“Have you ever done one of these breakfasts over the phone?” It’s 8:10 a.m., and Stephen Gibb, chief executive of Scottish law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn, is running late. It’s the second apologetic call he has made to me from the back of his London taxi, which he tells me is still sitting in gridlocked traffic just outside Bank station, in the heart of the city’s financial district. When Gibb finally arrives 10 minutes later, he has somehow cut himself and lost a cufflink. “It’s a long story,” he sighs. I decide not to press further.
As the head of one of Scotland’s leading independent law firms, Gibb is used to drama. The country’s legal market was hammered during the recession—thanks in no small part to its reliance on financial services and real estate, two of the industries hardest hit by the crisis—and has since been changed beyond all recognition by a series of law firm bankruptcies, spinoffs, mergers and acquisitions. “It’s been an interesting few years,” admits Gibb.
