From a PR point of view, the timing for Harrison’s London raid could hardly have been worse for Boies Schiller. But the plan is going ahead.
Harrison is launching her litigation house this week in a move which will mark one of the largest law firm launches in the UK in recent decades. She has hollowed out Boies Schiller’s London office, taking 27 of 33 staff with her, as well as some major clients.
She will hold on to her high-profile cases, including a lawsuit against Credit Suisse over Mozambique’s $2bn so-called tuna bonds scandal, as well as a potential case against the bank on behalf of investors burnt by the collapse of Greensill.
Yet Harrison doesn’t seem like someone who is about to deliver a blow to one of America’s most feared lawyers. Sitting on the sofa in her Kensington home beside her Russian Blue cat, Matrix, she appears completely calm just days before her firm’s launch.
“Why take the easy route?” laughs Harrison. “I always ask myself, what’s the worst thing that could happen? And what would I do if I wasn’t afraid? That’s exactly the question I ask at every stage of my career. Take that fear away, and really look at it. If it’s risk-free, would you do it? Without doubt.”
Those close to her will surely place their bets on a name for the firm beginning with the letter M, given that her children are called Max and Mia, her cats Matrix and Mika and her Yorkshire terrier dogs Mimi and Marni.
When it came to choosing, Harrison says her children, aged 16 and 11, helped her to settle on a name. “You’re literally the first person being told this outside the little net of secrecy – [it’s going to be called] Pallas Partners,” she reveals. “That comes from Pallas Athena, the goddess of war, wisdom and – rather randomly – handicraft.”
It is not wildly surprising that Harrison, the oldest of four girls, has named her business after a goddess. She describes one of the most memorable career moments as “commuting to Iceland and back whilst IVFing, and then pregnant with my son” while fighting on behalf of 120 hedge funds following Iceland’s banking collapse in 2008.
She also remembers struggling to fit in after first joining the male-dominated legal sector in the 1990s – and wants to ensure none of her staff ever feel like that.
“I just didn’t fit. [The sector] was predominantly Oxbridge, white male. I was Durham, I was a girl and I was the first in my family to go to university. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling,” she says.
“When I moved into the US system in 2000, that’s when I started to fit. It was utterly liberating – they didn’t care what your qualification was or what school you went to. If you were good, you could really accelerate.”
