From Selling Out Tours with Tom Jones to Thriving at One Essex Court: Sam Grimley’s Journey - S10E19

0:00It was an extremely unpredictable life. Many of my fellow students at Oxford were just kind of having a nice time. They'd done their undergraduate degree, they maybe weren't sure what they wanted to do next. It was completely different for me. I was walking along a tightrope between skyscrapers. One false move and I'd go tumbling down to the ground. So I had that advantage actually. I needed it to work and so I was just completely focused. One advantage I brought to this process of training in law from my previous career was a belief that you can learn how to do anything. And I believe that because I had learned how to do things that I thought were impossible.

0:44On today's Legally Speaking podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Sam Grimley. Sam is a barrister at One Essex Court. He specializes in commercial, competition and intellectual property litigation. Before pursuing a career at the bar, Sam worked with artists including Sir Tom Jones, Ed Sheeran and Jesse Jay. So a very big warm welcome to the show, Sam. Thank you. Nice to be here. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And before we get into your fascinating career journey, we do have a couple of icebreaker questions here on the League of Speaking podcast, which is, firstly, what is your favourite beverage?

1:18And secondly, what's your preferred choice of footwear on a typical workday? Oh, funnily enough, I had the beverage conversation last night with a very good friend of mine. And we were trying to decide if you could only have three drinks, what would they be? If you could only have two drinks, what would they be? If you could only have one drink, what would it be? And I'm afraid I whittled it down to oak flat whites. Well, obviously, if I only had one drink, I'd have to have water. But if I had two drinks, it would have to be oat flat whites and water. And on a typical work day, I'm afraid to say I have shamefully scruffy trainers, which my partner just this morning instructed me that I had to replace urgently.

2:03Say no more. And with that, we'll move swiftly on to talk all about you. So to begin with, Sam, I'm looking forward to this. Would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey? Well, I'm sure lots of you will get to say this, but I feel like I had quite an unusual career journey. So, for example, 10 years ago, so if we were to go back 10 years ago today, I would have been probably turning up to a venue. My professional tools would be an electric guitar rig and my guitar pedals. I would have had a stack of keyboards. I would be working with technicians. My colleagues would be session musicians and artists.

2:44And my product, my work product, probably would have been a show. And that was, that career that I was doing about 10 years ago is actually what I'd wanted to do since I was a kid. When I was about six years old, I was given a Walkman for Christmas. I don't know if you remember Walkmans. Oh, I remember the Walkman. I love it. And the tapes used to get jammed and you have to, yeah, I love it. Absolutely. So when I was about six, I had a Walkman and I had a tape of Eric Clapton. My favorite tape was The Cream of Eric Clapton, which was some of his solo stuff, but also lots of his material that he produced with a band called Cream.

3:25And when I heard that, I knew I had to be a guitar player. I had to be an electric guitar player. and I begged my mum and my dad every day, please buy me an electric guitar, please, please, please. It took them a year and then eventually they relented and they bought me a full-size adult electric guitar at the age of seven. Wow. And from that point on, I knew I wanted to be a professional musician. I studied music at university. When I left university, I started doing just pub gigs. then I kind of went on to slightly bigger music venues and eventually I was playing stadiums I was touring I toured with Tom Jones I played with Ed Sheeran Jesse Jay and I even got to play Eric Clapton's guitar parts with the lead singer for Cream he did a residency at Ronnie Scott's and I was the musical director for that residency and I was playing Eric Clapton's guitar parts arts.

4:26So in some ways, I did my music career. I got to play, I got to be Eric Clapton in Cream. I got to sort of do something approaching a full circle. And I think by the time I'd done that, at which stage I was in my sort of early 30s, I started to wonder if this was really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. You know, is this the career that I want to have when I'm 40, when I'm 50. Because whilst it was very exciting touring the world and playing to big audiences and meeting some of my heroes, it was an extremely unpredictable life. I was away all the time. There was no real financial security.

5:13And it was sort of very difficult to, you know, maintain a home life, see my family, you know. So I started to look around around that time for something else to do. And really, I had no idea what else I could do. Because as I've said, since I was six, I've wanted to do music. And one day I went out for lunch with actually a friend of mine who was actually also a musician. And he said, Sam, have you ever thought about being a lawyer. And I spat my spaghetti out and I blurted, sorry, what? Why on earth would I want to be a lawyer? No, that has never crossed my mind. I sort of thought it was a ridiculous suggestion, but it was an idea.

