Admitted in 1981, with Godfreys Law since 1986 and recently retired (August 2025) – those are the broad dates for Phil Sewell formerly with Godfreys Law in Christchurch.
Many people said that if he’d stayed on one more year, he would have done 40 years at Godfreys. “40 years before the mast,” as his predecessor Doug Godfrey proudly said about himself. But achieving 40 years had zero appeal to Phil. He says he had been carefully working towards retirement, over the last few years. He compared it to a plane coming in to land - gliding in, decreasing speed slowly, getting the wheels down, landing without any bumps and taxiing in to the terminal.
That’s where Phil is now - but when we caught up with him, he was not exactly sure what terminal he had come in to. His first week of retirement was mainly spent helping plan a family funeral; week two was more normal; but week 3 was spent mainly feeling sorry for himself with a flu/cold. He is looking forward to establishing a new routine which involves plenty of biking, tramping and home DIY. Maybe in weeks 4 and 5 he will get started?
So, what lessons does Phil have to pass on. Has he learned anything?
- Make sure you have a great team of young people around you. As well as keeping you in touch, they are great at fixing technical issues on computers, with Excel spreadsheets and complex editing.
- Make sure you do whatever Alan Gallagher says you should do.
- If leaving or entering a new partnership consult Sam Beesley early on, he is the best.
- See if you can get a dedicated AML team to handle all that stuff. Leaves you time to concentrate on your legal work.
- Use plain language and avoid all Latin phrases and long words.
- Tell your clients what you think when you pass on correspondence from other people, rather than saying, “please phone to discuss”. We are in the business of giving advice, so give it.
- Don’t underrate the value of a good practice manager. They too can release your precious time, so you can focus on what you are good at - your client file work.
- Holidays are important for everyone, not just you and the other partners/directors – keep everyone fresh.
One of the happiest periods of Phil’s time in the law was actually his last year or so, when he was neither director nor partner and was freed from all those issues which take up so much management time. No meetings, no agendas, no dramas - just do the file work and let the practice manager sort it. Phil can see the real benefit of a firm which has the right size, and in having a proper general manager to move all that tedious work away from the directors. Ah, the benefits of hindsight!
Phil has not fully retired. He is now working as a barrister sole (from the kitchen table) doing PPPR Act assignments as Lawyer for subject person. This is an area he has done a lot of work in and is the only area where Phil says he can honestly claim to have real expertise. He intends to do this work only for another year or two, while he and his wife adjust to their new budget! Happy days.
Lastly, Phil would’ve wanted to add that this article was written by a real person, not by an AI programme. Whilst he does (somewhat) acknowledge the benefits of all these new ‘A’ acronyms (“AI” and “AML”), we agree there is a personal nature to legal work that, not surprisingly, can only be delivered by real people.
Only an unreasonable person would think that a Generative AI programme could sufficiently produce an article about Phil. His style simply cannot be regenerated.
PDS. A real person. A career full of real solutions.
