Why do so few City solicitors get a good job after they retire? There are only about 20 qualified lawyers on the boards of the FTSE 250 and just a handful of these are solicitors who have advised a client in the last ten years. Solicitors are not represented on the board of the FSA or the Court of the Bank of England.

It wasn't always so

Partners in City firms turned away from involvement in outside interests a long time ago, but it was not always so. Fifty years ago partners in the big City firms were directors of important companies. But times changed and the competition got stiffer. Firms decided that the possibility of conflict of interest and the need for total commitment meant that every equity partner should be a full time lawyer. Now when the senior partner suggests that a partner should consider outside interests most believe that their days are numbered and they might as well retire into the library with a revolver. So when City lawyers leave practice, and they do so at quite an early age, they find that they have no other business or public service activity to fall back on. What are they going to do? They will find that daytime television is just not the same since television star Carol Vorderman left Countdown.

CEOs don't like lawyers

One experienced head-hunter told me that throughout her career she had never been asked for a lawyer to fill a board vacancy. Why not?  City lawyers are good at management. English solicitors’ firms are some of the most successful in the world – particularly internationally. But there seems to be a feeling that, with the possible exception of the managing and senior partners at our leading firms, City lawyers do not bring useful skills to the boardroom and may even be counterproductive. Chairmen and CEOs I have spoken to have been quite negative. They do not like the lawyer’s mindset: ‘Prepared to debate, but not prepared to agree’; ‘never prepared to be wrong’; ‘just a craft industry’; ‘don’t give me a lawyer - I’m in enough trouble already.’ One CEO said ‘I don’t have my dentist on the board, why should I have my lawyer?’

Lawyers don't like risk

Lawyers are risk averse, and this puts some of them off joining a board. But the risk of personal liability from being a director in a company run in accordance with modern governance ideas is vanishingly small and it seems odd that those who have been exposed to personal liability for the acts of their partners all their working lives will not accept that limited liability is an attraction. And of course public sector jobs will carry immunity or a Government indemnity.Lawyers have a contribution to make. We may be risk-averse, but our analytical ability and trustworthiness in a crisis is recognised, as is our ability to absorb a lot of information in a hurry. But to make it to the board the lawyer has to learn to think like a business person.

Lawyers need to think differently

So what is to be done? Edmund Burke famously said that the legal education sharpens the mind by narrowing it. Although the lawyer’s analytical and deconstructionist approach to a problem may have its place in the boardroom these are not the first skills the UK CEO thinks of when putting his or her team together – after all lawyers can be hired when necessary.  So the first thing is for lawyers to take a step away from the law, to change their minds and broaden their horizons. Lawyers need to get exposure to other ways of thinking by joining boards of charities, schools or other not for profit organisations while still in practice. In turn that experience will make them better practical lawyers as they learn what clients face and what they really want.At the moment there is a waste of talent and training. Lawyers need to get more experience and companies who are looking to fill a board vacancy should think about broadening their approach to get the benefit of the lawyer’s sharp intelligence.

Bill Knight is the retired senior partner of London-based law firm Simmons & Simmons. Since standing down, he has been chairman of the Financial Reporting Review Panel, a director the Financial Reporting Council, Deputy Chairman of Council at Lloyd’s of London, a Gambling Commissioner and President of the City of London Law Society