6:01It was a suggestion. And at that time, I didn't have any other ideas for what else I could do other than music. So I knew a lawyer who kindly offered to take me out for dinner. I asked him about what he did. He was a solicitor in a law firm. And he strongly recommended that, amended me to become a solicitor and said, you know, don't become a barrister. You'll have no financial security. And anyway, it'll probably never happen. It's too tall an order for someone coming from my background. So almost on a whim, I decided to do a law conversion. I didn't tell any of my musician colleagues that that's what I was doing.

6:49So I continued to tour, I continued to play shows and record, but sort of silently and secretly, whilst everyone else was at the front of the tour bus, you know, having drinks and pizza, I was at the back of the tour bus reading about offer and acceptance and trying to understand, you know, the rule in Capara Dickman and, you know, do my revision for my law conversion. I did it part-time, so I did my first year exams in 2019, then in 2020, the pandemic hit. And that was simultaneously a complete disaster for me, and an unbelievable blessing. It was a complete disaster because my work was as a live touring musician and the entire live music industry shut down.

7:44So I had no work, no income, but I had so much time. And in that second year of my law conversion, I was basically able to devote myself full-time to a part-time course. And it was that year, that first year of COVID that was really the pivot point. When it stopped, law stopped being an experiment and a sort of a secret tryout for me, and it became a serious endeavour. And during that year, I did my final exams, I applied to Oxford, I did a postgraduate at Oxford, which itself was his own story. I wasn't really expecting to be able to do that. and then well I mean I can tell you more about what happened after that but I've I know you've only asked me one question I've embarked on a long story already.

8:41No it's just fascinating listening to your journey obviously I had the benefits of reading a bit of the the bio prior to coming on air but just listening to it sounds even more fascinating and I think the you know resilience the tenacity the the bravery of what you've done and just the excitement and just on that what was it like you know working and you know playing alongside of like an Ed Sheeran, a Jesse J, Tom Jones, you know, what was your experiences? How would you sum those up for our listeners that might be used to people more training contracts, straight into law, law firm, you know, a barrister, et cetera, et cetera.

9:14Give us a bit of that experience, just generally how you reflect on it. Well, oddly, I would expect that most of your listeners, whatever it is they do, whether they work in a firm of solicitors or as a barrister, will actually be very familiar with the kind of experiences I had and the kind of feelings that I had doing that work. Because my experience of coming to the bar and doing this legal work that I now do is that it's very similar.

9:48Going on stage with Ed Sheeran, the first time I did that was to an audience of 100 ,000 people. it was being broadcast live on tv in australia to i think about three million people um it was utterly nerve-wracking but i had learned by that stage that preparation was everything and if i'd done enough preparation uh then i had the space to be nervous and have that not affect my performance, I could just fall back on the rehearsals, on my practice, on my preparation, and that that would carry me through. So I think those kind of preparation skills and remaining calm under pressure skills, if I can call them that,

10:45were fantastic preparation for doing this. and exactly the same kind of experience really structurally it was it was the same job in many ways yeah and hence why you're you're probably doing so well now but you've been very open and we're going to dive into your journey in a little bit more detail and about some of the the challenges and you mentioned Oxford because you're open and sharing you're rejected from the academic programs you applied for but you were offered three scholarships to study at Oxford where you completed the BCL so what was your experience like studying Oxford and you said that was a bit of a story so keen to learn more well um so if i could sort of return to where i left off my last story uh i'm in the pandemic i'm actually approaching my final exams for my law conversion and i have no work i have no income but i have loads of time and so i'm applying for absolutely everything i applied to be a judicial assistant i applied to be a paralegal i applied for training contracts.

11:42I applied for pupillage. Everything I applied to, I was rejected from everything, except one of the random applications was to Oxford. Now, I made that application simply because at that time, I had a policy of applying to everything. Like, don't think about it, just apply. So I applied to it. But it said on the website, the BCL website said, if you're doing a law conversion functionally don't apply because we're probably not going to give you a place you need to have done a full law degree but I thought I don't care I'm going to apply anyway and lo and behold I got an offer number one it was a great privilege I was very flattered to have been offered a place number two it didn't seem like something I could realistically take up.

