Lord Neuberger has enjoyed an illustrious career in the law, retiring as president of the UK Supreme Court in September last year. Speaking at Legal Week's recent Trust & Estates Litigation Forum, Elspeth Talbot Rice QC looks back with Lord Neuberger at his journey from – in his own words – a "not very good" chemistry student at Oxford to being appointed to the highest judicial office in the country and presiding over what many have dubbed the case of the century.

Elspeth Talbot Rice QC: You didn't take the direct path from Oxford into the law; you went from Oxford into working life as a banker with Rothschilds – what made you go into banking?

Lord Neuberger: I was very influenced by my mother and she didn't approve of lawyers, so I had never really thought about a career in the law. When I realised I was not going to be a very good scientist, I looked around and the 'in thing' to do that year was to go into what was then called merchant banking. I was a totally hopeless banker. Worse even than as a chemist.

Talbot Rice: So how did you learn your law?

Neuberger: I did law over about a year and a half, most of it part-time in the evening. The exams were quite easy and in those days they weren't very rigorous about whether you turned up to lectures.

Talbot Rice: Is it true that it's really your mother who trained you as an advocate?

Neuberger: I was an argumentative little boy and whenever my mother said anything I would disagree, and she'd get a bit fed up with this. So after we'd been arguing for a bit she'd say: "OK, let's stop and change sides – you argue my side and I'll argue yours." That actually was quite good training, so inadvertently she trained me for a job she disapproved of.

Talbot Rice: So it was 1974 when you were called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn and went into pupillage. Where did you go?

Neuberger: I started off in 7 New Square, a set of chambers that no longer exists. That ended and I got my next pupillage at what is now Essex Court Chambers, and at the end of my time there somebody else was taken on and I was rejected.

I then went for a third pupillage in what was then 13 Old Square. I was a pupil there for six months, and I got turned down in favour of Richard McCombe, now Lord Justice McCombe. I almost gave up because I had three pupillages and none of them had succeeded. I then heard there was a pupillage available at chambers which were then at 11 King's Bench Walk. They were landlord-and-tenant chambers, which were thought to be rather much less grand and less prestigious than the chambers I had been in before, but it was the best move I made.

One of the problems with pupillages and getting taken on in grand chambers is unless you're lucky, you don't get to do the small, knockabout, badly prepared cases in front of what were then ill-tempered and sometimes not very bright judges in the county courts, which really teaches you to think on your feet. Although I envied my friends in grand chambers sitting behind leaders, earning much more than me while I plied round the county courts in Ilford and Romford and Wandsworth, in retrospect it was good fun because you had your own cases and you really learned how to be an advocate.

Talbot Rice: So you got to the Bar and practised as a junior. In 1987 you were appointed QC and from then on you had a vertiginous ascendancy: in 1990 you were appointed a Recorder; in 1993 a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn; in 1996 a High Court judge of England and Wales, assigned to the Chancery Division; in 2001 the Supervisory Chancery judge of Midlands, Wales, Chester and the Western Circuits; in 2004 a Lord Justice of Appeal; in 2007 a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary; in 2009 the Master of the Rolls; and in 2012 president of the Supreme Court.

That career path rather made me think of the Nike logo, which is a tick – the downtick being the small decline of your pupillage experiences and then a huge uptick with your career just taking off. The Nike slogan is 'Just Do It' – is that how you've lived your life?

Neuberger: I find it quite difficult to pass a ladder without trying to climb up it, so when an opportunity was there I went for it. There's also a lot of luck involved, being in the right place at the right time. People don't like admitting it because they think it devalues their success, and people who haven't succeeded don't want to say it's hard luck because that sounds like sour grapes, but luck is very important. You improve your chances if you're intelligent, hardworking and honest, but you do need luck.

Talbot Rice: One of your first cases as a High Court judge was Pye v Graham. Do you remember that one?

Neuberger: I do. It was a case involving adverse possession. A farmer who later died in a hunting accident had occupied land owned by a building company and had originally been granted a licence to farm on it until it was wanted for development. After he died his widow took over, and after about 14 years the building company decided they wanted to build on it and they gave her notice to vacate. She said: "I'm sorry the licence expired more than 12 years ago, I have adverse possession." It was a 10-day case with lots of evidence and in the end I decided that she had established titles by adverse possession. I thought it was completely unfair and inappropriate because it was registered property, so at the end of my judgment I said: "I reach this conclusion with regret, but I think it's the law," and somebody in my old chambers said only I could express regret at finding in favour of a widow against a property company.

The other reason that case stuck in my mind was because the Court of Appeal said I got it all wrong. Then the perfect thing happened: it went to the House of Lords and they said, on the contrary, I got it completely right, and that is what every High Court judge really likes.

Talbot Rice: What was it like sitting in the House of Lords for the first time?

Neuberger: I'm going to sound a little bit like an Oscar winner. You sit in a semicircle, there's normally five of you, and there I was on the outside as the junior member looking across in the middle at Tom Bingham and to his right Lenny Hoffman, two of my heroes who I had appeared in front of and thought remarkable judges, and here I was sitting with them as a colleague. I really felt, in a moment I'm going to wake up and discover I'm sitting at the back of the District Judge's Court in Willesden and the whole thing is a vainglorious dream. It was an extraordinary feeling.

Talbot Rice: You must have had all manner of advocates in front of you as a judge – what works and what doesn't?

Neuberger: It's a difficult question because advocacy is quite a personal thing – what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another. For somebody like me who is quite impatient and quite quick, I like counsel who make the point and get on with it and answer questions even if the answer is 'I don't know'. A judge will much prefer an advocate who says: 'I'm sorry I haven't thought about this, can I come back later,' rather than ignoring the question, answering a different question or flannelling hopelessly.

Talbot Rice: What has been the most memorable case of your career?

Neuberger: It's got to be the [Gina] Miller case on the Brexit decision because there was so much public exposure and so much tension. For the first time ever all 11 judges sat, officially because it was such an important case but actually there were two other reasons. One was I thought we probably wouldn't agree and if we were nine and split five to four, the newspapers who supported the four would say if only they sat 11 it would be different. The other reason I sat 11 was because having to tell two of my colleagues you can't sit on what was seen at the time as the case of the century… well, I didn't want to disappoint any of them.

Talbot Rice: There was a case decided by the Supreme Court over which you presided in November 2015 called Bank of Cyprus v Menelaou – a case on unjust enrichment. Professor Graham Virgo wrote an article which said that Menelaou is arguably the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court. Doesn't it feel unfair that you can't respond to that sort of criticism?

Neuberger: Some of my colleagues in the Supreme Court used to get terribly cross with academic articles about why they got it wrong, and I would always say: "Look, these academics need to forge a career like we've done, and you're not going to make a name for yourself if you say this is a wonderful decision." Indeed, when judges are criticised in the press, as in the Miller case, we have to be very careful about responding, but there are advantages in not being able to respond. You might lay awake at night composing the response you can't give, but in practice if you don't answer back and people know you can't, other people will step into the breach and do it for you. In many ways, it's much better for judges to have their decisions defended by the people than to defend it themselves, so in a way it's a blessing that we can't stand up for ourselves.