Nick McDonnell of Kain Knight reflects on an unexpected legal career, his drive to support vulnerable clients and the surprising pleasures of watching nothing happen
What was your route into the profession?
My route was entirely accidental. I didn’t study law. After graduating from Cambridge, I returned home and took a job as a legal assistant while I worked out what I actually wanted to do with my life.
I quickly discovered that I loved the law and, perhaps rather more unusually, legal costs. The real turning point came when the wife of the solicitor I was assisting sadly became ill and he took time away to care for her. I suddenly found myself taking on far more responsibility. What had started as something to do while I decided on a career… became the career. I’ve never really looked back.
What has been your biggest career challenge so far?
After almost 20 years as an employee, taking the leap to become a director and part-owner of Kain Knight was a big one. There is quite a difference between having views about how a business should be run and suddenly being one of the people responsible for running it. I’m now nearly ten years into that journey.
More recently, writing my soon-to-be-published book, Vulnerability & Costs: Ensuring Access to Justice in Modern Civil Litigation & Beyond, has probably been the biggest intellectual challenge. The issues it deals with rarely have neat or straightforward answers, particularly when you’re considering how the rules and principles work in practice, rather than just on paper. It’s a subject that matters a great deal to me, and trying to explore those questions properly has been quite an undertaking.
Of course, the book has had to fit around the day job. Finding the time and headspace to write while still dealing with the everyday demands of the business has been a challenge in itself. It has certainly made me more disciplined with my time.
I’ve also come to the realisation that writing a book sounds terribly impressive until you actually start writing one. Then you discover just how many times it’s possible to rewrite the same paragraph!
Which person within the legal profession inspires you most?
Marc Elias, the American elections lawyer. I have a longstanding fascination with the intersection between US law and politics, and Elias operates right at the centre of it. He is one of America’s leading election lawyers and has spent much of his career litigating voting rights, redistricting and election law cases.
What particularly impresses me is his willingness to use the law actively and fearlessly in defence of democratic institutions. You don’t have to practise in the same jurisdiction, or even remotely the same field, to admire that degree of commitment to what you believe the law is there to protect.
If you weren’t a lawyer, what would you choose as an alternate career?
At 20, unquestionably a drummer in a band. Unfortunately, enthusiasm considerably exceeded talent.
But also, having relatively recently turned 50, my ambitions have matured, or possibly just become more sedentary. Given my fascination with American law and politics, I’d now quite like to be a pundit on US television, providing the slightly bemused ‘view from across the pond’. It combines three things I enjoy: law, politics, and offering opinions when nobody has specifically asked for them.
Who is your favourite fictional lawyer?
Jake Brigance from John Grisham’s A Time to Kill and Sycamore Row. He isn’t the slick, impossibly successful fictional lawyer. He’s a small-town Mississippi attorney, often taking difficult cases that are financially questionable, professionally risky and occasionally dangerous.
He is flawed, stubborn and sometimes makes life unnecessarily difficult for himself, but he has a very strong sense of justice and is prepared to stand his ground when it matters. He also gets some magnificent courtroom moments, which helps.
What change would you make to the profession?
I would change the rules governing the recovery of vulnerability-related costs and accompany that with a comprehensive programme of training for practitioners.
We have made enormous progress in recognising vulnerability and the importance of effective participation, but identifying vulnerability is only the beginning. One of the themes I explore in my book is the gap between recognising vulnerability in principle and responding to it effectively in practice. Practitioners need practical guidance on managing vulnerable clients, recording the additional work properly and ensuring that legitimate vulnerability-related costs can actually be recovered. Otherwise, there is a danger that the commitment to access to justice exists but is not properly supported.
How do you relax?
We moved to the countryside at the beginning of this year and are now surrounded by fields and wildlife. After years of roads, houses and emails, it turns out that looking out of the window and seeing nothing much happening is surprisingly therapeutic.
Relaxation rather takes care of itself when that is your backdrop. Although that said, owning a 450-year-old house does occasionally introduce its own interpretation of the word ‘relaxing’.
Nick McDonnell, director, costs lawyer and manager of the Manchester office at Kain Knight (kain-knight.co.uk). His forthcoming book A Practitioner's Guide to Vulnerability & Costs: Ensuring Access to Justice in Modern Civil Litigation & Beyond (Law Brief Publishing) is due to be published on 15 November 2026.
