is that looking back I wish I hadn’t rushed to qualify in the way I did. I never had any time out. I didn’t have any gap year at any point. It wasn’t really a thing back then when I was starting out in the job 30 years ago in the way it is now and I think one begins to realise that this job is a marathon, not a sprint, and you’ve got a long career in front of you. And actually I think it’s good for young people to take the opportunity to travel, to go see the world, to have new experiences before they fully embark on their careers.

Nigel: Yes gap years are the norm now it seems and we did have interrailing in my day (and still do I think!). I had to have a year out before I started at Man Met, but I wanted to work. I wanted my own money. Then I got married during articles, we had a house and there was no way that I was ever going to be able to take any time off. I had to work. We mustn’t forget also that there are a lot of people in that situation today that don’t have the luxury of being able to take time out.

But yes, it’s good to take some time off. It is a long haul but lots of other jobs are long hauls and lots of people don’t take time off. So if you can, great.

I think that’s changed a lot, the expectation from those working and those employing them is completely different. When you joined a firm previously, you genuinely thought that you were probably going to stay there. People move around a lot more now but also we now accept much more that people might not see spending their whole life doing one thing as very appealing. We’ve seen people leaving firms and then coming back later and being welcomed with open arms because firms want to retain talented people and adapting to changed expectations and how people see their careers makes business sense.

Jo: Yes, absolutely. And indeed, many firms are trying to attract and retain their talent by formalising sabbaticals policies and that’s something new.

Nigel: Yes, we never had those back in the day. Rather annoyingly I didn’t get the required years in to qualify for my sabbatical under the criteria at Mills & Reeve or my previous firm but If I’d had the sabbatical later on, I would have worried about whether I would have wanted to come back. I would have taken it had I had the option, but I think I might have found it really difficult, having had 3 months, not enforced by being off through burnout, to actually sort of figure out, I’ve got to go back to all of this again, update my training. Now everything moves so fast that 3 months off… I mean it’s managed, people do it and the firms like ours, they’ll get you back and you’ll have time to get back into it and you’ve got teams that look after your files, so it works. Clients understand it much better and you know a lot of clients actually now want their lawyers to have that time out. And it’s actually part of the pitches and the tenders that law firms do, that clients want to know how you’re going to protect your team from burnout, how your time off is managed. And that’s all completely different to what it used to be.

Jo: Yes, absolutely. Tell me, on a slightly lighter note, what’s the most embarrassing moment of your career?

Nigel: Well, my career’s been 45 years, so there’s been lots of them. I sent a letter to the wrong place years and years ago and I thought, that’s going to be a disaster. But I actually managed to go and retrieve it. Then you could just phone somebody up and say, look, I’ve sent you this letter by mistake. Now of course, you have to report it. You mustn’t hide your mistakes and that’s absolutely right. And a while back I sent a message to a client about a meeting the next day but unfortunately, I sent it to her husband by mistake…

Jo: What was the response you got?

Nigel: I immediately realised and then I was frantically trying to recall the message but couldn’t. To be fair to him he replied and just said, I don’t think this is for me. Of course I told my client and the good thing is I hadn’t said anything along the lines of ‘I know you’d like £2m but we’d accept £1.5m’, which would have been the end of my involvement in the case and we would have had to have dropped out. I think it might actually have helped the meeting in a way because I’d said in the message that we were there to do a deal, which was what his big panic was: that we weren’t serious about trying to settle. So it was a lucky break, but that moment of horror when you actually press send and realise. Again with emails, now we’ve all got protocols about things and you get warnings saying ‘this is a new recipient, are you sure?’. So there’s a lot more help available, but yes, that was a nervy moment.

Jo: One of those heart-stopping moments and we’ve all had them.

Nigel: We all get them and you will get them if it hasn’t happened to you yet. That’s one of the things to say to people – you will make mistakes. Admit them. Learn from them. You’ll get help. It probably won’t be the disaster you think at the time. And the longer it takes to happen in your career, the worse it might feel. It’s almost better to get a horrible one out of the way early and get over it.

