How the practice actually runs

A short account of how the practice actually runs, written so that someone considering an approach knows what they would actually be approaching.

The desk is not a firm. It is a practice, in the older sense of the word: a small number of people doing serious work for a small number of clients, with a settled way of doing it. The work is led by me, and the people I do it with are counsel rather than staff. I want to describe what the working week here looks like, because the question I am most often asked, in different forms, is whether what we offer is what the asker has been told it is.

The working week begins with the reading. The systems have been running through the night, and the day starts with the picture that has formed since the previous afternoon. The picture is reviewed against what we know about each present matter. Most of what has been read does not warrant attention. The small portion that does is read more carefully, and the question of whether it is a change or a coincidence is taken seriously. A great deal of the working week is this.

Requests come in throughout the day. A request from an existing client about a matter we are already watching. An introduction from an adviser about someone new. A direct enquiry through the form on this site. Each is read by me. Those that warrant a reply are replied to within the three working days mentioned on the contact page; those that are urgent are replied to within the working day. The reply is written, not automated, and signed.

When a new client is taken on, the first work is the account. This is the assessment of what is presently knowable about them, drawn from the categories of source that bear on their position. It is not a quick exercise. The account is taken at a serious level of detail, because what follows in every other part of the work depends on it being correct. It is delivered as a written document, discussed in person or by appropriately secured call, and the work after it proceeds from what we agree the picture shows.

The response, where a response is called for, is taken through the channels appropriate to it. There are several, and the right channel is rarely obvious from the description of the matter alone. The choice involves counsel; some matters involve external advisers, brought in for a specific purpose; some matters are handled entirely within the practice. None of it is improvised. The strategies are settled, drawn from when needed, and revised when the picture in front of us suggests they should be.

The watching that follows is what most of the working week then becomes. It is the part of the practice described in The watch, and it is the part most clients see least of, because when it is doing its job nothing reaches them. When something does reach them, it reaches them with an account of what it is, what it appears to mean, and what the options are. Their decision is theirs to make; our work is to put them in a position to make it.

We do not advertise. We do not run a sales process. We do not transact. We do not act in commercial matters that are properly the work of advisers in those fields. We do not work on matters that involve actively obstructing the proper administration of justice, and we do not work to remove records of public interest. None of these positions is contested by anyone serious; they are listed only because the question is asked.

What the practice is, then, is small, settled, written, and continuous. It is led from London with a presence in Singapore. The counsel I work with are picked individually for the work they do; the systems that run the watch are built and maintained as part of the practice; the matters we take on are limited in number by the seriousness with which we treat each one.

If the description sounds restrained, that is because it is meant to. The work is restrained. The people who do it are restrained. The clients we want to serve are restrained, mostly, and they recognise the disposition. The ones who do not recognise it are not the clients for whom this practice is built.