It is perhaps unprecedented for three members of a family to be formally admitted to the Law Society on the same day. But it certainly saves on petrol, as proud father Douglas Iles can attest.
Douglas, who qualified in 1998, finally fetched up to a Chancery Lane ceremony on 19 October with his children George and Rebecca (both admitted in the last five years). His father, also Douglas, and wife Caroline were in attendance too.
‘I came to the law late after leaving school with just a few O levels,’ Douglas Junior tells Obiter. ‘As I was drifting through life in sales jobs, my wife suggested that I become a lawyer after a casual comment I made in support of a lawyer who was talking on the radio. This radical idea took hold and so I went back to school at 28 to take three A levels so that I could get into university.’
Douglas made up for lost time. A training contract at Tollers LLP in Northampton followed and he went on to start his own corporate law firm, Friday Legal Solicitors, which he sold to Wilson Browne LLP in Kettering. He was a founding partner of Key Conveyancing in Northampton and chairman a decade before his partners bought him out last year.
‘Now that I have been admitted, I can finally retire!’ he tells Obiter.
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