Work Life Quiz: Seamus Smyth, Carter Lemon Camerons
What was your first-ever job? Schoolteacher.
Seamus Smyth 1
What was your worst experience as a trainee?
Failing to notice that page 99 was missing from a document that had to be initialled on every page by several important people.
Where’s the best place to go if you want to find out what’s really going on in the office?
The tea room or the lift.
What time do you usually leave the office?
7.30pm.
What do you do at weekends?
General domesticity. Swim, golf, eat, drink, cook, some work.
What’s your favourite restaurant?
Rules in London.
If you weren’t a lawyer what would you have been?
Soldier, teacher, writer – depending on the crumbling of the cookie at the time of the decision.
What’s your favourite film?
Lawrence of Arabia.
What was the first record you ever bought?
Hambone by Bill Haley. Don’t ask me any more about it. It was in about 1956.
Who’s your hero and why?
FW de Klerk, for having the wisdom to see that he and his followers had been wrong and the courage and strength to persuade them to radically change course.
What’s the best thing about your job?
The stimulus of horsing around with ideas and words in a competitive environment.
What’s the toughest thing about your job?
Ploughing through masses of boring material in search of the nugget that matters.
What’s your biggest work/career mistake and what did you learn from it?
Submitting to unduly long working hours while my sons were small. Children grow up very quickly whether you’re paying attention or not and the clock can’t be put back.
What book are you currently reading?
The Tribes of Britain by David Miles.
What’s your favourite children’s book?
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
What’s the most exciting deal/case you’ve worked on and why?
Hartt v Newspaper Publishing plc (The Independent) (1989): about the provenance of a work by Michelangelo, two juries, documents in four languages (including Latin), three appeals and limitless anecdotes.
If you were stranded on a desert island, what two luxury items would you take?
Shaving brush and blades.
What’s the worst partner conference location you’ve attended and why?
Answer withheld – inevitably defamatory.
What’s the longest you’ve worked without sleep?
Thirty-six hours.
If a movie were being made about your life, which actor would play you and why?
No one would choose the role. If I could choose, it would be someone truly ornery, like Nick Nolte.
Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with and why?
A life insurance (or any) salesman. No escape.
Tell us two truths and one lie about yourself (in any order)
I never get bored; when I was 19 I should (at least statistically) have been killed; I tie my shoelaces in the reverse direction.
CV
Name: Seamus Smyth
Firm: Carter Lemon Camerons
Title: Head of litigation
Lives: West Malling, Kent
Education:
1966-70: BA, LLB, University of Witwatersrand
1975-78: LLM, UCL
1992-93: Diploma in international commercial arbitration, Queen Mary, University of London
Work history:
1970-72: Trainee, Webber Wentzel, South Africa
1972-74: Assistant attorney, Routledge-MacCallums
1975-77: Trainee, Ashurst
1977-78: Solicitor, Ashurst
1978-84: Partner, Ashurst
1984-94: Sole principal, Smyth & Co
1994-present: Partner and head of litigation, Carter Lemon Camerons
