Ashley and Hayden join dad Darryl at gunnercooke as joint chiefs of staff
Darryl Cooke, founder of corporate firm gunnercooke, has brought his two sons, Ashley and Hayden, into the business as chiefs of staff.
The pair have joined the firm’s leadership team, aiming to “drive culture forward” into (quite literally!) “the next generation”. Their new chiefs of staff role will be to “immerse themselves in the business and culture” and “spearhead growth and innovation”. Commenting on the appointment, their old man declared his “huge ambitions”, for the outfit, which he set up with co-founder Sarah Gilbourne back in 2010 — reportedly over a cup of Costa coffee.
Cooke Senior, whose profile on gunnercooke‘s website describes him as the “founder and visionary” behind the firm began as a barrister. He held roles as head of private equity at Addleshaw Goddard and DLA Piper, and headed up the corporate team at Hill Dickinson before establishing his own practice.
gunnercooke now has 15 offices across the UK, US, and Europe — having opened a Chicago base earlier this year — and boasts more than 500 lawyers. The firm turned over £82 million last year, leapfrogging firms like Bristows and Howard Kennedy.
Legal Cheek understands the Cooke brothers to be in their mid-30s, both having studied history at the University of Oxford before embarking on City careers. Hayden Cooke trained at Magic Circle player Slaughter and May before working in-house at tech start-ups.
His older brother, Ashley Cooke, is a former management consultant at PwC. Ashley went back to university in 2022 for an MSc in biodiversity and conservation. Before taking on chief of staff dad Darryl’s firm, he was running the Cooke family’s 200-acre rewilding project, The Meadowlands, in Herefordshire.
Expressing his excitement to be onboard at the family firm, Hayden Cooke said:
Having spent my career initially in private practice and then in-house, I’ve seen first-hand how unhappy some law firms can be. I love that the model [at gunnercooke] is about delivering better outcomes for clients and giving lawyers the ability to design their own lives, all whilst trying to operate as a deeply responsible business. gunnercooke is hugely ambitious and rightly so given the size and importance of the opportunity.