I remember exactly when I stepped off the standard Big Law career track. 

It started on a Friday at the end of a week I’d spent carefully protecting a rare weekend off — my first in many months. I’d worked past midnight all week to get everything done. The partner was due to be away, so there should have been no last-minute surprises. 

It didn’t turn out that way. 

That Friday, the partner came into the office unexpectedly. Late in the afternoon, they made a promise to the client that didn’t need to be made. It was a promise that was mine to deliver by Monday. My free weekend turned into two long days. 

It’s the hope that kills you. 

That Sunday, I was sitting on a bench in the sun, eating lunch and thinking: if this is what success looks like, I’m done. 

The problem was the track I was on. My inability to control my time, no matter how efficient I was. 

It felt like the better I did, the less time I had for what mattered most in life. 

That moment didn’t come out of nowhere. 

I was at the end point of a path I hadn’t understood when I stepped onto it. 

How I ended up in law 

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a lawyer. There was no sense of vocation, no clear direction. 

I was ‘good with people’, although the first job I applied for wouldn’t have played to that. I wanted to be a fighter pilot — thankfully not possible given I wore glasses. Before university, I had an offer to become a railway signalman. Between those two points I’d done farm work, shop work, office work and cleaned the toilets at the University of Essex. 

When it came to choosing a degree, I found myself drawn to law because I believed it combined the precision of Maths and the wordplay of English Literature. Underneath was something that mattered much more: helping to make sure outcomes were fair, especially for people who felt on the outside or had been dealt a difficult hand. 

With hindsight, I can see the influence of early life experiences that taught me that belonging and stability were not things to take for granted. 

Confidence was an issue. As my director of studies at university later put it, “if I have any criticism of Graham, it is that when he came up he lacked a certain degree of self-confidence.” 

Too right I lacked confidence. It was another world I wasn’t sure I belonged to — not helped by my school’s opposition. 

For example, there was a teacher I did not get on with. He graded me a D and wrote that I needed to “devote more effort to serious work and less to being an argumentative Smart Alec.” 

It was a good line, and fair comment on my behaviour. It was only half the story. He experienced me as challenging; I found his approach difficult. 

Unintentionally, he pointed me towards a career where my instincts might be an asset rather than a liability. 

To check it out, I spent a summer in a local solicitor’s office. Two things struck me very quickly: 

1. Law can be very boring (at least for me), but… 

2. …the moments that matter really matter. 

I remember watching a lawyer advise a woman in a dangerous situation at home. She kept circling the same ground between knowing what she needed to do and finding it within herself to do it. 

The lawyer was patient and professional, but didn’t engage with her at a human level. She decided not to take his advice, and the cycle was left to continue. 

That moment made a lasting impression. 

I could tolerate the boredom if I felt I was making a difference. 

The distance between the idea and the reality 

Like many of my peers, I chose the seemingly safe option of a training contract in the City. 

I did the best due diligence I could and thought I had a good idea about what I was getting myself into. I was wrong. My dad was a teacher, my mum a dinner lady. With no background in law, business or the City, my knowledge was theoretical and second hand. 

The reality quickly established that most of the work would have little to do with my original motivations. It was mostly fine in itself, but often felt disconnected from the human aspects that had drawn me to law. 

What I also couldn’t miss was everything around the work I was turning out. The all-consuming nature of it. The range of supervision styles.  

None of that was named. It was just how things were, and you learned to absorb it. 

Running alongside that, from early on, was a question: what was all of this actually in service of? 

The answers were familiar and often true — great colleagues, challenging work, well known clients, the potential of partnership. But some of the underlying incentives and expectations were not ones I felt aligned to. 

When I looked ahead, I didn’t see something I aspired to or could see myself thriving in. 

When I listened to my instincts it was clear that the original pitch, the reality and my motivations had drifted apart. 

When I qualified my supervisor’s advice was, “Be happy, Graham.” That struck a chord.  

Japan, and what I learned by being there 

My wife suggested we do something different. 

We ended up working in a church in Japan in the sub-arctic. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life. 

Life was community-driven and full of real human connection. People from all backgrounds, open and honest with each other, genuinely supporting each other. 

It was the reset I needed. 

For the first time in a long time I had space to reflect. I spent that year trying to think my way to an answer about what to do next. I got nowhere. 

What I came away with was the realisation that you can’t think your way to an answer to a big career decision. You have to live it. 

Finding the work that energised me 

We came back with a clearer sense of what mattered — and a desire to put down some roots. 

Law was what I knew. Freshfields offered me an interim Knowledge Lawyer role. I had always had a really goodrelationship with the firm, based on mutual respect. I was happy to accept. 

The role was a good one. It was my first experience of team management. But in my heart I knew that arms length lawyering wasn’t me. 

