My father, Jonathan Haw, who has died aged 71, set up the US base of the legal firm Slaughter and May, and enjoyed the outdoor life while living in New York. However, over the years he devoted more and more time to charity work and the arts.
He was raised in Sidcup, Kent, the son of Denis Haw, a trustee manager at the Royal Exchange, and Elisabeth (nee Mack), a teacher at the Dragon school, Oxford. He attended West Lodge school in Sidcup and then went on to Radley College, Oxfordshire. He won a place to study law at Keble College, Oxford, where he rowed for the college. Rusticated after failing his first-year exams, he went to Australia and spent a year taking casual agricultural work around Sydney.
At the end of 1969, he met a brilliant young French student, Hélène Lacuve, and they married within thee months. They moved to Bamber’s Green, Essex, and Jonathan then began his legal apprenticeship with Slaughter and May in London, while Hélène taught French literature at Trinity College, Cambridge.
In 1984 they moved to New York for the Slaughter and May job, and they discovered tennis and sailing, ranching and sushi, before Jonathan was recalled to London, eventually becoming an executive partner. His colleagues remember him fondly for his brilliance, humanity and mentorship of fledgling lawyers as well as his irreverent sense of humour, and deft imprecation.
He spent increasing amounts of time involved in charitable work, eventually becoming chair of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, joining its peer review committee, and travelled extensively to attend international scientific conferences. He retired in 2001 and intensified his charitable activities, becoming deeply involved in the Mary Kinross Charitable Trust, funding medical research. He was on the board of governors of the College of Law and was twice master of the Worshipful Company of Armourers & Brasiers, supporting research into material science.
The man who read science by night began to make art by day, and clay models appeared throughout the house. All remaining daylight hours he spent at work with Hélène on their beautiful garden. He loved good books, galleries, sport, food and wine; yet more than anything he loved helping others.
Friends were always greeted by carefully curated snippets from the Guardian that Jonathan had saved for them. He was deeply learned and knowledgable, an unassuming teacher who preferred to listen than declare. He embodied the vanishing Englishness of humility, civility and self-improvement, splashed with humour and self-knowledge. His only, rather vocal, complaint was how bad everyone else’s driving was.
When he was diagnosed with severe glioblastoma, he apologised to his wife for the inconvenience and did everything he could to help his nurses, ever gracious and grateful.
Jonathan is survived by Hélène and by me and my sister Katherine.
