Nigel Graham Maw (1933–2005) was a British lawyer who spent most of his career at the London firm Rowe & Maw, where he became senior partner, and who chaired the record company Decca from 1970. He is also known for his role in the 1968 extradition of James Earl Ray, who was wanted in the United States for the killing of Martin Luther King Jr.
Background
Nigel Graham Maw was born on 4 July 1933 and grew up in south London. His earliest recollection, as reported in his obituary, was of watching the fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace in 1936 from his bedroom window in Dulwich, when he was three years old. The glass-and-iron building had been moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham in the 1850s after housing the Great Exhibition of 1851, so its loss was a well-known event in the region.
He was born into a family already connected with the law. His great-uncle, Frederick James Maw, had founded the London firm Rowe & Maw in 1895, and his father had run it since 1926, providing the professional setting that Maw would later enter.
Education
Maw was educated at Westminster School, the London independent school whose origins lie in a medieval monastic foundation and whose refoundation by Elizabeth I dates from 1560. After national service with the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment, a county infantry regiment of the British Army, he went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1954. National service, which required British men to serve in the armed forces, continued until 1960.
Founded in 1347, Pembroke is one of the older colleges of the University of Cambridge. Maw first studied modern languages there and later switched to law. His Cambridge qualifications were the degrees of Master of Arts and Bachelor of Laws.
He was admitted to the bar in England in 1961, the same year he became a partner at Rowe & Maw.
Career
Maw joined Rowe & Maw in 1958, when the firm had fewer than a dozen lawyers, and became a partner in 1961. Founded in 1895, the firm was known for its corporate, construction, pension, insurance, property and employment practices. In 2002 it merged with the Chicago-based Mayer, Brown & Platt to form Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.
He served as senior partner from 1976 to 1993, and his obituary credits him with driving much of the firm's growth during those years. Early clients included the Liberal politician Jeremy Thorpe, the painter Bridget Riley, the actresses Zsa Zsa Gabor and Diana Rigg, and, according to the same obituary, he gave advice to the Central Intelligence Agency, the American foreign intelligence service.
In 1970 he became chairman of Decca, the British record company, at a time when it was under pressure from GEC, the industrial group led by Sir Arnold Weinstock. Decca, founded in 1929, was among Britain's best-known record labels, and his obituary describes him as a lawyer who worked with the Rolling Stones.
From 1992 to 1998 he was special professor of law at the University of Nottingham. The university received its royal charter in 1948 and had begun in 1881 as University College Nottingham.
Connections
Maw married in 1961, and the couple had four children. His marriage took place in the same year he became a partner at Rowe & Maw, the firm his family had long been associated with.
