Finding another way to serve: Nana Owusu’s distinctive path to global legal practice

There are many ways to help people through law, and they don’t all require becoming a practising lawyer, says Nana Owusu, whose own career journey has taken him down a less common route following his graduation from law school.

“I fell in love with the law, and just felt like, this is the life I want to live,” says Owusu, as he reflects on some formative work experience he undertook as a teenager, including seeing a case at London’s Royal Courts of Justice. “I want to help people, and for me it was the power, and the change you can make from being within the legal industry. I wanted to make changes, and I wanted to help people’s lives.”

Owusu studied law at the University of Exeter expecting to become a solicitor, but discovered his own strengths lay elsewhere. “I felt like I was much more business-minded,” says the founder of new international legal practice Owusu & Partners Global. “While I realised that being a solicitor or barrister wasn’t necessarily for me, I found an area within law I loved that not so many people are aware of.”

That area was practice management.

Working within leading London barristers’ chambers the past few years, including Atkin Chambers, Owusu immersed himself in everything surrounding the legal work itself, from client relationships and fees, to business development, and supporting practitioners internationally. He recalls travelling to the Middle East and going to dinners with clients, negotiating fees. “It’s almost like being a football agent,” he says. “You’re sorting out the business side, while the barristers can focus on the law.”

Several years being in and around barristers working in chambers also gave Owusu a first-hand view of the structures supporting them, the infrastructure, relationships, and support that enable independent practitioners to build successful careers.

“But this also highlighted to me the opportunity to take those principles beyond traditional boundaries of domestic practice and to create something truly international,” he says. “I learned so much, and truly, I wouldn’t have come up with the idea that became Owusu & Partners Global, if not for travelling around.”

The international travel, working for barristers doing cross-border cases, led Owusu to question why Africa appeared comparatively overlooked within some global legal networks. “I began wondering, why do so many people seem to be ignoring Africa?”

The question wasn’t just a professional one, but personal too.

Born and raised in London, to Ghanaian parents, Owusu visits Ghana regularly, and says his heritage has influenced the international legal practice he wanted to help build, and his decision to put his surname above the door. “I’m very proud of my African heritage. While I’ve lived my life in London, I’m very familiar with my roots.”

Another conversation crystallised the opportunity. Owusu recalls an African lawyer telling him she wanted to undertake international work and travel, but felt those possibilities were out of reach. Could the infrastructure surrounding independent barristers, Owusu wondered, help more lawyers build careers across borders?

All of that led to the launch last week of Owusu & Partners Global, an international legal management group whose hybrid approach supports independent barristers and transactional lawyers with the infrastructure to build international practices.

“Barristers and lawyers want to simply practise law,” Owusu says. “They don’t want to focus on the business of law, and we are here focusing on the business of law.”

Owusu & Partners Global draws on elements of both law firms and barristers’ chambers; members remain independent and self-employed in delivering legal services, while Owusu & Partners Global provides practice management, clerking, business development, marketing, and operational support.

Africa sits at the heart of a wider global strategy, with Owusu keen to see African legal expertise travel more readily into international legal work. “We do need Ghana expertise, we do need Africa expertise,” he says. “There is the demand, the need.”

Having witnessed the power of the law to change lives, as a teenager, then discovering his place in the legal profession didn’t have to be the one he first imagined, Owusu now wants others drawn to law to recognise its broad possibilities.

“I’m hoping long term to be able to help young people who love the law, but are more business-minded, and show them that this is also an alternative route.”