Jane Andrewartha of Clyde & Co talks to Georgina Noakes

JANE Andrewartha has enjoyed nearly thirty years at Clyde & Co and shows no sign of her energy abating. "I am still in my first job," she smiles modestly. Her litigation career has focused on the reinsurance and insurance markets and she has the reputation of being a formidable opponent. Over the last decade she has added mediation to her portfolio and is a director of the London based CEDR.

The day we meet, Jane has flown in overnight from a twenty four hour business trip to New York, has been to the gym and completed a couple of hours work before this interview. Later on, she will deliver a lecture before returning home to her long-term partner Bill and their three children, Laura, William and Jamie, all aged under thirteen.

Jane's office appropriately overlooks the tubular pipes of Lloyd's. Her suitcase is set down next to a small table that holds a large bowl of fresh fruit. Whilst a quiet order prevails between the legal files, there are splashes of children's artwork on the walls, a rosette from a riding tournament pinned to the notice board and a large photograph of someone riding the crest of a wave in a power boat.

It has been said that Jane Andrewartha has been a pioneer inside and outside Clyde & Co. In addition to running an enviable practice, she was the firm's first finance partner, an office to which she was elected four times before stepping down in 2000. She has played a key role in the financial management of the firm and its strategy to broaden from a shipping and insurance niche to a wider full service practice.

So, from where are these achievements hewn?

"My father was a Lancaster Bomber pilot in the second world war and I was the eldest girl of eleven children. I had five brothers and five sisters, spanning a twenty-year age gap between the eldest and the youngest. My parents lived an active RAF social life after the war and I was often left to look after the younger children. My mother was a traditional, organised service wife until after my father's death in 1973.

"I learned early that responsibility without authority is difficult. Helping to run an owner-managed business, in which everyone sees themselves as equal shareholders, is not easy. The only way to acquire authority is through respect. And the best way to gain respect in a law firm is to contribute with a successful practice. Michael Payton, who has been senior partner here since 1982, is a terrific example and has led the way on this. If he walks into my office and asks me to complete a management task, I do it, because I know he has found the time to do it too.

"I became involved in the management of the firm because there was a job to be done and I understood that to influence things you have to become part of the system. From simply having a finance committee, we created a management board in 1992 that included the senior partner and four elected members. As finance partner it felt at times as if all I got was flack. There were some tough decisions to be made during the nineties. Law firms had to demonstrate their value to clients and assess the contributions of their partners, but the partnership is now, as a result, in good shape.

Jane was the first child in her family to go to university, where she read law at Exeter. What did it feel like to Jane, to join a male-dominated profession?

"The wandering spirit of RAF life prepared me," she says. "All my life I was the new kid. I went to fifteen schools and was always in the wrong colour uniform!" So standing out as different wasn't a problem.

The Head of the Faculty of Law at Exeter, Professor Parker, placed a sign on the notice board that a well known City law firm would welcome Exeter graduates to join them. Jane explains, "I applied with a cautionary warning from Professor Parker that the firm concerned may have a problem with the idea of a woman joining them. I was duly rejected and told it was because the firm was concerned that 'women might cry when they went to court' ".

Jane was not deterred and went on to receive job offers from nine other firms. One of those was from Clyde & Co, the firm, unbeknown to Jane, that had initially rejected her. Michael Payton (Jane says he will deny this story) wrote to her and said, "You are so determined, we had better meet you." At the interview, Michael said he would be happy to take on women but was concerned about the views of his senior partners. Jane duly returned to meet them and they all liked one another and Jane describes fondly Michael Wilford, author of the famous book on Time Charters, as "one of the most delightful men to work in the City of London."

"I would not want to be anywhere other than where I am," Jane says. But that does not mean her career has been planned each step of the way and, in her own modest style, Jane almost seems surprised to have got this far. The ability to juggle she learned early and her most difficult day at the office "pales into insignificance when compared to my father's service in Lancasters or my mother raising eleven children, seven of those as a widow."

Perspective is everything and one senses that Jane has it in bucketloads. "I have been able to do all the things I have wanted to do in my career," shesays. "I have never been aware of not getting work because I am a woman. I have encountered no recognisable opposition but I have worked hard and the work I get I deserve. The work I don't get I probably don't deserve."

Jane has had the reputation of being aggressive, "but I merely express similar views as men and have certainly been no more aggressive than they," she says. "Sometimes, being assertive as a woman is interpreted as being aggressive, while men can be either and no-one remarks on it.

"I think there have been far more advantages than disadvantages to being a female litigator. I am better remembered than my male peers who joined the market at the same time. Clients assume rightly or wrongly that to have got where we have that women, whether lawyers, underwriters or brokers, are twice as good as men. This could result in positive discrimination.

From here, how did Jane get involved in mediation?

"We had a client with a major market problem who wanted to mediate. As a litigator I was a bit anti the idea," Jane smiles. But she attended the CEDR course and loved it, so much so that she is now on the CEDR board and a big advocate of mediation.

"Mediation gives you instant results, instant thanks and feedback from the client," says Jane, "and it is considerably more rewarding to settle than to fight a case. Mediation gives lawyers and clients the opportunity to do this, without losing face."

So what is Jane's routine and how does she spend her time outside the office?

Three days a week, she is in the office before six a.m. but on the other two days she religiously does the school run, getting into the office at nine. "I drive into the office and go to the gym at six thirty a.m., which is the only time all week that I get to myself, and am back at my desk by eight a.m," she explains. She is usually home by seven-thirty for supper. While Bill and the children are in bed, she sneaks way on a Sunday morning to spend a few hours in the office before returning home via Sainsburys by lunch-time.

Before her first child, Laura, was born, Jane was a powerboat racer. "A friend saw how I tackled the more dangerous runs on the ski slope and suggested that I would be a good power boat racer," she says. She competed nationally and internationally and was sponsored by Mitsibushi who were attracted to a female driver racing against men. Jane was fourth, third and then second in the national championships and was planning to be first when she became pregnant.

"My partners at Clyde's did not know that I was a power boat racer until one happened to be visiting London docks on a day that I had crashed," says Jane. "He heard my name being announced over the tanoy and rather than thinking 'what a coincidence, there must be two Jane Andrewarthas', he immediately presumed it was me."

This says a lot about how other people view Jane. And while she has opted for the stability of staying in the same firm since 1974, resisting the opportunities for pursuing change elsewhere, it is outside the professional domain that she has taken the most risks. "Competing as a power boat racer was hugely exciting for a city solicitor," Jane enthuses.

She met Bill, who was a Formula 1 powerboat racer, on the ski slopes and they are both keen horse riders, along with their two sons. They also like to scuba dive and, when on sabbatical a couple of years ago, the family went bungee jumping in New Zealand and climbed Sydney harbour bridge.

"Going on sabbatical felt like taking a risk. I recognised I might discover a more interesting world, and may not want to come back, or, alternatively, I might return with renewed enthusiasm," Jane says. No surprises that it was to work that she returned and "some of the best work I have ever had," Jane concludes.

"These were not my ambitions when I started out in my career and it might all end tomorrow and that too would be OK."

Jane's perspective puts everything back into balance once again. The balance between valuing the important things in life as well a thriving career remains intact.