Neil Ziatabari, a senior associate at Ashurst, and Niall Trainor, an in-house lawyer at eOne, formed their acoustic act ‘Neil & Niall’ after an impromptu performance at a wedding in 2014. Since then they have performed to thousands of people around the world, while raising significant sums for charity in the process. As their debut gig they signed up to the LawRocks! battle of the bands charity competition – and won. LawRocks! founder Nick Child invited them to perform in Tokyo a few months later.

The acoustic duo, who received the support of Ashurst for the trip, soon found themselves in Japan performing for Tokyo TV.

After Tokyo came charity performances in Vienna, Washington DC, Sydney and Hong Kong. How do they fit tours and rehearsals around their busy work schedules? Neil said: ‘We’ve kept the act clean and simple. Our instruments have great resonance unplugged, so we don’t need to complicate things at rehearsals with amps and leads. We’ve kept the act as a duo as it’s easier to find time when we can both rehearse.’

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