Obituary: Rod Fletcher, the white-collar star who revolutionised HSF’s investigations group

There has been an outpouring of grief following the passing of Herbert Smith Freehills’ Rod Fletcher, one of the UK’s most esteemed white-collar and business crime lawyers, who had a career spanning over 30 years.

Fletcher, who was 62, was regarded by his peers as exceptionally capable and with excellent judgment, leading people to instruct and refer cases to him because they trusted how well he handled his work. Fletcher was meticulous, efficient and thorough – qualities that instilled great confidence in his colleagues and clients.

Hired as the leader of HSF’s corporate crime and investigations team in April 2013, Fletcher was one of the first people to move from a boutique practice to a City firm and make it a real success. He brought with him a bounty of experience in all aspects of white-collar and business crime and regulation, having also headed the team at legacy Russell Jones & Walker (which had become Slater & Gordon one year previously). It was at HSF that he took on a case handling a case for ex-Barclays banker Roger Jenkins, notwithstanding his then recent diagnosis with cancer.

Graduating from Birmingham University in 1978, he started his legal career at Kingsley Napley, where he was articled to Christopher Murray, who then went on to become senior partner in 2007. As one of the earliest practitioners of white-collar crime, a key trigger for Fletcher’s career was the development of The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in the late 1980s.

After joining Russell Jones & Walker (RJW) in the 1980s, Fletcher paved a career as a leading litigator, seeing through many of the major public inquiries and inquests of the last three decades. The year before, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) had been introduced, and Fletcher set about building up RJW’s criminal team. In particular, the firm was known for acting for the Police Federation and its members, and Fletcher worked on some of the largest and most high-profile police disciplinary trials of the time. This included acting via the Police Federation for PC Patrick Hodgson, thought to be the first police officers charged with murder arising from an incident in the line of duty in 1996. Fletcher had indomitable spirit and was dedicated to his team, who worked 12-hour days to see the trials through.

In the mid-1990s, Rod was involved in the Maxwell case, a trial surrounded by a blaze of media coverage, concerning allegations of more than £100m of fraud. The trial of Ian and Kevin Maxwell – sons of newspaper baron Robert Maxwell – and two co-defendants, Larry Tratchenberg and Robert Bunn, attracted the premier league of white-collar crime legal experts. Fletcher acted for Tratchenberg, an American financial aide to Robert Maxwell, who, following an eight-month trial, was acquitted alongside the Maxwell brothers and Bunn.

Speaking of his work, former colleague and Slater & Gordon lawyer Scott Ingram said: “His CV of cases is up there with the best in his field. The Maxwell-Mirror Group case where he was involved in the first challenge to the SFO section 2 power to compel answers, as well as LIBOR, Barings, Bute Mining, Balfour Beatty and the Hatfield train derailment.

“His public inquiry work included the Arms to Iraq Scott Inquiry, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, the Marchioness Inquiry and the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.”

Over the 1990s and early 2000s, Fletcher had the vision to expand the practice deeper into business crime and regulatory work. Ropes & Gray’s Judith Seddon, who qualified into RJW’s criminal department in 1997 and worked with Fletcher until she joined Clifford Chance in 2008, said that much of her team’s success was down to his patience and support as a leader.

“As a young lawyer Rod offered me equal opportunities to my colleagues, encouraging me to speak at events. He was a great figure to all the lawyers in the team and was someone who praised and inspired” Seddon states.

“I remember after a long police corruption trial, in which I had worked incredibly hard, I told Rod I was taking an extended holiday and went travelling for three months. Rod hardly batted an eyelid. He expected high standards and hard work but was exceptionally generous in return.”

RJW sparked some of the brightest stars in litigation today and the career paths of Rod’s former team are testament to his leadership. The team was made up of lawyers including Seddon, Liz Dux (Littleton Chambers), Neil Blundell (Macfarlanes), Jeremy Summers (Osborne Clarke), Ben Brandon (Mishcon de Reya), Tom Epps (Cooley), Shula De Jersey (BCL Solicitors) and Scott Ingram (Slater & Gordon), who spread their wings and went on to lead the top business crime units in the City. Fletcher and Ingram were co-partners of RJW’s criminal team for over 25 years and were both anchors of the department.

Fletcher took on cases that were truly groundbreaking. In 2008, he also represented Balfour Beatty in securing a settlement with the SFO involving the use of civil recovery powers; the first against a major UK company. While at HSF, he was instructed by ICBC Standard Bank, the former unit of South Africa’s Standard Bank, on its plans to enter into the first-ever UK deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the SFO. For confessing that it failed to stop bribery in a Tanzanian bond issuance and signing the DPA, ICBC avoided the expense and time of a lengthy court process, instead only seeing a judge in the final stages of the negotiations. Lord Justice Leveson, who approved the DPA, hailed the team’s work as “the benchmark against which future such applications may fall to be assessed”. 

In 2003 Fletcher was appointed a Recorder of the Crown Court. Brian Spiro, a partner at HSF who had known him for 30 years and worked alongside him at the firm for two, refers to the technical brilliance he had that gained him such prestigious posts. “His skills as a lawyer meant he could not only quickly assimilate new statutes and case law but also then apply them in practice. It is one thing to understand the law from a textbook, but another to be at the coalface and apply it in court in the way that Rod did.”

He was also a founding member and secretary of the Association of Regulatory and Disciplinary Lawyers, which, after being established in 2002, now has in excess of 750 members. “He established networking opportunities that most lawyers in the field have enjoyed over many years,” says Scott Ingram. Fletcher also held the role of vice chair of the Criminal Law Committee of the International Bar Association and member of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association.

When he wasn’t in court, Fletcher loved sailing and was a deft golfer. He played rugby in his youth, though in his later years moved away from playing to spectating and was a regular at Twickenham. He was an English rugby fan.

But above all, Rod was known as a gentleman and a man of extraordinary integrity.

“He was one of life’s truly lovely people,” states Michael O’Kane, senior partner at Peters & Peters, who worked alongside him on a number of cases. “He never had an edge to him.” O’Kane continued that he was tremendous company and the two would bump into each other outside of the UK at IBA events, where he would often bring his wife Linda with him. “He was one of the few people that would laugh at my jokes.”

Rod’s incredible dedication to his work was enduring. Until the very end, he had been discussing a trial he had on at the Old Bailey at the hospital with colleagues from HSF.

HSF said that Fletcher “would be sorely missed by the London team, the global practice and the entire firm. Our thoughts are with his wife, Linda, his children and the friends and family whom he leaves behind.”