Work Life Quiz: Andrew Owen, Leo Abse & Cohen

What was your first-ever job?
Kitchen porter at the Cartref restaurant in St Davids, Pembrokeshire.

What was your worst ­experience as a trainee?
Getting my tactics wrong after serving an injunction and finding the violent ex-husband between me and the door.

Where’s the best place to go if you want to find out what’s really going on in the office?
To see the accounts girls.

What time do you usually leave the office?
My reputation is as a ‘9-5er’.

What do you do at weekends?
Boss the centre of midfield in the parks of Cardiff.

What’s your favourite ­restaurant?
My wife told me to say the Gwaelod y Garth Inn, Cardiff.

If you weren’t a lawyer what would you have been?
There are plenty who still doubt my credentials as a lawyer.

What’s your favourite film?
Get Carter.

What was the first record you ever bought?
The Osmonds’ Crazy ­Horses.

Who’s your hero and why?
My Dad (for all kinds of reasons) and Mum (it’s a South Wales lawyers’ thing).

What’s the best thing about your job?
Meeting Billy Bragg at a marketing event.

What’s the toughest thing about your job?
The office toilet if ­Rhodri’s had a ruby the night before.

What has been your biggest work/career mistake and what did you learn from it?
Representing a juvenile in the local magistrates and being ‘instructed’ by her father (a career criminal and proper ‘ard nut) that I must elect a Crown Court trial for her (which the court had no power to do) - which I did.

What car do you drive?
Middle-aged man’s multi-dented Renault ­Scenic.

What book are you reading?
Shoot Annual 1991.

What’s your favourite ­children’s book?
Large Lifter by Arlene Blanchard and Tony Wells.

What’s the most exciting deal/case you’ve worked on and why?
I’m not trusted with ­anything complicated.

If you were stranded on a desert island what two luxury items would you take?
The latest edition of the Civil Procedure Rules and the Anarchy in ­Timperley album by Frank Sidebottom.

What’s the worst partner ­conference location you’ve attended and why?
Don’t really do much of that sort of thing.

What’s the longest you’ve worked without sleep?
See earlier answer, re office hours.

If a movie was being made about your life, which actor would play you and why?
The bloke who plays Roy Cropper in Coronation Street - res ipsa loquitur.

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with and why?
Is this where you trick me into talking about ex-work partners?

Tell us two truths and one myth about yourself (in any order)…
I failed to recognise both of the only famous clients I ever had the pleasure to deal with - the late Steve Marriott (a really nice bloke) and a high-profile cast member of ‘Allo ‘Allo. I once scored a goal at White Hart Lane.
I can drink three pints of Brains SA in the same session.

CV
Name: Andrew Owen
Firm: Leo Abse & Cohen
Title: Partner, personal injury department
Lives: Cardiff
Education:
1981-84: LLB, Reading University
1984-85: College of Law, Guildford
Work history:
1986-88: Trainee, Foskett Marr Gadsby & Head, Epping
1988-96: Solicitor, Foskett Marr
1996-97: Solicitor, Thomas Graham Solicitors, Cardiff
1997-present: Partner, Leo Abse & Cohen, Cardiff