I first got to know Jonathan Hirst, and his wife Fiona, in 1984 when I was his pupil at what is now Brick Court Chambers. The lessons that Jonathan taught me in professionalism, efficiency, client relations and the importance of focusing on the real issues in the case were not only valuable to me then but have been valuable ever since. I appreciated too, as his pupil and always afterwards, his conspicuous kindness, lack of any affectation and positive attitude to life—an attitude that he managed somehow to retain even when he was terminally ill. My pupillage with Jonathan was the start of a friendship that continued for over 30 years, until his untimely death in 2017. From first to last, I looked up to him as a model of integrity, positivity, robust decision-making and sound judgment tempered with humanity. I count myself fortunate indeed to have known him.

It is a question to which it seems to me anyone who earns a living as a commercial lawyer ought to be able to give an answer. My own principal motivation at the Bar and now on the Bench has always been the superficial one of wanting to do the work that presents itself as well as I can, for the satisfaction which that gives. But it would be a shame to have spent as long as I have practising commercial law without any clear conception of whether or why it is a worthwhile activity in which to engage. After all, to invert a familiar saying: if something isn’t worth doing, it isn’t worth doing well.