Spear’s Review

‘With my experience, I’m not really shockable anymore,’ Mark Jones, partner at Payne Hicks Beach, tells Spear’s. ‘I’ve seen most things and can bring an air of calm and confidence.’

Criminal defence work at the firm sits within the dispute resolution team, but Jones is still occasionally called to the police station in the middle of the night. ‘Normally my job involves arranging an interview by appointment so that we can go at a much more reasonable time. But obviously when something is quite urgent and an arrest is necessary, then it does on occasion involve me going to the police station at an unsociable time,’ he says.

His team handles a wide range of criminal issues spanning financial misconduct to general crime, and makes use of Payne Hicks Beach’s wider family, reputation and privacy teams.

Contact with a client as early as possible in the process, well ahead of any formal police involvement, is key, Jones adds. ‘We try to get ahead of the curve to work out exactly what we need to do.’