The apparent affinity between mild-mannered lawyers who spend their days buried in Halsbury’s Laws of England and their weekends burning rubber at race tracks up and down the country has long been a source of interest to the Gazette, which has featured many of them over the years.


What is the fascination that lawyers hold for fast cars? ‘It’s mind-blowing,’ replies Sarah Franklin, a 34-year old matrimonial law partner at Kettering firm Terence Bailey Solicitors. ‘There is no feeling quite like it when you’re sitting on that grid because there is so much adrenalin.’


Ms Franklin passed her five-day driver’s course at Silverstone last year and now has her race licence. She is taking part in this year’s AVO Ginetta Championship as part of the Reflex Racing team. Her last race at Thruxton last month resulted in ‘a big smash’ in the first lap after a poor qualifying round following brake problems. The solicitor then found herself caught up ‘in other people’s accidents’, leaving her own car with a bent chassis and broken wheel hub.


‘It can take a couple of days to come down,’ Ms Franklin says. ‘It wasn’t until Tuesday when the adrenalin finally stopped pumping and I realised that I actually had whiplash.’ Her husband, Adrian, shares her enthusiasm for racing and four years ago sat for his race licence test. However, he was taken ill soon after and diagnosed as suffering from a form of lymphoma. ‘Because of his illness he can’t race, but we’re hoping he will be able to do some endurance racing once he’s feeling better,’ she says.


Ms Franklin claims that racing cars is a great antidote to the pressures of the day job. ‘The law is so stressful,’ she says. ‘When you’re racing you can’t think of anything else, so it is a stress release.’


Duncan Rabagliati, a consultant at London firm Wedlake Bell, runs the Formula Junior championship. ‘It has grown from being two or three cars running in 1993 to being the most successful historical racing formula in Europe,’ the solicitor says. ‘From very small beginnings, we now have 300 cars racing and we hold races almost every weekend from March to October.’ Events are held at tracks from Donnington Park to Monza and Monaco. The biggest race of the year for Formula Junior is at Silverstone at the end of July. ‘We will have 44 cars on the grid and another ten extra just in case some break down,’ he says.


As a lawyer, Mr Rabagliati specialises in trusts and residential property, and from 1990 to 1993 he was lawyer to the Formula One Lotus team. He stopped working more than two years ago to be a consultant to the firm. So how does the old day job compare to the thrills and spills of racing? ‘I think it is equally exciting dealing with fascinating offshore clients,’ he insists. ‘If you are having lunch with the managing director of Panasonic in Osaka having just bought his property, I find that the same as heading for the first chicane at Monza.’


Ms Franklin is currently spending all her spare time preparing for the forthcoming season. ‘It’s pretty much all consuming and when I’m not working I’m either at the gym training, speaking to sponsors or testing the car,’ she says. ‘It’s taking every second of the day at the moment.’ And it is an expensive business – her car costs £40,000 to £50,000 annually to maintain ‘depending on how much damage’ has been done.


What is her dream racing car? ‘I would love to have driven a Bentley at Le Mans, but frankly I’d race a shopping trolley there if I was given the chance,’ she replies.


Other racing lawyers include Matthew Truelove, a partner at Guildford-based law firm TWM solicitors, who has raced his BMW M3 in the Nürburgring 24-hour race, which in terms of cars entered and spectators (around 150,000) is said to be the largest of its kind in the world. And Lawrence Phillips, a partner at City firm Tarlo Lyons, has taken part in the Sports 2000 (or Sports 2) series.


As Mr Truelove told the Gazette back in 2001: ‘It offsets the thrill-a-minute nature of commercial property law.’