Finance solicitor by day, Jiu-Jitsu pro by night
A senior associate at RPC has claimed victory over 1,600 competitors in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) — a more aggressive adaptation of its parent art, Judo.
As British champion in the sport, David Allinson now holds an impressive brown belt, the highest ranking colour belt in BJJ. A former trainee at JP Morgan and now on the financial risks team at RPC, he’s been training and competing for around 12 years.
“I’ve always enjoyed sport and fell into BJJ after becoming a fan of mixed martial arts. It was a lot harder to find a club back when I started but there was a guy teaching in my home town and I went along once and was hooked,” Allinson says.
To gain wins, he finds the time to train three times a week, grappling opponents to the floor using submission holds such as chokes or joint locks. His recent victory goes some way to dispelling the City lawyer myth that they are chained to a desk 24/7 and have little opportunity to pursue personal interests. Continuing, he says:
The training schedule is pretty intense and I found the flexible working policy at RPC to be of great benefit especially in the lead up to a competition where the number of training sessions needed to be increased.
But he’s not the first lawyer at RPC to fight martial arts battles. Nigel Collins (pictured below), a corporate partner at the firm, is also a modern-day Samurai. When he’s not clearing deals, he’s defending himself using not the law, but a bamboo sword — he’s into the Japanese martial art Kendo. Interestingly, Collins’ profile states he has “extensive experience and a deep cultural knowledge of Japan and Japanese business.”
With firms happy to trumpet their commitment to diversity, now more than ever future lawyers are thinking about how to stand out from the crowd. No doubt winning a Jiu-Jitsu championship would do just that.
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