 He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1970, joining a Chancery chambers, practising in trust law, property law and revenue law.He met his first wife, Melanie Sandiford, at Oxford, and they were married in 1972; they had two daughters.In 1996, he divorced his first wife, and married a second time, to Sara Jane Hargreaves, a barrister; they had a son.