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Edited transcript of Matthew Claughton, Managing Director of Olliers Solicitors, in conversation with Robert Hanna on the Legally Speaking Podcast (Season 10, Episode 30). Lightly edited for clarity. Watch the full episode.

How did you get into criminal defence?

I passed my law degree in 1985 and did not really know what to do, so I took a year out and became an advice worker at a Citizens Advice Bureau. I got good at listening to people's problems, diagnosing them and delivering an answer, and I represented claimants at benefits tribunals. I realised I could make a difference for my clients, and at 21 or 22 that gave me a lot of confidence. So I sat my solicitor's exams and qualified. I went from not knowing what to do with my degree to knowing I wanted to work with individual clients, where I could really make a difference for a person, rather than with contracts or conveyancing.

Why criminal defence in particular?

There was always something in me drawn to it. Once I started going to police stations, prisons, the cells and the courts, I found it genuinely exciting. Add to that the fact that you really can make a difference to someone's life, and often you are on your own at the police station, so it is down to you. When an individual has the might of the state bearing down on them and you are the one person they can turn to, that is a huge responsibility, but it is also a privilege. By the time I finished my training, crime was the only thing I wanted to do.

What is the emotional reality for someone under investigation?

It is most intense for the person in custody. They have been arrested, sometimes for something very serious, they have asked for a lawyer, and they are waiting. When they finally see you, you are the first person on their side, and the only person at that point. You see people at their most vulnerable, and that is when your job kicks in: put them at ease, then give the advice that puts them in the best possible position. Sometimes the worst case is a life sentence, so the stakes could not be higher.

Can a criminal charge be prevented? What is pre-charge representation?

The best day's work is not necessarily an acquittal in the Crown Court. Far better is the day you can ring a client to say the case is being NFA'd, no further action, it is over. That client is on the phone trying to take it in, and I will always ring first and email the detail afterwards, so they know as soon as possible that they have their life back. That is where we have the biggest impact, and it is one of the things that sets us apart.

The danger is being released under investigation, told to come back in three months, then another three, relying on the police and assuming that because you have done nothing you will not be prosecuted. People can sleepwalk into a prosecution that way. My stance is the opposite: do not forget yesterday's harrowing police interview, go on the front foot, and instruct a lawyer who will be proactive in preventing a prosecution.

Pre-charge representation means representing the client all the way through to the charging decision, not just the interview. You engage with the police, formally or informally, tease out weaknesses in the case, direct lines of enquiry, and provide material that points away from guilt. It culminates in representations against charge, arguing that the charging standard in the Code for Crown Prosecutors is not met, either because there is no realistic prospect of conviction or because a prosecution is not in the public interest. The skill is to put the prosecutor in the position of a Crown Court litigator preparing for trial and get them to see there is no conviction in it. Once they do, the case should be dropped. That is fantastic for the client, and it is good for the system, because the wrong cases do not reach court and the justice system can focus on the strong ones.

What separates a good defence team from a great one?

You have to look at the case and find the way through it, and that is how we train our staff: pick out the weaknesses in the prosecution case, take on the exculpatory material the client provides, work towards engagement with the police, and join the dots into representations. Our pre-charge lawyers are also Crown Court litigators, so they can imagine the case at trial, and they understand the prosecutor's role and the tests they must apply. On top of that sits a high level of empathy. These clients choose us because they have a story to tell and an outcome they want. They are not burying their heads in the sand, they are up for the fight.

How do you balance urgency with judgment on serious cases?

There may be urgent elements, but you always have to keep a sense of calm. You cannot let a client's anxiety affect your judgment or the steps you take. You reset and go through it methodically, even under pressure. The client needs to understand that too, which can be a challenge when they have their own ideas, but ultimately they need to trust our experience and, sometimes, be a little patient. That calmness, confidence and ability to reset methodically is really important.

How do you match the right client with the right lawyer?

We have thirty solicitors, which is a good starting point that a lot of firms cannot offer. Within criminal defence there are sub-specialisms, so a lawyer might handle fraud or serious crime but not, say, a sexual offence, while being excellent in their own areas. Beyond matching expertise, we also think about temperament: a particular client may be well suited to the calm nature of a particular lawyer. Matching on both the type of case and the personality means we can get the right lawyer for the right client, every time.

How did Olliers quadruple its turnover after 2018?

In 2018 a couple of my partners, around my age, wanted to cash out. I said that if they let me take over, they could all go. That gave me control, and I could set the direction. I worked hard on the core focus: we are strong in serious crime and fraud, and I really wanted to develop pre-charge work. I also saw there had been a lack of recruitment, so another focus was a strong youth policy, exactly what I called it, so the firm would have continuity as I got older. There was no point staggering over the finishing line having paid out my former partners only to leave a firm that had withered. We also fixed the values: everything had to be about the client, the ethics, and being a byword for excellence. Focus and values have stayed rigid ever since, through lockdown, home working and the arrival of AI, and they have held us in good stead. By this July, turnover may be around four times what it was.

What are your non-negotiables when hiring?

