Spear’s Review

With a client book spanning royalty and UHNW landed families, Birketts partner Tristan Ward brings a  long-term perspective to property law. It’s unsurprising for a lawyer who once owned a 700-acre farm in Kent, which he ran until 2017. ‘There’s a saying in farming: live as though you’ll die tomorrow, but farm as though you’ll live forever,’ he tells Spear’s.

That philosophy has stayed with him. In property, he argues, decisions made today can have consequences for generations. ‘What I write down in a document that affects the ownership, in principle, can last forever,’ he says, recalling the oldest legal document he has advised on: a medieval Latin document written by, or on behalf of, Richard II, which still had real day-to-day legal effect centuries later.

For Ward, that perspective is increasingly important as landowners grapple with climate change and the need to plan for a different future. He sees an estate not simply as an asset, but as ‘an organic unit’ with ‘a life and a destiny’ – one that encompasses employees, supply chains and the wider community around it.