About Andrew
I believe business success comes from relationships, not combat
That might sound obvious.
But look at how the legal profession operates and you'd never know it.
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Contracts written to trap people.
Disputes resolved by whoever fights hardest.
Lawyers who measure success by how much leverage they can extract rather than how much value they can create.
It produces worse outcomes for the businesses it's supposed to serve.
Legal combat destroys the relationships that drive long-term success. And it mistakes short-term leverage for long-term advantage.
The businesses that last — the ones that scale, the ones that land their most ambitious plans — understand that relationships are a strategic asset, not a variable to be managed.
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That's the belief behind everything I do.
And it took one moment in my career to crystallise it.
The journey that built the belief
It was at Bristow Group, a US-listed UK-headquartered helicopter services operator building an increasingly international business, that my relationship-first thinking started to grow. Head office instinct was to manage local partners the way a lot of multinationals do: tell them what to do, loudly if necessary.
I took a different approach.
I built relationships with those partners instead. Asked for their input. Trusted them to respond in kind. After their initial surprise, they did.
It was an early lesson in something I've only become more convinced of since that time: that relationships, handled well, move faster and last longer than legal leverage ever does.
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That instinct only grew further when I joined ASOS in 2012 as General Counsel. ASOS was one of the fastest-growing businesses in the UK at the time, with a young, internet-native team that believed deeply in what they were building and had absolutely no interest in anything that felt corporate or old-fashioned. My job was to build a legal function that fit that business like a glove, robust enough to protect it, agile enough to keep it moving fast. Key to that was getting the engagement of everyone in the building on what we wanted to achieve.
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But the moment that showed me just how powerful it can be to put relationships first had nothing to do with "the law".
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ASOS faced a five-year global IP attack. Serious, sustained, expensive and potentially even existential. We had strong, well reasoned legal positions. We had big law firms alongside us. We had done months and months of preparation. None of that was what ultimately resolved it.
What resolved it was a simple apology I gave.
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That moment crystallised everything I had been coming to believe about law, about business, and about what actually creates long-term success. It wasn't combat that worked. It was the decision to prioritise a relationship.
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From ASOS I moved to Berry Bros & Rudd, a 325 year old wine and spirits merchant, still family owned, now in its eighth generation. I was their first ever legal hire. Coming in after a fast-growth internet rocketship, the contrast couldn't have been sharper. With its carefully preserved family atmosphere, BB&R had the quiet confidence of a business that thinks in decades, not quarters. And the foundations of its business were relationships with customers and suppliers that had lasted for years & years & years.
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BB&R deepened something I'd been building for years. The businesses that last aren't the ones that fight hardest. They're the ones that tend their relationships across generations. They're the ones that work hard to build partnerships, friendships even.
That's why I founded Relationship First Law. Because the legal profession is letting businesses down.
The legal industry is built around combat: contracts designed to trap people, disputes resolved by whoever fights hardest, and lawyers who measure success by how much leverage they can extract. That combat actively works against the businesses it's supposed to serve. It destroys relationships. It wastes time and money. It pulls leadership teams away from building something.
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Ambitious businesses deserve better. They deserve legal thinking that looks forward, not backward. Legal thinking that pro-actively protects & enables long-term plans, rather than reacting. Legal thinking that treats relationships as the strategic asset they are.
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I finally found a version of being a lawyer I'm proud of. And I founded Relationship First Law to share it.
Beyond the law
Everything I do outside Relationship First Law makes me better at what I do inside it.
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I'm proud to give something back to Northern Ireland, the place I'm from and the place I call home. I am an Independent Non-Executive Director at the Department of Health in Northern Ireland, one of the most complex operating environments in the public sector, managing an £8bn+ budget against rising demand and funding constraints. I'm also a Non-Executive Director at Middletown Centre for Autism, a cross-border centre of excellence for the education of children & young people with autism, jointly funded by the governments of Northern Ireland & the Republic of Ireland, and created under the Good Friday Agreement.
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That second role is personal as well as professional. My stepson has autism and doesn't speak. When he was younger, the Centre was a real support to his mum. Knowing what organisations like this mean to families makes me want to make sure this one thrives.
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For nine years I was Chair of Barons Court Project, a homelessness and mental health charity in Hammersmith, where I lived for 20 years. During that time, government austerity stripped back the statutory funding that small charities had relied on, while demand for services kept growing. A lot of charities didn't survive that period. Barons Court Project did. I'm proud of that.
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I mention all of this not to pad a biography, but because it shapes how I think. Boards make better decisions when someone brings a different perspective and asks the uncomfortable questions early. Organisations become more robust without losing what makes them special. Relationships, tended carefully over time, outlast almost everything else.
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The same thinking. In every room I walk into.
Let's Talk
If any of this resonates — if you've read this and thought "that's exactly what we need" — I'd love to have a conversation.
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Not a sales call.
Just an honest discussion about where you are, where you're trying to get to, and whether I can help you get there without anything derailing you along the way.
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I work with a small number of businesses at any one time. That's deliberate. The work I do requires genuine commitment on both sides, and it only works when the relationship is right.
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If that sounds like the kind of partnership you're looking for, let's find out.