The Hot 100 career quiz: Herbert Smith Freehills litigator Will Glassey

What’s your most vivid memory from being a trainee?

The view from my office 36 floors above Auckland harbour.  I needed to wear sunglasses. I thought I’d made it.  On my second day I had to photocopy transaction bibles for 24 hours straight – no sunglasses required.

What is the thing in your professional career that has terrified you or taken you out of your comfort zone the most? 

Being made graduate recruitment partner at Mayer Brown in early 2009.  Having previously been no more than a lawyer, the role brought me face-to-face with graduates whose world had been changed almost overnight by the global financial crisis.

Managing the expectations of people under pressure, while under pressure myself, was the least comfortable I have felt professionally.  I learned that as much as we all fear uncertainty, we enjoy platitudes even less – people only ever want to be told it straight. I stayed in the graduate recruitment role for 10 years, alongside first William Charnley then Dominic Griffiths, and under the leadership of senior partners Sean Connolly then Sally Davies, both of whom cared a great deal about diversity in recruitment, and the training commitment made to the graduates we recruited. We worked with a fantastic team of HR professionals, including most recently Charlotte Hart and Danielle White.

What is the wisest thing anyone ever said to you (and who said it)?

I think the problem with wise words is that they are usually wasted on us until experience teaches us the wisdom in them! The wisest thing I remember being told about law firms is Sean Connolly teaching me that everyone is in it together.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get to where you are/do the job you do?

Don’t be afraid to give a view. It’s what clients pay us for, and they won’t pay much for ‘execution only’.  In my line of work, I deal with solicitors’ mistakes. Seeing lawyers getting sued and facing disciplinary investigations can make anyone become defensive. Where something has gone wrong, it’s seldom in expressing the final conclusion, where judgement is brought to bear – it’s usually a failure to follow the correct process somewhere along the way.

So my advice to any young lawyer is to make sure you do the groundwork thoroughly, but once you’ve done that, back yourself to express a view.

What’s your best friend from law school doing now?

At law school I was in awe of Jonathan Temm, and we became good friends. Even at law school, he was a powerful advocate. We mooted together, including representing the university abroad, and we qualified together in the litigation department at Chapman Tripp. In the same year as I came to London, Jonathan moved to Rotorua, and became a criminal barrister.  He enjoyed great success at the criminal bar, becoming the local Crown Prosecutor, a QC, and, in 2010, President of the New Zealand Law Society.

Tragically Jonathan died in 2021 – as well as to his family, he was a great loss to the profession in New Zealand.