Successful, controversial, unconventional – The College of Law's chief Nigel Savage has a singular reputation within the profession. Neil Hodge meets the 'Brian Clough of legal education'

There are not many chief executives whose opening line at an interview would refer to their early career "pulling" turkeys' genitals. But then, the College of Law's Nigel Savage is no ordinary interviewee. Straight-talking and ebullient in equal measure, the Nottinghamshire-born chief has a no-nonsense reputation for making sure that plans of action are put into practice and that they pay off.

"A few days ago I spoke to a friend who said someone had described me as the 'Brian Clough of legal education'," says Savage. "While the Nottingham connection is obvious, I'm not as gobby as he was and I'm damned sure I haven't drank as much, though not without trying on occasions.

"I think the point that this guy was trying to make is that I don't need a certificate to tell me that I know what I'm doing. There are so-called experts that write on educational issues, and there are those that do research on them. I just get on and do it."

Savage joined the College of Law – the UK's longest-standing and largest legal education provider – in 1996 during a period when it was facing mounting criticism from City law firms for complacency and poor service.

The toughest point came a few years later when a consortium of eight leading firms struck an exclusive deal for their trainees to study the new commercially-focused City legal practice course (LPC) with rival providers BPP Law School, The Oxford Institute of Legal Practice and Nottingham Law School – the latter being the school he had set up himself, and had just recently left. The College responded with a period of investment and a sustained effort to rebuild its links with leading law firms, resulting in a series of deals to provide bespoke training to many of the City's leading firms.

A good deal of credit for this turnaround goes to Savage, who pushed for a more proactive management style at the institution. The man himself claims to be dismissive of what happened. "People tend to talk up the significance of a deal that didn't go our way 12 or 13 years ago," he says. "The situation is very different now."

Indeed it is. In April, the College agreed a £200m sale of its education and training business to Montagu Private Equity, while its ongoing charitable activities arm will be renamed The Legal Education Foundation.

A week later, the College announced that it joined forces with CMS Cameron McKenna to launch an international legal practice course in September, the first LPC to focus on the global legal services market. In May, the College formed a 'strategic collaboration' with the Singapore Institute of Legal Education to develop learning programmes for lawyers. The arrangement has provided the law school with its first foothold in Asia – "a position we intend to build on," says Savage.

The College also plans to attract prospective students by expanding its "best friends" relationships with Beijing's Renmin University of China Law School, Northwestern University Law School in Chicago and IE Law School in Madrid. Savage hopes the Montagu deal can start to position the College, which generated revenues of £74.4m in its 2010-11 year, as a global force in vocational education.

It is fair to say that Savage's own education had an inauspicious start. Born in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in 1950, Savage describes himself as a "victim of the old-style education system" after he failed his 11-plus exam and was dumped into a local secondary school rather than the grammar school he aspired to attend. Without encouragement from either his teachers or his parents to push himself, Savage left school at 16 years old and went to work in a series of short-lived, dead-end jobs. It was only while he was spending "more time than I wanted to" artificially inseminating turkeys by hand at a farm owned by a friend of his father that he thought about going back to college. And he has been in education ever since.

The turkey job "certainly put my options into perspective," laughs Savage. "I spent a couple of years at Newark Technical College doing my O and A levels and I had the fortune to be taught by people that actually cared and who built up my confidence. Until that point, I was aimless – all my friends had gone into the trades and I suppose that was where I was destined until a teacher suggested applying for university," he says.

In 1970 Savage started his law degree at Manchester College of Commerce (now Manchester Metropolitan University) and excelled: he became the first person to graduate from the law department with first-class honours. He followed that up with a Masters' degree at the University of Sheffield, and then moved up to Strathclyde in 1974 to research a PhD in corporate governance. He initially thought he would be in Scotland for just three years, but ended up staying for nearly a decade – developing a life-long dependency on Tunnock's caramel wafer biscuits (he has an office drawer full of them).

"I loved Scotland," says Savage. "The people were fantastic and the pubs were brilliant. It was the only place I've been to where you could go to a bar and have a street cleaner stood on your left and a judge on your right and everyone would mix. They were happy times," he says.

