At the bar - Tim Taylor talks to Georgina Noakes

Tim Taylor talks to Georgina Noakes at The City House, 86 Bishopsgate, London

IT is another wet day in London when I arrive at the offices of Hill Taylor Dickinson. I am met by an array of umbrellas, which I step between to take a peek at Tim Taylor's corner office. It is covered in the usual mess of paperwork that lawyers so love to accumulate. No tidy desk-empty mind policy here. An office always reveals the secrets of its occupier and, in addition to the case files, there are glossy brochures of golf clubs from around the world.

Tim Taylor makes a joke and quickly bustles me out for lunch. I get the impression that he could be just a little bit shy about exposing his inner sanctum. Despite the coyness, Tim comes across as a larger-than-life figure, in every sense of the phrase. His enthusiasm bounds through his chosen profession, his addiction to gadgets and newspapers, golf, the First World War and, luckily for me with lunch looming, food and wine. "I drink wine for pure enjoyment. If you drink several bottles you learn more about it," Tim promises.

We escape from the filthy day to below stairs at the The City House, where a small private dining room has been reserved.

This is clearly not nouveau cuisine. The menu is not designed to look after your cholesterol, so forget it. We quickly decide on the pan-fried goats cheese and potato terrine to start with, followed by lamb chops for me and rump steak for Tim. Plus lots of proper fat chips. And a little spinach on the side to make us feel better.

Tim has recently completed a wine course run at his local pub, so I confidently give the man who claims to "drink carefully" (read knowledgeably) at home free rein with the wine menu. He orders "poor man's Cloudy Bay", a Sauvignon Blanc from the Morworth Estate, New Zealand. It arrives cold and crisp, tasting of early summer gooseberries. Choosing to stay in the new world, Tim opts for a Pinot Noir from the same estate to accompany our meat later on. I put to one side my plans for the afternoon.

Waiting for lunch, we talk about Tim's recent training as a mediator. "As litigators, we are taught to be evaluative and judgmental. Our whole training from day one is to review a set of facts and then ask 'Can A sue B and win?' But you have to unlearn all this as a mediator. It is now the problem of the parties concerned, and they have to find their solution, not yours. You have to be sensitive to them, to listen and develop the views of the parties at the mediation table rather than try to watch the clock and try to control the conversation," he says. No mean feat for a hardened litigator.

But Tim, I suspect, can listen just as well as he can play the raconteur, pulling from his sleeve one funny story after another. I let him do the talking though, in order to savour the goat's cheese with the Sauvignon Blanc.

"I'm a dealmaker at heart," says Tim. "I like to find solutions to problems. Recently I've tended to be hired on cases that have become apparently intractable. I love to unlock cases where people are no longer communicating. I especially enjoy doing this abroad, learning to read different cultures, finding out the story behind the story."

Thinking about all the examples I know of clients not communicating with one another, I ask, between mouthfuls, "How do you do that?" He explains, "Intuitively. I just do it. It doesn't always work, but it helps if you have a clear vision of the outcome, then you take it and sell it. It goes beyond the technical skills of being a lawyer to managing expectations".

We touch upon mentoring. "All the people that work for me are brighter than I am," says Tim. "I am an adequate technical lawyer who loves doing deals. I take a lot of pleasure out of the end game. And I most enjoy finishing off a case as well as the processes involved along the way. You actually have to be quite grown up about letting your team do the running. My own mentor was David Taylor (now permanent secretary to the Joint Hull Committee and an adviser to the International Underwriting Association of London). His attitude with me was 'let this dog see the rabbit', and I try to do the same."

Tim savours his wine and looks happy when the rump steak arrives. He is also warming to his theme. "The secret of the universe," Tim explains, "is convincing the client that the people working for you are better than you are. When it works it's a triumph. If you get that right, it is the most rewarding part of the job." I've met enough self-important lawyers to know he is probably telling the truth.

We are led into temptation by the pudding trolley. By this time we have covered Tim's upbringing in Bolton (his grandfather, father and uncle were all lawyers), his family (home is competitively matriarchal, with three young daughters and a wife who is a doctor) and the birth of Hill Taylor Dickinson in 1989. Tim was actually asked to organise a partnership conference at Gleneagles in Scotland by what was then Hill, Dickinson & Co. "I knew it was going to be interesting," he says, "when one partner, asked whether he had any special dietary requirements, replied, 'There should be no clarets younger than 1982'."

We, in turn, cannot resist a 1998 Quady Essensia Orange Muscat from California to bring out the best in my burnt lemon marquis and Tim's bitter chocolate pudding.

It is still daylight when we emerge into Bishopsgate. I watch as Tim confidently saunters back to his office, leaving me smiling at his rendition of a monologue about a Lancastrian building contractor called Sam Oglethwaite negotiating with Noah for some bird's-eye maple to "panel the side of his bunk". As a memento of the longest lunch I have enjoyed in some time, Tim later sends me a copy of Stanley Holloway's famous recital of the same story. I still think Tim Taylor may have missed his vocation.