Work, Run & Family – The Life of a Modern Dealmaker

Mark Beardmore, Corporate Partner at Eversheds, shares his insight on how he balances a busy schedule with a little help from marathon running. 

Work life balance is a phrase we now hear all the time. Easy to say but, for many, difficult to implement. In the legal profession, corporate lawyers have probably found this more difficult than most. Things have changed though and, for me, I think I’ve finally got it right (or, more accurately, got it much better), 20 years after qualifying.

When I say things have changed, I mean there is an appreciation within all firms that there is a need for a balance. Exercise is not part of everyone’s daily or weekly routine but it is hugely important for many busy professionals for health and general well-being. It’s also a great way of dealing with the stresses that inevitably come with our role. I’m sure that’s why there are so many runners, cyclists and triathletes in most corporate teams.

I’ve been a runner for many years but I was erratic. I would enter a marathon, start training and if I got too busy on deals my running would suffer and I would end up cancelling it. I did my first marathon in 1998 and my tenth in 2011 but I must have cancelled as many as I ran doing that period. I struggled to cement running as part of my weekly routine and would often go several weeks without running when I was very busy and then only pick it up again during a quieter spell. After a marathon in 2011, I went a couple of years without running much at all. I probably thought my marathon days were behind me and my waistline certainly suggested they were! A few months garden leave was the catalyst to get running again and I ran the Florence marathon in November 2013 just before I joined Eversheds.

Since then, I have managed to build a proper routine and have run another 11 marathons. Diarising an early morning or lunchtime run a couple of times during the working week has made a massive difference to me. It doesn’t always happen and clients and deals take priority but, more often than not, if it’s in the diary it will happen which helps to build and maintain a routine. This isn’t for everyone but I’ve suggested in mentoring sessions with members of the team that they try and diarise something for themselves once a week (eg a tennis match on a Monday evening like a colleague of mine or a long run on a Wednesday morning in my case where appointments are blocked out before 9.30am). Another partner in our team recently joined a running club which meets at 7pm on a Wednesday. Again, diarising that as an appointment works for him. He will get there more weeks than most, recognising that he will have to cancel it at times. If he has a deal completing that week he probably won’t make it but, despite how it might sometimes feel, we don’t each complete a deal every week. However, if the time isn’t diarised in advance something will often happen which gets in the way.

It sounds simple and some people may have always been disciplined like this but, in my experience, corporate lawyers struggle to make outside interests like this work on a regular basis and I certainly wasn’t good at this for the majority of my career.

The benefits are more than just being fitter and healthier. I benefit from having some time during the week for myself (even if it is early in the morning which is certainly much easier in the summer than the middle of February) and this has been especially important during busy spells. Another key factor for me has been arranging to run with friends, colleagues and even like-minded clients and contacts. It’s much more difficult to reset the alarm if you’re meeting someone at your back gate at 5.30 for a long run which is my Wednesday morning routine. Once you’re up and out, you never regret going but, if I wasn’t meeting someone, the temptation of resetting the alarm and staying in bed for another hour is too strong. The other benefit for me of this routine is that it’s a day when I will get a later than normal train to the office which means that I have a post-run breakfast with the family. It means I get to the office on a Wednesday a bit later than normal but I’ve done a long run and had breakfast with the family and, if that means I’m in the office later that evening, then it still feels like a good trade off.

For me, after sticking pretty well to a routine like this for over two years during a busy period with many deals completing, I don’t think there’s any going back. It’s also made me more appreciative of the importance to the team to also find some balance. We work in a demanding and challenging environment and the partners in a team have to set the tone in terms of commitment to clients and also demonstrating to the team an ability to balance work with family and outside interests – all of which contribute to successful and sustainable careers. Just wish I’d have worked that out a few years earlier!