Personal profiles, professional insights: Lisa Davies, Private Client Partner

You were the first pupil from your school to get into Oxford. How did that journey begin?

I grew up near Oswestry, on the Welsh border, in farming country, and then moved to Ross-on-Wye in my early teens, where I went to the town’s comprehensive school. I didn’t know any lawyers, but I was drawn to law because it played to my strengths: communication, debating and a love of words. I was passionate about fairness from a very young age, and I wanted to make an impact on the world. My father suggested law might be a good fit, and it felt like a wise choice. I read Jurisprudence at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and had a wonderful time. I even coxed for the college rowing team. It was a formative, eye-opening experience.

Your route into practice was anything but conventional. Can you tell us about it?

After Oxford, I wanted a break. I’d worked incredibly hard and needed time to breathe. So off I went to northern Italy, initially as an au pair, speaking no Italian whatsoever, to a tiny village in the Alpine foothills where nobody spoke English. I had to learn Italian very quickly! I stayed there for five years doing many varied jobs before returning to qualify as a lawyer at a firm in London, working first as a paralegal in family law before completing my training contract. Then I went back to Italy, this time to the south near Naples on the Sorrento Peninsula, for another five years. It was a good ten-year gap in my career, and I don’t regret a moment of it.

How did you end up in Cardiff?

My mother was Welsh, and when I eventually decided to come home, Wales felt like the only place for me. I arrived with my cat and 140 boxes, and within a week, I’d met my husband, Carl, in the pool at my new apartment block in Cardiff Bay. I now serve clients on every continent, so it’s fair to say the move worked out well!

You specialise in an area of law that puts you alongside families at some of their most difficult moments. How do you approach that?

A colleague once said I was sometimes more of a therapist than a lawyer, which can often feel true.

Private client work demands a high level of emotional intelligence. That comes with experience, but you also need strong people skills.

Is there a case that has stayed with you?

I was called to a hospice in Penarth to make a will for a terminally ill woman in her early thirties. She was divorced, and her greatest worry was her teenage son’s welfare. We sat down together, considered every option, and wrote a letter to present to the family courts, clearly setting out her wishes and concerns. She told me that, because of that work, she felt she could die in peace. That will always stay with me.

Does the emotional weight of the work ever get easier?

Honestly, I’ve found it increases with experience. The closer I get to my average client’s age, the harder it is to feel detached from my work. You’re dealing with people who are losing a parent, or facing their own mortality, and that starts to feel closer to home. I think that’s a good thing. It makes me a better private client lawyer.

What keeps you going after nearly two decades in practice?

One word: people. My clients, my colleagues, and my team. No two families are the same, and while the problems can be similar, the people behind them never are.

The weight of that responsibility doesn’t diminish and, if anything, you become more conscious of it. But the reward grows too.

You also sit as a magistrate. How does that fit alongside your private client practice?

I joined the Cardiff bench back in 2006 and have served as a magistrate since, voluntarily, one day a month. It keeps me connected to a completely different dimension of the law, and I think that each perspective helps with the other.

And outside work, what keeps you grounded?

I am a dedicated consumer of fiction. My father is a screenwriter, so books and films have always been central to my life. For me, picking up a new novel is like choosing your next destination. I also love sewing and dressmaking; I can lose a whole day in my sewing room! And I love to travel. Carl and I have explored much of Europe and Asia, did a grand tour of India, and are heading to Australia and New Zealand next year. Italy, though, will always have my heart. I still have friends there, and I use my Italian whenever I can, including occasionally at work!

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