‘Gone are the days when super-rich people would come in and instruct lawyers on a huge retainer, and let the lawyers run the case how they want to,’ says Williams. ‘Quite rightly clients now want to be involved in how their case is managed.’
A solicitor, mediator and an arbitrator, the likeable Williams, who has been a partner at the firm since 2009, is an expert in financial remedy, asset quantification, unmarried couples and children’s cases. The German speaker, who also has a degree in German law and Swiss-British nationality, says being a fluid communicator ‘certainly opens doors’.
The ‘very determined’ litigator recounts McFarlane v McFarlane, in which he represented a City lawyer who jointly decided with the husband, a top-tier equity partner at Deloitte, to give up her career for their children. She was awarded £250,000, but Williams helped turn it into a sum nearer £400,000 at the High Court, for a career ‘which she could not then get back’.
His ‘most memorable’ case was also the most contentious: a dispute over children with ‘serious allegations’ between the parents. A few years of ‘litigation on every front’ later, there was a happy ending: the wife received a genial invitation to the husband’s second wedding and Williams received a grateful message: ‘She said that without my help, that wouldn’t have happened.’
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