Gateley Wareing

We had the opportunity to get to know James through working with him during his two years at Gateley Wareing as a trainee solicitor. I was in the same year of trainees as James and considered him a great friend. I have attached a couple of pictures of James during his time at Gateley Wareing. Both are taken from Christmas parties which the trainees (including James) organised. The first is of us as a group from our Christmas party in January 2005 and the second, with James dressed as a cowboy, was from our first Christmas party with a wild west theme in January 2004. We worked together to organise these events and a number of others during our time as trainees.

James was always generous with both his time and ideas in making these events work and much of their success was due to his remarkable imagination and ability to think that anything was possible. In view of his public speaking skills, James was our unofficial spokesman and was always happy to take on the thespian role – much to our own relief.

We as a group will always remember his amazing capacity to send the wordiest emails on the simplest of arrangements, even let’s meet in the pub after work! I would love to see James’ time recording when he had spent one of his many afternoons composing a pun filled email about an event. They certainly proved a distraction from the normal day. Equally, we will remember his notable ‘test match’ sicknesses and none of us will forget the news of him making controversial decisions against the senior partner when umpiring cricket!

It is rare to get the opportunity to meet someone who makes the lasting impression on you as James did. James was an amazing character and I believe we are all keen to concentrate on all of our happy memories of our time with him at Gateleys. We enjoyed all of our time working with him and he was much missed by us when he left Gateley Wareing to join Stuart Hodge. James was for all of us an entertaining (and extremely intelligent) colleague, an excellent high class drinking partner (we never worked out how he managed all those fine wines and taste for posh cigars on a trainee salary – we never could convince him to buy a Bushwackers £5 happy hour bottle!) and a valued friend. We would all like to pass our sympathies on to his family.

On a personal level, I always agreed with James that he had far too much creativity for life as a lawyer! He was such a vibrant character it is a real shame that we will never know what he would have achieved. I honestly thought that I would see him on television one day when I was least expecting it. I think we will all regret that we let James persuade us out of that firm trip to see him play a stripper at the Crescent theatre!

I enjoyed spending time with James. We tended to spar with each other, disagreed with each other all the time and I believe I gave him a fair few lectures, all of which were completely disregarded. Despite this, the sparring was always in jest and part and parcel of our friendship. We had amazing fun together and I always looked forward to seeing him. Happily for me the last time I saw James he was in his element presenting a BTSS quiz in his usual flamboyant style (and feeding Gateleys the wrong answers!). This is an excellent way to remember him.

Amy Taylor