12:36As I said, I didn't have an income and doing a master's is an expensive endeavor. Not only do you have the course fees, but you also have living expenses. And I had various financial responsibilities at that stage as well. So it didn't really seem like an option. But a couple of months after I got the offer, I got a second email from Oxford offering me a scholarship. So things seemed a little bit more plausible, but the scholarship, whilst it was generous, It was still nowhere near enough to cover my living expenses. So I called up the law faculty and I said, thank you. I'm so flattered and honoured to have been awarded this scholarship, but I don't think I'm going to be able to come.

13:17I'm just forewarning you. I'm going to see what I can do, but I don't think I can come. Two months later, I got awarded a second scholarship. And at that stage, it really was possibly plausible that I could go to Oxford and do the BCL. So I started selling guitars, selling pedals, selling amps. You know, all of my professional music gear was out the door on eBay, trying to just scrape together all the money I could. I still wasn't really there. But then in the final month before the course started, I got a third EML from Oxford offering me a third scholarship. I then sold my piano. I had a grand piano, which had been my professional instrument for 15 years.

14:02And finally, I had enough to go and do the course. As I sort of hinted at earlier, I had some responsibilities. I think this is one of the challenges with changing career later in life is, you know, you're not just a free spirit who only has to look after yourself. You know, I had a father who was very ill. I also had a godson whom I was looking after. and I couldn't just up sticks and disappear for a year. It wasn't an option. And so even though I now had the money to do the course, I still didn't know how practically I was going to be able to do it. So in the final week before I started at Oxford, I borrowed some money from my family and I bought a 125cc motorbike, having never ridden a motorbike before in my life.

14:52I did one day training to basically learn where the steering column was and learn how to operate the indicators and not much else. And then I set off to Oxford and basically commuted from Oxford back to Cambridge, where I was then living to look after my father and my godson and then back to Oxford for lectures. And it was basically 140 mile round trip. Absolutely terrifying. Travelling at 60 miles an hour on a machine that I barely knew how to operate. But at least it meant I could do it. and I was at Oxford, having already had a completely different career with people 10, 15 years younger than me, studying law at a terrifyingly high level.

15:48But it felt real at last. I was finally doing law. Yeah. And I bet it was a sense of achievement after a lot of the hardships you'd been through, you know, and you're quite open about that as well. And we'll talk about that in a moment. But what was it like becoming a student again at 40? It was a complete revelation and absolutely, actually a total joy. One of the reasons why I was open to the idea of doing law when it was first suggested to me, and I didn't think it was a completely ridiculous idea, is I had done a degree, I did a music degree. And whilst I'd gone to York where I did my music degree expecting to spend the whole time playing guitar and playing piano, I actually spent the whole time in the library.

16:35I discovered there how much I loved studying, how much I loved forming an argument and writing a compelling piece of prose. That was really what I spent my undergraduate degree doing. So in some ways going to Oxford felt like a return home I was back in the library again and I was acquiring knowledge and I was using my sort of linguistic and my structural skills to present a compelling argument and I loved it I just got lost in it yeah and as I say obviously you know fast forward to where you are today I'm you know hugely successful but you speak openly about your home situation at that time you know about losing your home, homelessness during your actual law exams.

17:25So how did you actually stay positive, overcome the hardships while studying and obviously getting the results you needed? I'm not sure I did stay positive all the time. We're all human, right? Yeah. There's a wonderful Bruce Springsteen quote. He talks about what drove him to his successes. and early in his career he suffered terribly from stage fright he had crippling stage fright but he was more afraid of not doing it of not going on stage than he was of going on stage so he was you know in some ways the fear of failure um was stronger than the fear of success and I think that's a little bit what it was like for me.

18:21I couldn't afford to have this fail. You know, I felt like many of my fellow students at Oxford were just kind of having a nice time. They'd done their undergraduate degree. They maybe weren't sure what they wanted to do next, but they were pretty good at university stuff. So they stayed doing university stuff and continued to be a member of the Corfe Ball team and, you know, joined the University Debating Society and, you know, had a nice time. It was completely different for me. I was, I was walking along a tightrope between skyscrapers and one false move and I would go tumbling down to the ground and splat all over the pavement.

