CitySolicitor


Past Master John Young, Liveryman


Past Master Mark Sheldon


It was with pride tinged with sadness that I accepted the Editor’s invitation to write about Mark. He died in hospital on 3 May at the age of 82, some fi ve days after undergoing a knee operation. Mark was educated at Wycliffe College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford and served his National Service as a lieutenant in Royal Signals.


Mark joined Linklaters & Paines in 1957 and at once proved his calibre: he won our Company’s prize in that year and became a partner in the firm a mere two years later. He established the firm’s New York office in 1972 and served as senior partner from 1988 to 1993. Sir Robert Finch speaks of “his great stint in New York and his wonderful vision in terms of where he thought the firm should go”.


Mark served as Chairman of the Company’s Professional Business Committee (the forerunner of the Committee of the City of London Law Society) from 1976 to 1978 and as Master of the Company in 1987/88. Shortly before this he had proclaimed his antagonism to multi-disciplinary practices and had campaigned vigorously for the independence of lawyers. While Master (to quote from Keith Hinde’s History of the Company), “his thespian inclinations led him to delight in a spectacular float in the Lord Mayor’s Show and scintillating Revels at the Duchess Theatre”. Mark was always traditionalist but when Karen Richardson broke with tradition by treading a new path as the first female Master of the Company, he was an unhesitating champion.


It was in 1977 that Mark started his distinguished career on the Council of the Law Society which included a spell as Treasurer from 1981 to 1986 and culminated in his election as President in 1992. Shortly beforehand he was so tireless in his preparations that he continued to work in hospital while recovering from


12 • City Solicitor • Issue 82


surgery. He chose “One Profession”, as his theme for the year. John Hayes, the then Secretary General of the Society, tells us “By his sheer hard work and willingness to listen even before taking office Mark convinced High Street practitioners that he understood their concerns and was prepared to fight for them…..He could deal effectively with people at all levels as well as gently puncture arguments that lacked merit”. With John, other Council and Court members will recall an occasional pedantic approach and attention to minutiae although, as John says “his charm and wit shone through”! He was a hugely civilised ambassador for our profession.


A fellow Council member, Chris Heaps, tells of two delightful incidents: “When I invited Sir John Donaldson (as he then was) qua Master of the Rolls to open the new Solicitors Complaints Bureau offices in Leamington Spa, I arranged for Sir John to travel with the driver in the cab of the locomotive-No 90 013 The Law Society-between Euston and Coventry. When I mentioned this to Mark, his immediate response was “That is not fair” and against all the rules it was agreed that the President of the Law Society could also travel with the driver, as did I”….“Mark had officiated as President at the naming of the locomotive at Euston after the Lord Chancellor’s Breakfast on the previous 1st October in the presence of numerous foreign legal dignitaries, all of whom (clad in their respective exotic gowns) followed him into the cab like schoolboys”.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16