At the Bar - A board on which staff must enter their names

STROLL into the Liverpool offices of Hill Dickinson and the first thing you see is a board on which staff must enter their names if they are intending to be in the building after 1800hrs. “Does it get used much?” I ask John Hulmes, who leads the Liverpool shipping team. “If there is a good reason,” he says. “But we don’t have the culture of some London firms of insisting on impossible billable hours. We insist on getting the job done for the client at a sensible cost, and there is a lot less pressure here. It’s better for everyone.”

As we walk down from the office and head towards Liverpool’s reclaimed docklands, John is stopped by a colleague to enquire about the annual office ski trip. John assures her that Wengen is booked, and tells me that with direct flights from Liverpool he can easily indulge his love of skiing. With that, and golf, and a house with a home office and lovely views over the Irish Sea, John doesn’t sound like the typical harassed maritime lawyer.

“If you work every evening and every weekend, you have no slack in the system when a real emergency comes,” says John. His calm grip on his life and work is no accident. As we step up to the bar of the Pumpman, right on the Albert Dock and overlooking the River Mersey, he explains how last year he took the conscious decision to leave the admin to others. “I was getting embroiled in admin,” he says. “Now I spend two-thirds of my time on case work, and the rest helping assistants and colleagues. The emphasis of my work is on commercial issues for shipowners and agents, and I see myself as a dispute resolver, not a litigator. Our clients want disputes sorted out, and there are lots of ways to do that, and they don’t all necessarily mean fighting every point.”

Clutching our pints of cider, we move to a table outside, and John makes his point so pugnaciously that I’m left in no doubt that, if he had to argue, he would. Hard. Which is why he became a lawyer. “I was at grammar school at Preston, thirty miles north of Liverpool,” he explains, “and when I mentioned to the teacher that I was thinking of becoming a lawyer he said I should seek another career, as I obviously had the wrong temperament to be a lawyer. He even tried to persuade my parents that I wasn’t right for law, I was supposed to be too argumentative. So that was it - the pigheaded in me clinched the decision, and I went for law.”

A law degree at Liverpool Polytechnic and a desire to work for a local firm - because that was where his friends were - led John to Hill Dickinson. At the time, most of the firm’s work was maritime, and John naturally moved into shipping work. “My dad worked in the engine rooms of the Cunarders,” he says. “But I had no particular intention of moving into shipping law. And I did expect to move to London at some stage. In fact, what has happened is that London cases have come to me, and I do have a flat in London and I do spend some time there. I get the benefit of the work but without having to be a commuter on the Northern Line.”

Why this pub? “My first flat was up there,” says John, pointing out a refurbished warehouse by the river. “So this was my local. From here you’ve got space and views, and you are surrounded by maritime heritage.” John is passionate about the benefits of Merseyside. “We have to create opportunities for the cynics to come and see what we have here,” he insists.

What they have in John is a lawyer who believes law is getting too expensive. “We see the costs for the other side in some of our disputes, where partners are charging out at £375 per hour. It is ridiculous. Overseas clients now find the costs of law in the UK to be prohibitive and the English Law Jurisdiction clause, which used to be on all international shipping documents, is disappearing,” he says.

John is happy that today he has received confirmation that Hill Dickinson has received accreditation so that local clients can get a forty per cent grant from the EU for key aspects of legal advice in Liverpool. “Objective One funds are there to help develop the local economy, and this is great news,” he says, while admitting that he just doesn’t like billing. “I always think it is too much.”

We’ve had a pint each and a good chat, and John is off home. I offend his sense of frugality by telling him I’m about to catch a cab to Manchester Airport. “You can get a train,” he says. John’s not a man to argue with, but he is obviously someone you can trust with your cash.