What I cared about was coal-face employment law and addressing issues at source. Not being a hired hand in the “legal” box, with influence limited to advice. 

Moving into a dual role combining in-house employment law and people responsibilities brought me closer to where I wanted to be. 

This meant turning away from safer and more lucrative paths, but the closer I got to those options, the clearer it became that they would take me further away from what I cared about and energised me. 

I wanted to be closer to the source of the issues, to get as good as I could be at what I wanted to do, and to make sure they were handled well. I also wanted a degree of control and the chance to see my children during the week and at school events. I worked hybrid and part-time, which created Daddy Fridays, when my short-lived alter-egos Souper Man and Ironing Man made an appearance. I stopped doing that when I realised how much it was annoying my wife, who the bore the brunt of running the home. 

What I saw from the inside 

Law firms can feel very different when you move from fee-earning into business services. Moving into HR created complexity between my associate friends and me: could I be trusted? 

HR was where the learning accelerated. Over the years, I worked across a range of legal, compliance, people and leadership roles, often dealing with issues at the point where they had already escalated. 

I had an amazing team who did unsung work bringing calm to all manner of situations, and quietly made sure they were well handled without fuss. The credit crunch. A new operating model for the firm. #metoo. Cultural transformation. 

I then left Freshfields to train, coach and to run external investigations and mediations across a range of sectors. Another fantastic team, formed remotely during Covid were soon doing 50+ interventions a year.  

The pattern 

When things went wrong, as they do from time to time in even the best run organisations, the pattern I saw was consistent enough to be predictable. 

The problems were rarely hidden. They were overlooked, delayed, or addressed too late. Lessons were rarely learned. 

People finding themselves in positions of responsibility for others without meaningful preparation. Individuals absorbed harm and assumed that if they were struggling, it must reflect something about them, rather than the environment they were in. 

I also saw the impact on HR professionals — shouldering responsibility for situations they hadn’t caused, sometimes without the authority or support to address them properly. 

Power without preparation on one side. Responsibility without authority on the other. 

That combination has consequences. 

What this looks like in practice 

At times I don't think I'd be alone in having these feelings: 

• Feeling constantly behind, regardless of how hard you work  

• Losing confidence without a clear reason why  

• Navigating difficult dynamics 

• Questioning whether you want the next step, but not knowing the alternative  

• Assuming that struggling is a personal flaw 

What I've learnt is that this is part of the normal process.  

There are likely to be lessons you can learn.  

It can also reflect working in a system that hasn’t been made clear and that people have not been properly equipped for. 

Why I started Arrisan 

I came to believe many of the problems I was solving were foreseeable and preventable. 

The issues landing on my desk were rarely new. They were the end point of a series of earlier moments — conversations not had, concerns not raised, patterns not recognised, action delayed. 

By the time a problem had become impossible to ignore, many important moments had already passed. 

If those moments had been handled well, most problems would never have escalated. 

But they weren’t. 

Sometimes because people couldn’t see what was happening. Sometimes because they could, but didn’t feel equipped to act. And sometimes because acting came with risk. 

Doing the right thing is not always recognised or rewarded. Doing the wrong thing is not always addressed — particularly when commercial, political or relationship considerations are in play. 

In that environment, self protection often becomes the rational choice. 

Over time, patterns became predictable. And they consistently led back to one place: the quality of management. 

I also saw something else. 

The character of leaders sets the ceiling for culture. 

Taken together, this explained a lot. It also made clear that change does not require wholesale transformation — but it does require getting the important moments right. 

The profession does not lack smart people, serious work or high effort. What it can sometimes lack is the clarity, capability and systems to handle those moments well. 

What is needed is early, honest, practical intervention — from people who understand the environment, have no conflicted interest, and are willing to address the issues. 

A long restrictive covenant gave me the incentive to create what I wished had existed when I was looking for help. I'd always had a sense that the experience I was getting would be turned to wider benefit. That turned out to be Arrisan. 

What I would argue for now 

I’m grateful for being called an argumentative Smart Alec at a formative age. 

It did me a favour. And I did devote more effort to serious work over the last thirty years.  

Unlike the 14 year old me, I steer clear of unimportant arguments these days. If were to argue for anything now, it would be this: 

• You cannot separate how people feel from how they perform 

• Work should help people grow, not diminish them 

• You can’t manage what you haven't noticed 

• You can’t manage others if you can’t manage yourself 

• The small moments are the big moments 

• Big problems start small 

• Value statements that don’t match reality can be dangerous  

• Unskilled supervisors are a luxury firms can’t afford 

And that, with the right perspective, many of the difficulties lawyers and law firms face are far more navigable than they first appear.