19:05So I had that advantage actually, I needed it to work and so I was just completely focused but doesn't really answer your question you asked how I stayed positive didn't give a very positive answer um but perhaps I was motivated rather than positive yeah and you know clearly because you you've overcome a lot and you share quite openly as well I think you've touched on this but just keen to get any further thoughts you share about the cultural and socio-economic barriers to entering the legal profession specifically. So, you know, you've talked a lot about your journey, but any of the barriers that you think others might be facing you would like to share?

19:43And again, how did you manage to overcome them? Less from a mindset perspective, maybe practical steps and things that you did that might help others that are trying to overcome certain barriers they might be facing? One advantage I brought to this process of training in law from my previous career was a belief that you can learn how to do anything. And I believe that because I had learned how to do things that I thought were impossible. I remember one tour that I did. I got a call three weeks before the tour went out. And the musical director said, OK, we want you to come on tour. You know, it's half a year.

20:20I think that this was one of the tours I did with Tom Jones. He said, but you're going to be playing harmonica for the tour. that okay i'm like okay i have never played harmonica in my life i've never i mean i think i got one once for christmas when i was 11 and i you know made a raucous sound on it uh but i had three weeks to learn how to play the harmonica so i called up the only professor of harmonica university professor of harmonica in the uk who i happened to have met along my journey and i said I would like you to teach me every day. We're going to have one to two hours of tutoring every morning.

21:01I'm going to spend the afternoon practicing and then we'll come back the next day. And in three weeks, I went from having barely picked up harmonica to playing harmonica on stage in front of 80 ,000 people for a whole tour. So having had that experience, when I went to Oxford, when I started the pupillage application process, I felt like I don't know how to do this. I don't know what the rules are, but I know that I can learn it. If I can just find the people who can teach me, I can do it. So I went on a journey of just talking to everybody saying, how do you approach applications? What do you do for interviews?

21:50What makes a good essay? I had long conversations with, you know, star Oxford undergraduates asking them, how do you write a good essay? What on earth do they look for? And I was unafraid to ask the most basic and stupid questions again and again and again until I got the answers. I mean, flipping to the pubilage application process, I met someone in a pub after having applied for pupillage twice. You know, I had done two rounds of pupillage. And this person was a barrister, is a barrister, and also had been on various interview panels at various times. And I talked to this person and they heard about my CV and my background and said, well, you've got an incredibly compelling story you've got a really good cv what's going wrong and so i said well can i have some mock interviews please and i with this person i ended up having not one not two but four maybe five mock interviews um and every time i asked for like the most brutal feedback just tell me everything i did wrong.

23:04Tell me what I did wrong. And I found that process of hounding people in the know and constantly requesting and receiving feedback to be a really effective way of overcoming those kind of barriers that you asked about in your question. I didn't know how to overcome the barriers, but someone did. And I was going to keep asking questions until I found the person who handed me the key to that log. And eventually they did. I had lots of failures, lots of bruises, you know, rejection letters that kind of slapped me around the face. But, you know, eventually I got a few acceptances and a few offers.

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24:51So tell us about the type of work that you're involved with and maybe walk us through a typical day in the life of yours now. I feel incredibly privileged to be here. It is so strange. I have to keep pinching myself. You know, as I say, when I think back to what I was doing 10 years ago, and then when I think what I was doing five years ago, you know, I remember submitting my final dissertation for my GDL from the back of a van on mobile internet because I've been kicked out of my flat because I didn't have any money. And then here I am in Middle Temple, one of the most prestigious sets of the bar.

25:33It feels incredibly strange. My experience of being at one Essex Court has been a delight. My colleagues are not only brilliantly clever, they are also very kind. During pupillage, I was treated like a valuable asset who needed to be nurtured and trained. I was given really endless feedback, endless advice. And now I'm in practice. the work is of the highest quality. I'm doing commercial cases in the commercial court. I'm doing civil fraud work. I'm doing contractual disputes. I'm doing some music and entertainment related work. Very strangely, I'm actually doing some work on a case involving some artists who who I never worked for as a musician, but I sort of had interactions with, I came across when I was a guitar player.

