I’m quite realistic about what I can and can’t do. As a kid I used to play quite a lot of football — I actually had a trial at QPR at one stage — but I always knew I wasn’t good enough to make a career out of it, so I focused on my studies and went off to read classics at Oxford. I’m a better lawyer than I was a footballer, but I’m well aware that there are certain aspects of the job that I’m not great at and so I rely on colleagues to support me on. That’s the great thing about working in a team.

It’s a terrible thing to say, but I don’t actually love the law. Applying the stuff is fine, but elucidating some big academic treatise isn’t my thing. For me, being a lawyer is all about dealing with people, whether it’s an immediate situation in which, for example, you’re keeping the various parties at the table by persuading them that they’re the favoured bidder, or in the context of a long term relationship with a major client.

Deals are rather like cooking. My wife’s a fantastic chef — probably a better chef than I am a deal doer — and watching her cook often reminds me of handling a transaction. All the big things I’ve worked on recently — Alliance Unichem’s merger with Boots, Heineken’s joint acquisition of Scottish & Newcastle, Macquarie buying Thames Water — were about pulling together a lot of ingredients in the right amounts at the right time. Sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes rather less so.

Most people do their jobs pretty averagely. And a lot of people do them not very well at all. What I tell my children is to find something they enjoy — and it can be worth hunting around a bit — then do it really well. That’s usually enough to make you standout, especially if you’re working in an area involving any element of client service, which is something I think the British are particularly bad at.

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If you focus on the right things, you should be able to keep your hours under control. The two years I spent at the Takeover Panel in the 1980s, where I found myself making some pretty far-reaching decisions under considerable time pressure, was good training for that. I should add that if you spoke to my family they’d probably say, “What’s he talking about? He’s never managed to keep his hours under control!”

Money doesn’t motivate me to come to work. Well, at least I don’t think it does. I can’t be entirely sure, though. Once you’re earning a good income you sort of say to yourself, “That’s great, but I don’t really do it for the money.” But if you took it away, would I do the same job in the way that I do? I actually don’t know the answer to that.

I’m half Indian but, oddly enough, I only went to India for the first time last year. The experience has sort of inspired me to find out a bit more about that part of my background. Other than that, my interests outside work centre around my family. I’ve been married twice so I’ve got two sets of children. Their success provides me with most of my kicks.

If I was employing someone to work on my house, the last thing I’d want is to pay them by the hour. So it’s beyond me why lawyers continue to operate that way. We’re focusing on the wrong thing, counting the wrong measure. With the odd exception, people are reasonable and fair, so why not price on the job?

I don’t think people regard me as a tyrant, but it’s not a soft job. I can make unreasonable demands on associates’ time, sure. It could be due to pressure from a client, or it may just as well be as a result of my own inefficiency. It’s a bit like family life, really: you make a mistake and someone else bears the brunt of it. But, on the whole, I think that as long as you’re not unreasonable all the time, people will put up with you.

The big challenge for this firm, and others like us, is going to be attracting and retaining the best talent. Inevitably, some of it will be done on pay, but I think work environment is going to become increasingly critical. People want, and sometimes need, flexibility. There’s also an increasing premium on decent training and professional development opportunities. The firms that do those things well are, in my view, going to be the most successful.

Alan Paul is a corporate finance partner at Allen & Overy

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