Jo: Agreed. On a different note, in speaking to some of your Mills & Reeve colleagues ahead of this chat today they spoke, among other things, very fondly of your competitive nature. In fact, one of them mentioned you subbing him halfway through a table football match on one occasion! So I’m quite keen to know where does that competitive nature come from? And do you have an occasion where you can think of it being particularly pronounced?

Nigel: Yes, I’ve always been like that. And I see it as much as a fault as an advantage. I can’t help it. I think I might just have mellowed a little bit now but I’ve always been that way. It comes from school and sport; I was surrounded by quite a lot of talented people at school and talented in different ways. And I think you’re always trying to keep up with it, but it’s always been like that. I always joke about it. You know when your children are growing up and you play games with them, I always wanted them to play by the rules. I used to joke that I used to bowl bouncers at the kids when we were playing cricket in the garden, and they were only 3. So there’s a downside to it, but it can be an advantage because you push yourself and you want to be competitive. But I’m sure it can be irritating at times as well.

Jo: Moving on to a totally different topic, we can’t do this interview without talking about your role at Resolution. You’re the only person who has chaired the organisation twice. So I’m interested to understand when you first became involved in Resolution and your observations on how the organisation has changed during the time that you have been involved with it.

Nigel: Resolution started in 1982, of course, as the Solicitors Family Law Association but my training contract (articles) principal already subscribed to the Code of Conduct ethos before that. The SFLA came to Manchester in about 1984/1985. We had a steering committee and we had James Harcus, then treasurer, and the late Mr Justice Bush came to address an open meeting which was really well attended. So I became the first Manchester chair after the steering committee had stepped down and I stayed chair for a few years until I got onto the National Committee in 1991.

Jo: And how do you feel the organisation has changed over the years?

Nigel: Well, hugely. In the early days we had one member of staff, the wonderful Mary I’Anson, and that was it. When I was chair the first time we were dealing with the Family Law Act 1996 work and we actually got members to pay a voluntary levy for outside consultants that did our parliamentary lobbying work and PR. It was so different by the time of my second term where we all had the support of a dedicated staff team as partners in everything we were doing.

And so it’s changed vastly, but at its core, everything that was great about Resolution in the early days is still there. It’s still the Code of Practice. It’s still the approach of wanting to help people by doing things the right way, so the core hasn’t changed. It’s just the support structure to enable us to deliver it has changed.

Jo: It’s incredible, isn’t it, how the size of the membership has grown over the years to be about 6,500 today and how it’s a much broader church membership today to reflect how we practise family law now, so that we do embrace therapeutic professionals and financial advisers, mediators, obviously barristers and solicitors coming together. So what’s your reflection on those changes and how everything has moved on?

Nigel: We’ve moved away from saying we are a family law organisation to saying we’re a family justice organisation. That’s absolutely right. And I was heavily involved in the change of the name to Resolution, which was quite was an interesting period and there were many who weren’t keen on losing the Solicitors Family Law Association. But it was absolutely essential, because we were no longer just about solicitors, we were no longer just about family law, it was much, much wider than that. In terms of barristers, when I first got going barristers weren’t allowed to set foot in solicitors’ offices. There was that demarcation, it was so different. And now we’re working together and it’s brilliant that we’ve got barrister members and we’ve got mediator members and we’ve got therapists that can join us. It’s wholly different and for the better.

Jo: Now tell us, Nigel, in 2016, you became National Chair for a second time of asking, the only person ever to do so. What persuaded you to do that?

Nigel: I was asked and knew I had unfinished business.

Jo: What persuaded you to say yes?

Nigel: Put simply, no fault divorce. I’d been heavily involved back in the mid-1990s and we had it in a completely different form. The Family Law Act 1996 was imperfect to say the least. But you know, we succeeded, but it just never got implemented. We carried on the campaign. We never gave up and it just seemed that the mood music was right. I never lost faith that it was really achievable and I thought that would be a nice kind of bookend, if we could achieve it having got it and worked on it so hard 20 years before or whatever it was. And I’m glad I did.

