We say farewell to Peter Kelly

Thursday 31st October marks the end of Peter Kelly’s long career with Neves.

Peter has been with Neves for 40 years, joining in 1984. He has been our Head of Disputes for many years and was one of the managing partners before stepping down in 2022.

We asked Peter for some of his memories of how the profession has changed over the years, so here’s a ‘potted’ history of some of the advances he’s observed over the past 40+ years.

Me

"I started as an “Articled clerk” in a small firm in a Dickensian
part of London, in a street called St Andrew’s Hill, just down from St Paul’s Cathedral. The offices of Ellis Wood Bickersteth and Hazel were adjacent to a Wren Church, curiously named St Andrew-by-the- Wardrobe. The firm no longer exists, but the building which housed it does (pictured right) and has been turned into flats.
Lawyers are renowned for keeping papers, so I have even managed to find my “articles of clerkship.” These disclosed that I was on a salary of £1500 per annum. That really was not very much – even then. An inflation calculation tool on the Internet tells me that that is about £9,500 in today’s money. That is quite interesting because I felt I could just about “get by” (albeit by sharing flats and scrimping) on that salary. You certainly could not manage on £9,500 today as a young man in London, so I think inflation alone is a misleading measure of the true value of the salary. I am pleased to report that after one year it shot up to £1750!
But one has to remember that not that long before my starting in the profession one actually had to pay for the privilege of being trained! 
After articles, I did another three years at ‘Ellis Wood’ before coming to Neves in Luton in 1984."

Practice

"This has changed massively in my time in the profession. In a provincial practice such as Neve Son & Co (as it was called in 1984), there were many competitors of a like nature. Many of the practitioners were very generalist indeed. One might appear in the Magistrates Court on many a morning (either for the defendant or Beds Police, if you were on the Prosecution Panel), then later in the day manage your civil litigation, family issues, conveyancing and Wills and Probate. We were only just leaving behind the days when property completions took place in person at the sellers’ solicitors office, in exchange for a cheque of course. I wonder just how many completions one could achieve on a Friday afternoon now by deploying that method!

The move towards specialisation must be regarded as a good thing. Many external factors have necessarily brought about considerable change. Membership of the EU brought in a lot of new legislation, especially in the field of employment. Technology was advancing in increasingly fast leaps and bounds. (Digression – in my old firm the technological advances meant first the ‘daisy wheel’ typewriter, then the ‘golf ball’ typewriter. A few of you will know what they were, but the fundamental principle meant that the carriage, which held the sheet of paper, remained stationary!). The demands of the clients became greater (with increased championing of consumer rights) and there was also a demand for much greater accountability. All these things meant it was becoming increasingly difficult to remain as any kind of “generalist.” 

In my early days of crime (!), I did rather regret the creation of the CPS. Again, the new nationwide service probably created a much higher nationwide standard for prosecution, in the place of less than efficient, sometimes haphazard, county police forces handling prosecutions. But when you found yourself defending someone on a charge one day, and then on the next prosecuting for the police, it did ensure that you had a very balanced view of the whole process. And you certainly did not become “Prosecution minded” or “Defence minded.”

As for compliance and professional regulation…when I qualified, we were all given a paperback entitled “A Guide to the Professional Conduct of Solicitors.” It contained everything you really needed to know about looking after client money, and professional conduct generally. The most memorable section was a short paragraph about how not to write to a client - see below. Fair enough!"

"Nowadays, there is not just a book, but an entire industry devoted to professional behaviour. It has all been necessary – know your client, money laundering, source of funds etc. It is of course hugely important, but it has also added to what was always the expensive cost of professional services." 

Final thoughts

"Certainly, there have been many ups and downs and difficult challenges in the last 40 years. Many similar firms (I mean similar 40 years ago) have not survived (some with disastrous demises). I am pleased to say that Neves still displays much of the same ethos as it did when I joined. I do hope it will continue to do so."

Peter will be greatly missed by all of us at Neves. We wish him all the best in his retirement.