Savage also valued Scotland's approach to education. "The country had exceptional law schools that were taught by practitioners, rather than pure academics. They knew what they were talking about and had the experience to back it up," he says.

"Polytechnics had that great vocational insight too, before the Conservative Government ruined them by turning them into universities in the early 1990s. That was one of the biggest mistakes ever in UK education. Polytechnics lost sight of what they were good at and what set them apart from universities. They followed the academic route, dropped their vocational qualities and just became second-choice, second-rate universities, which was a great shame," he adds.

Savage retuned to Nottingham in 1984 to become professor of business law at Nottingham Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University). Five years later, he was head of the department. About that time in the late 1980s, he came up with a bold scheme in Punchinello's, a city centre wine bar, to crack the College of Law's monopoly on postgraduate legal education by setting up Nottingham Law School. He stayed with it for seven years as dean before taking up his current post in 1996 at the very educational establishment he took aim at.

"When I set up the law school, I wanted to move away from the academic side of law and get more engaged with what law firms were actually doing, and what they were looking for in law graduates and for their own in-house training and development," says Savage.

"Back then, the law firms were becoming more engaged in education and I was starting to organise their training and development programmes. Nottingham had fostered great relationships with some of the major law firms, particularly Allen & Overy, and this gave me the confidence to go knocking on doors, making myself known – and probably making a nuisance of myself. I then had the idea – over much booze in this wine bar – of launching the Nottingham Law School to provide postgraduate legal training. The university thought it was a good idea and backed me all the way."

Savage does not regard himself as ambitious or driven, but more as someone who sees opportunities and grasps them. "I was a late developer. I was nearly 40 when I set up the Nottingham Law School so I wouldn't describe myself as a 'go-getter'. I just judged the mood right and saw what was developing both in the profession and in legal education. I saw what the next step could be and was able to drum up support with the people that mattered," he says.

But if Savage doesn't see himself as ambitious, he is in a minority, with his thrusting style being regarded as a major force in reviving the College's fortunes. The flipside of this is that this approach has at times attracted critics who believe the College is too commercially-driven for what was, until the sale, a charity.

In common with many large law schools, the College – which today has 8,000 students – has often been accused of educating too many aspiring lawyers with little chance of securing careers in law.

Savage's remuneration – he had an annual package worth £340,000, including a base salary of £260,000, according to the College's latest accounts – has also drawn some flak. He argues that the sale to Montagu will liberate its new commercial arm from such considerations, while generating millions to back the work of its separate charitable arm.

Those commercial goals will be daunting to achieve. With the College, which employs about 700 staff across its branches in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Chester, Guildford, Manchester and York, facing a subdued domestic market for vocational education, the institution now faces the huge task of going international while navigating a key moment in its 50-year history.

Not that its chief seems flustered. Savage reflects: "I've been lucky throughout my career to be around capable and supportive people who have nudged me in the right direction and have backed me up when I needed it. The best thing I've ever done is to nurture contacts – you never know when you might bump into these people again, or when you might need them," he says.

Outside of work, Savage spends time with his wife and two sons from a previous marriage. He is also a cricket enthusiast, and calls Nottingham's Trent Bridge ground his "spiritual home".

"Cricket was the only thing I was any good at during my school days, but there was never any chance of me ever turning professional," says Savage. "I love watching it when I can, whether it's a county game or test match, and I admit that it brings back a certain feeling of nostalgia."

Besides cricket, Savage enjoys golf and has recently taken up skiing. "My wife introduced me to it about seven years ago when I was 55. I never thought I'd enjoy it and I was a bit nervous about starting it at my age and breaking my legs, but it's great fun. I did my first black run last year and have lived to tell the tale," he says.

He is also a music lover and likes to see live jazz, though he says that his Desert Island Disc would be Kenneth McKellar's Song of the Clyde – a hangover from his Scotland days, and formerly sung by him while on the way to a hangover.

He comments: "I used to sing this from start to finish while in the pub in Glasgow and everyone would join in. It's a great song and brings back great memories." He still knows all the words, but declines to perform: "The office acoustics aren't quite right."

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