26:43So it's very strange now to be acting for them as a lawyer. It's sort of a bizarre contrast. But yeah, as I've said, the work is of really fantastic quality and it's so varied. And I really feel like I could do any work that I choose here. the clerking team is so fantastic um and so willing to take my lead as to what kind of work um to put my way so yeah it's it's a real privilege and i can hear the gratitude in your your voice as well but very well earned given the journey and the the hard work and resilience you had up to that point obviously getting to where you are today did you find your background in music gives you a bit of an advantage as a barrister it gives me an advantage insofar as I think the skills that I used as a musician are the skills I use today.

27:37I had a really strange interview at one point. I didn't get offered a pupillage at this set, but I had a lovely conversation during my interview with a barrister there who was also a career changer. And he had changed from being an academic to being a lawyer. And during the interview, he said, you know, it's funny what you say about music and law being similar, because I've got this theory that all intellectual jobs are actually the same job. And as he was talking, I was sort of nodding and agreeing. And this was the way he put it. In all intellectual jobs, you solve a knotty problem and then tell a story about it.

28:21And that's what I did as a musician, particularly as a songwriter. Much of my life as a musician was as a songwriter. And in that, I, with my co-writers, solved a knotty problem. We talked about some experience in the artist's life or some issue that we wanted to, you know, expound in the song. And then we told a story about that issue. And that's exactly what I'm doing here in my work as a barrister. so yeah i i mean i i feel like i'm using all of the skills that i use as a musician but i'm just sitting in a slightly different room yeah and you know it's i always talk about skill stacking as you go through any part of life and journey and using transferable skills or anything that you do you know i always use the acronym in life you never you never lose the acronym is life offering some experience and i strongly believe that in any adversity or any opportunity or great thing that happened you take some of these experiences you can stack them onto the next part of your journey and you know good things can can happen I want to go back to your pupillage because I'm interested in this although I'm a Liverpool fan um you assisted Phil Roberts Casey in high court proceedings in a dispute concerning Manchester City's football kit so could you tell us a bit about that case and is that one of your most memorable that was certainly one of my the most memorable cases I did during my pupillage.

29:47That was a really enjoyable case to work on, not least because my supervisor and leader on the case, Phil Roberts, is not only a brilliant barrister, but fantastic fun and made the whole journey really enjoyable. But that was a trademark dispute and it did concern Manchester City kit and the clothing label Super Dry. And actually, again, in some ways, it was like a return to my experiences in the music industry because I encountered some of the same kinds of personalities in that kind of sports and entertainment context as I encountered in my music career and learned a lot about how to manage clients and witnesses in that world in the cross-examination context.

30:43I think, yeah, one of the biggest lessons I learned was how to game plan a cross-examination, often by researching the background of the witnesses that you would be facing in court and using that to inform your approach in court. It was a really amazing experience. Yeah, it sounds phenomenal, to be honest. And you've had some great experiences, but I just want to go back to, again, you're speaking very openly and we appreciate it, the rejections you had, because it is very hard, the pupillage process, very challenging. Lots of people get lots of applications rejected. They think they've done enough, but they just get a rejection after rejection.

31:29So from your experience, what would be your top three tips for aspiring barristers who probably are struggling to get pupillage? And what words of wisdom do you wish you had known that you now know that you'd want to pass on? I'd say three things broadly, and I'm afraid the three things that I would say are contradictory. They don't really mesh together, but that is not my problem. That's your problem. Hit us with it. And the first is just do everything. Apply for sets you don't think you're going to get an interview at. go to the open evening meet the barristers talk to them ask people for advice whatever you do do the mock interviews get get feedback on your assessment your your your application forms because you never know what's going to work you really never know which mock interview is going to give you the vital piece of advice that will mean your approach really clicks into place.

32:44You never know. My second tip is to be strategic, which sounds a bit contradictory. Think about what you're offering the set, who they are, why they might be interested in you. think about how you might sell yourself to them on the basis of your background or your experience or your education. And my third tip is go for the run. If you're sitting at your desk and you're exhausted and you've got an application form to write and you said you would go for a run, but you're not sure if you've got time, you're too busy, just close your laptop and go for the run because that is what will give you the stamina to get through it.