We look at the track record, then spend a lot of time talking to them. Do they care about clients, so that a client is never a commodity or just a sum of money? Do they care about the quality of their work? And will they share our values? The core focus matters less, because we already know that from the conversation, but values are the key thing. That is half our recruitment. The other half is the youngsters on our youth policy, many of whom join through our intern scheme, because we put huge emphasis on attracting young people into criminal defence, not just into Olliers. Every year we run week-long intern programmes, eight people over eight weeks, and we have recruited around ten trainees from that. I have had over fifty trainees in my time. We skill them up fast, with accreditations, including two industry-first internal ones. Where the Law Society does not offer one for pre-charge work we built our own, with exams, portfolios, shadowing and monitoring, and a couple of years ago we added a Crown Court accreditation. Last year we added a client care accreditation, and next is an AI accreditation, run annually because it moves so fast.

How have you stayed independent and specialist?

Our last value is independence. You cannot be swallowed up by a bigger firm and keep your values, because they would then be set by the bigger firm. It was never about being hugely profitable, that came from the focus, the values and the professionalism with which we run cases. Part of it was a client acceptance policy on publicly funded work: we cannot travel across the country to represent someone on legal aid when a local lawyer with the time would serve them as well or better. Most of our pre-charge and post-charge work is now privately funded. At the start of my career ninety-nine per cent of our work was legally aided, even fifteen years ago it was very high, and now we are close to eighty per cent privately funded. Success with cases brought more work, and we look after our branding and online presence. We love showcasing our experience, and we always aim for content that is educational, authoritative and trusted, and we encourage staff to contribute, because it is good for them and for the firm.

How is AI and answer-engine search changing legal visibility?

The interesting development this year was the impact of AI and answer engines, rather than search engines. We have worked with someone on search engine optimisation for many years, and for the last two or three years he wanted to make sure we did not lose out as people started searching through ChatGPT and the others. We took the view that if we carried on doing what we were doing, we were probably doing the right thing, because our content has real authority. In fact the work we did before 2025 was probably even more optimised for answer engines than for search.

Take pre-charge. A competitor might have a couple of paragraphs, or a single page. What we have is a content hub: a strong page with embedded video, a large set of frequently asked questions, and case studies, plus side widgets linking to around twenty-five articles on pre-charge, at least twelve of them with embedded video. That is about forty thousand words in total. It is great for the reader and really good for the machine.

You hear the phrase, you have to win the battle for the answer, you have to be the answer. When someone asks a question, the answer engine takes one part of the answer from Olliers, then another, perhaps a part from the Crown Prosecution Service, and the follow-up question is often about Olliers. Then the engine starts talking about Olliers, and the client comes to us. So we have gone from being one of the top three firms recommended by Google to being the recommended firm and part of the answer provided by AI. Becoming the answer was a big part of 2025, not everywhere, but as often as we could in the areas we chose. Homicide is another example, with the same depth of content and video on diminished responsibility, self-defence, joint enterprise, the first days of a murder investigation, bail and post-mortems. The client is left in no doubt about the level of expertise. Compare that with, we represent people on murders, come to us.

What does excellent client care look like in practice?

You have to be an excellent lawyer, and we have talked about how we train and how we match the right lawyer to the right client. But client care is not just getting things out on time, diagnosing the problem and delivering the service. It is about caring, literally, and having empathy for the client. Why did you come into the job? Because you cared about the client and the outcome. If your people align with that, you are winning. Client care, as distinct from client service, is a drum the senior lawyers bang all the time.

How are criminal investigations changing?

We will see more use of AI in how investigating teams work and coordinate on serious cases. The biggest change I saw early in my career was HOLMES, the police computer brought in after the failures of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation in the 1970s and 80s, which made investigations far more efficient. As teams move towards AI and pulling information together, we may see changes beyond what we expected, and more efficient police investigations. The other factors are the political climate, which shapes where the emphasis falls and which offences are investigated, and technology itself, with criminal law trying to keep up and new online offences appearing. To some extent you anticipate, and to some extent you react, because you never quite know what is around the corner.

What should you do if the police contact you? (educational, not legal advice)

First, do not engage with the investigator, do not say anything, stay quiet and absorb what is being said. If you are asked to come in for questioning, take it in, but do not try to talk your way out of it, and remember the police are doing their job, which is to investigate you. Second, seek legal advice as soon as possible, and contact a specialist. Clients are using AI now and asking far more exacting questions, setting out the problem and asking what we can do, which helps them reach a firm that specialises not just in criminal defence but in the particular matter. What you must not do is simply trust that because you have done nothing, you will not be prosecuted. Help yourself, and get representation from a specialist who will take a proactive, front-footed approach.

What has criminal defence taught you about leadership under pressure?

The most important thing is that people are looking to you. In April 2020, in lockdown, people were worried about clients and about their jobs, and that is when leadership comes to the fore: you reassure them that there is a plan and a strategy. Whether it is a member of staff with a problem or a client in a professional matter, if you carry the problem with calm, authority and experience, and they can see there is a way through, they end up in a far better position than if you had no solution. It is the same in a lawyer and client relationship as it is in leading a firm.

What advice would you give aspiring criminal defence lawyers?

Get out there. Look for firms that run intern programmes and that you can spend time with. We run week-long internships for eight people, a spring meet-and-greet for around a hundred, and a full-day virtual programme that around two hundred attended last year. Go to the magistrates' court, be a bit cheeky, speak to a lawyer, ask what their job involves, ask if you can watch the next hearing, and make yourself known to the court staff. Then follow it up: approach as many firms as you can for experience, even barristers, and connect with people on LinkedIn. If someone cannot give you work experience, ask if they can recommend anyone. You would be surprised how many people are impressed by that and will help. The CV builds up, and when someone sees a twenty-year-old who has done two or three placements, they know you are keen and coming from a genuine interest.