Paul Leighton Email and Phone Number

I started working at age sixteen as an apprentice and then practising plumber. Over the next few decades I developed my career to become a partner in a law firm, leading over two hundred lawyers.Six years into my plumbing career, in search of something more challenging, I started the first plumbing school in Benue State, Nigeria as a VSO volunteer. I learnt a lot more than I taught in my two years in Nigeria and I came away with some of the drive and determination displayed by my students. In particular, I had a thirst for knowledge and I gained an understanding of the importance of change in organisations.Over the next fifteen years I developed my career in the areas of finance, law and construction, qualifying as a Chartered Quantity Surveyor and Chartered Builder along the way. I decided to focus on property and construction law, and so qualified as a Barrister then a Solicitor by part time study. My experience of working for big commercial property clients, who relied on me for sensible financial and legal advice on major building projects, was of immense help when I went onto join the law firm where I would spend the next twenty one years. My business on building a volume litigation team to deal with claims for financial institutions, also enabled me to concentrate on my business specialities: managing legal disputes as a process, managing risk, managing change and turning businesses to profit and at the same time, whilst managing my own caseload of major professional negligence related litigation. I topped up my business skills with a finance course at London Business School and a post graduate diploma in organisation leadership at Oxford University in 2016/17.Outside of work, my main hobby is renovating large Victorian houses, which enables me to keep my hand in as a craftsman, a building designer, and a project manager. It is not only my artistic outlet but keeps me fit. I am also a very keen fisherman in the UK. I travel extensively fishing, most memorably catching: Tiger fish on the Zambezi; Tarpon in the mangrove swamps of Puerto Rico and Sailfish in the Caribbean Sea.