Jo: It’s a phenomenal job that you did over decades and you are known as Mr No Fault Divorce. Was there ever a moment when you thought, this is never going to happen?

Nigel: No, I don’t think there was. You know when you get the perfect storm of Owens and the Finding Fault research from Liz Trinder and her team and I think you know, what are the key things? Even the Daily Mail were on board by the end! They had been opponents of reform and in the past there had been vitriol and abuse, especially about Lady Hale at the time as the original architect of no fault divorce when she was at the Law Commission. But with Owens, the mood changed in Parliament and there was cross-party support.

So we knew the second time around that if we could get it before Parliament, it would go through. And as it turned out, that was what happened.

Jo: Absolutely. I think our biggest disappointment at the end was because, as I remember it, the final reading and the passage of the bill all happened during one of the early COVID-19 lockdowns, we all had to raise a virtual glass of champagne in our respective homes to celebrate.

Nigel: I remember sitting there when it went through the final reading and sending still my most popular tweet; you know I’m not up there with Taylor Swift or Elon Musk, but I tweeted that it’s passed. I remember being in Parliament the first time when it went through the final reading, and coming out to fluffy microphones from Sky News outside at 11:30 pm. But it was nice that this time it stuck and we actually got it and I should say it was it was very, very much a team effort. I mean, you put an enormous amount into it, the Family Law Reform Committee, the staff team, Rachel Rogers and Matt Bryant; it was a phenomenal team effort and it was a privilege to be involved in it.

Jo: And what next for law reform? For you? What do you think is pressing now?

Nigel: I still think legal aid. I know that there’s been a commitment made to the funding of initial legal advice before the election got in the way of that. I don’t think we’re ever getting proper legal aid provision back, even though you can show economically that it saves money down the line and at least some solid early advice is invaluable. I grew up in the days of the green form, where you sign somebody up and you know you could help them. You could give them 2 hours’ advice or 3 hours if you were drafting a divorce petition, irrespective of means. My charging rate was the same when I started off for legal aid and for private. The only difference is whether you had some forms to sign or not. So getting something back to give people a steer in the early stages is crucial I think.

The other big thing is cohabitation reform and we did have a cross-party commitment to that at the Resolution awareness week event in November 2023. It’s just, I hope, a question of when and parliamentary time.

Jo: And moving away from family law to family justice, I wanted to touch upon arbitration. You were one of the first people to qualify as an arbitrator and I’m interested in your reflections on the future of family arbitration – whether you’d make any changes to the scheme as it is and what you think might be holding arbitration back.

Nigel: It’s a surprise that it hasn’t taken off more than it has, though obviously it’s talked about a lot more. There still seems to be a problem with one side suggesting it and the other side having a reason for not going for it. Some of the reasons given are spurious, largely; I think the main reason is that delay often suits one side and it doesn’t suit the other.

So I think the key to unlocking it is going to be the attitude of the courts, which is changing and now the NCDR encouragement under the new rules and the need to give an explanation for why you haven’t explored NCDR. But at the end of the day there’s always a risk that increased focus on what is effectively private justice is a get out of jail card for not funding the courts properly and people have a right to go to court to have their issues resolved. You can encourage, and you should encourage, NCDR. Of course, in the vast majority of cases there should be an answer, but at the end of the day the courts are there to resolve disputes that can’t be dealt with by agreement. Of course, there’s a two-tier system argument about whether it’s fair for those who can afford it being able to get a fast-track bespoke family justice service, but if you can afford it and you want to get a solution, which you should do, then it is an option that should be used much more than it currently is.

Jo: Out of interest and for whatever reason, one of those potentially being the pressure that the family courts remain under, do you think there are any circumstances in which the court should be able to mandate family arbitration?

Nigel: I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of our justice system requiring people to pay privately. As I’ve said, people are entitled to use the courts and they should be funded so that they operate effectively. I just think that it’s not the same as commercial contracts that have arbitration clauses. I don’t think compulsory NCDR is the answer personally. Strong encouragement, yes. Mandatory? No, not for me.

