Lord Grabiner: No room at the Inns for Dickensian values: his great expectations come to £3m a year

The top QC inhabits the world of 'Bleak House', but Abigail Townsend finds him at home in both the High Court and the court of Philip Green

It is the most perfect of clichés. The chambers of Lord Grabiner QC, arguably the Bar's leading practitioner and part of a tiny elite that can charge up to £3,000 a hour, are pure Charles Dickens.

Located in the Temple, the network of courtyards in central London that is the historic home of the Bar, his inner sanctum is approached via a flight of creaky wooden steps. The large, sunny room is dominated by two desks heaped with clutter: cartons of Lemsip and camomile tea; a forlorn computer, looking out of place in this historic setting; boxes stacked up and bulging with notes for forthcoming trials; documents and briefs tied together with the ubiquitous pink string; a small, immaculately kept library of law books.

And, sitting amid it all, is Lord Grabiner, bespectacled, arms folded and with an all-knowing air: everything you would expect from a 59-year-old peer of the realm who is also one of Britain's top silks.

Yet Lord Grabiner - or plain Tony to his friends - is no Tulkinghorn from Bleak House. Raised in Hackney, east London, the son of a fur cutter, he won a scholarship to the local grammar school. An expert in commercial law, he has been head of his chambers, One Essex Court, for the past decade but his business acumen is not restricted to the legal world. He was a non-executive director of the fashion chain Next and is currently chairman of Philip Green's retail empire Arcadia.

Then there are his political affiliations. Part of the brave New Labour world, he was made a life peer five years ago but feels no need to toe the party line. The day we meet, he is due later in the House of Lords to vote on foxhunting, and will oppose the Government. He doesn't hunt but can't see the point of banning the sport. "I understand that people don't like the idea of it. But to criminalise something that a lot of people do for pleasure? It's a perfectly harmless activity."

He is not averse to fighting the prevailing majority in the City, either. He has worked with Green for several years and is unfazed by the combative billionaire's unpopularity.

"He is constantly stimulating," he retorts, "and he understands the retail business from top to bottom. People cannot get their heads round the fact that someone might be better at running a business."

The ability - or rather, lack of ability - to run a business is a subject that rouses Lord Grabiner. "Just look at Sainsbury's next to Tesco - one is a world beater, the other is in the doldrums. Look at BP against Shell, Marks & Spencer against Next. It shows this is not a cyclical thing. There is some great management and some lousy management.

"If there were more Philip Greens, there would be a lot more efficiency."

He is also irked about the way the M&S board behaved during Green's bid approach in the summer. Commenting on M&S's recent £2.3bn tender offer to buy back 28 per cent of its shares, he says: "There's a serious doubt about shareholder democracy. They had the face to buy those shares at 362p and they wouldn't even put to their shareholders a £4bn bid from Philip. That takes face, doesn't it?

"They just weren't prepared to trade with him, and there's no mechanism to deal with that unless shareholders are willing to put pressure on the board. But there's a vast number of small shareholders who are not in a position to do anything."

Despite such strongly held views, he is not tempted to enter the City full-time (unlike various other Grabiners: one cousin is chief operating officer of Arcadia and another two are directors at private equity firm Apax). Lord Grabiner says that nothing has tempted him yet but he is obviously reluctant to quit the legal world.

"The best thing is your independence," he extols. "You have your own business, you do your own thing. People come to you for your advice - if they don't take it, that's fine."

He calls commercial law "the most stimulating you can do", while criminal law is dismissed as "badly developed" and family law "too terrible". "It's all grubby work. I get a turn-on from almost everything I do."

His recent cases include ensuring, on behalf of JP Morgan Chase, that German bank WestLB paid $165m (£90m), plus interest and costs, to settle an Enron-related dispute over a derivatives contract. This month he goes into court for Abbott Laboratories in a dispute with rival Cambridge Antibody Technology over royalty payments.

It is high-profile cases such as these, and the even greater amount of time Lord Grabiner spends advising clients on matters that will never come to court, that mean people are willing to pay his fees. He reportedly takes home around £3m a year but is dismissive of any talk about money. "It's irritating. It's not bad but it suggests it's the only thing that matters. And when you compare it to what else is going on in the City ..."

He trails off, perhaps understandably. After all, £3m is nothing compared to the £460m dividend Green recently awarded himself, part of a £500m payout announced after he paid off Arcadia's bank debt earlier than expected (the rest will go to HBOS, which has an 8 per cent stake). "If they didn't want to pay that, they wouldn't come to me," asserts Lord Grabiner.

Not, however, that he doesn't believe he's worth it. Commenting on the often criticised QC system, he says: "It's an indication to the outside world that they have a suitable instruction. If it means X is better than Y, so what? They have earned it. I'm sick to death of this dumbing down of the profession."

Another of his passions, alongside the law, the City and, judging by the amount of photos on his mantelpiece, his family, is the London School of Economics. "That was the key moment in my life," he says of university. "I wouldn't have got into a place like this without very good academic results. Those years brought me into a different world."

And that pretty much sums it up. On first impressions, Lord Grabiner appears the epitome of a Dickensian lawyer, a mastermind sitting in the Temple pondering the finer points of the law, but the reality is a little different. As the interview goes on, his London accent becomes more pronounced ("I've lived my entire life in a radius of three miles," he muses) and he appears generally rather pleased with what he and his kin have achieved.

As he remarks, while casting an eye over his cluttered surroundings: "The grandparents would be shocked to observe all this."

BIOGRAPHY: Lord Grabiner of Aldwych QC

Born: 3 March 1945.

Education: studied law at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Career (1966): law lecturer, LSE.

1968: begins pupillage (one year as a trainee barrister) at One Essex Court.

1969: tenant, One Essex Court.

1981: appointed Queen's Counsel, a process known as "taking silk" and restricted to the best barristers.

1994: head of chambers.

2002: non-executive chairman, Arcadia.

Other posts: chairman of the LSE's Court of Governors, director of the London Court of International Arbitration, deputy High Court judge of the Chancery and Queen's Bench divisions.

Solicitors are generally not allowed to speak in court - which is where barristers such as Lord Grabiner come in. And whereas solicitors form partnerships, barristers are self employed. However, most become "tenants" in chambers, which tend to be known by their address and often specialise in one area of the law. One barrister will usually head the chambers, but all pay collective costs. These include salaries for staff such as clerks, who negotiate with solicitors over cases and fees.