Jo: I have to ask – what next for Nigel Shepherd?

Nigel: Well, we’re doing this interview when I’m in my last 2 months at Mills & Reeve. We’ve agreed that I should end my consultancy at the end of October, which I’m ready for although of course it will be a big wrench after so long there and working in family law generally. I’m still involved with Ampla Finance, which is continuing so I’ll have that connection with the family law profession as a result of that being one of the products we offer. Sandra and I have five grandchildren and we will spend more time in Anglesey, which people who follow me on Twitter will know about from me boring them with pictures of it occasionally. And I will play more golf! So yes, it is time for the next chapter, but as a life member of Resolution I will definitely be keeping in touch and I hope I’ll still go to some events and particularly the annual conference because I’ve never missed one! As well as being the only person to have chaired Resolution twice, I’m the only person to have been to every single Resolution conference since they started in 1989.

Jo: Which is quite an achievement and one you have to keep up, definitely.

Nigel: Yes, I’m hoping that I can find good reasons to do so and to be in Birmingham next year.

Jo: And on a related topic, do you have any advice for people who are approaching the end of their career? I have colleagues who really look forward to retirement and then I know others who have really struggled to get their head around retiring and suddenly stopping a career that they absolutely love. So have you got advice for how people might prepare themselves for that transition to retirement?

Nigel: Yes. I think you have to make your mind up whether you’re going to step back and do it gradually or just stop. Personally, I was lucky because I was asked to do the Resolution chairing again in 2016. And I knew from previous experience that if I tried to do that and carry on full-on as a partner, it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be right for me, for the firm or for Resolution. So I stepped back to a consultancy at that point, on 2 days a week, but with Resolution it was still pretty much a full-time job, but I was able to keep going with client work. My team were great. I was passing things over and then in 2020 I stopped doing client work apart from arbitrations and private FDRs and that coincided with COVID-19 which for me was a relief because I looked at how people were having to juggle things, colleagues who were sitting in a one-bedroom flat trying to work, sitting on their bed and then remote hearings and all the stuff around that. And I was just looking at it from afar, thinking, thank goodness I don’t have to be dealing with this because I think I would have gone mad. I know I would have managed like everybody else did, but I think it must have been enormously stressful and enormously difficult and bluntly I was quite glad I was sitting in my garden during that time. And then of course things have moved on from there. We’ve learned a lot about this remote working and all the issues around that and all the benefits around that. But ultimately, with retirement, I think you’ve got to decide whether you’re going to try and take a glide path or just stop. One of my former partners has just retired and he just stopped, went from 5 days to just stopping and he’s loving it. But I think everybody’s different.

You have to find what’s right for you and talk to your colleagues. There are courses you can go on. A lot of firms will do that and there’ll be programmes that you can go on to help you find something you want to do. My advice is, don’t just drift into it. Try and work out what you’re going to do with your time, because it’s a huge change.

Jo: Yes, of course. And finally, how would you want people to remember the mark that you have made?

Nigel: I think it’s likely to be the no fault divorce stuff. I mean there are far more talented family lawyers than me, including within my own team.

Jo: Very self-effacing as ever!

Nigel: OK I suppose I did alright, but I think probably in terms of my mark, it’s the stuff with Resolution and no fault divorce. It’s how I’d like to be remembered and it’s probably also inevitably how I will be remembered, which is nice to have a legacy in that sense.

Jo: I don’t think there’s anybody who wouldn’t agree with that sentiment, Nigel, after the huge, huge work that you put into that over a number of years.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to have this interview with you and actually, despite having known you for a number of years, to have learned so much about you and about your career through this discussion, and the anecdotes that you’ve got. I know that you’re carrying on sharing them and will be speaking at the YRes conference in November.

Nigel: I am, yes, and the timing is perfect as it will be the week after I’ve stopped at Mills & Reeve. So it’s really quite nice to go and talk to the next generation about some of the issues we’ve discussed today.