Q2 2024 Q&A
What would your advice be to people working at smaller firms or as consultants who are thinking about giving LinkedIn a try?
Fundamentally, if you are hesitant, my advice is to reframe how you think about it. No matter where and how you work, whether you’re a lawyer at a top-200 firm or self-employed or anywhere in between, no one is coming to save you.
There isn’t a gallant white knight on horseback, galloping towards you with a sack full of the best work to present you with. No one is going to market you and your services better than you are able to. You have to rescue yourself.
So be your own white knight, create your own opportunities and forge your own path. At the risk of sounding morbid, none of us know how much we have left of our finite time on this spinning rock hurtling through space.
We can use this realisation to counteract the fear and trepidation we might feel about posting: what is the worst that can happen? You only have one chance to make an impact, and this is your time to do so.
You recently had a cancer scare and posted honestly and movingly about this. What was your rationale for doing so?
I think it’s far too easy on social media to airbrush out life’s shadow sides. On LinkedIn in particular, you see people humblebragging or talking about their success. I have always been determined to not be part-human on my profile, but to bring all of my humanity.
We all live in our own world and think we are invincible until something like this comes along to shatter the illusion, and it felt important and authentic to say as much.
I also believe strongly that the more we talk about things like breast cancer, the more we break down any stigma, work towards preventing these things and provide encouragement and support to others facing the same situation, whether it is ‘just’ a scare as in my case, or an actual cancer diagnosis.
Dame Deborah Anne James, aka Bowel Babe, was an exceptional and inspiring example in this regard, using her authentic voice to generate so much awareness among women (and men) of the symptoms of bowel cancer, and the preciousness of life.
What prompted you to leave Big Law life behind and become a consultant?
It was around the time that I had my first child. I couldn't reconcile how to give everything a firm needed me to give and to be the mother I wanted to be. I couldn't make the two things match up.
I realised that my previous approach to work – of always striving to be a high achiever and to please clients around the clock, volunteering for extracurriculars within the firm, working long hours – was simply no longer viable now that I had become a parent.
And yet I didn’t want to throw away all the qualifications, experience and expertise that I had worked so hard to acquire. It was a moment of crisis and, ultimately, rebirth for me.
One of the great realisations that came to me, and something that allows me to deliver great value to my clients to this day, is that there is nobody more organised than a working parent who has to make the school run, because you simply have to get tasks done within a certain timeframe.
Once I had left my firm and joined a friend’s start-up consultancy in 2019, I harnessed this new outlook to my determination to achieve a satisfying work-life balance, and have never looked back.
So you no longer feel like you are short-changing your family or your clients?
No, it has been incredible! It’s not until you become a consultant that you realise how much of the industry ‘orthodoxy’ you have absorbed during your time at law school and working within a firm.
When you take a fee split of the work that you are performing, you don’t need as much work and it takes you less time to earn the same amount. Obviously, there’s an initial start-up period, but I have managed to earn the same income, and sometimes double or triple the amount, pretty much every month since I went down the consultancy route.
The flexibility has been wonderful too, although I would caveat this by saying that, as a consultant, you basically become your own boss, and it’s important to be a good boss to yourself. I’ve met lots of people in similar situations who aren’t very kind bosses to themselves, driving themselves too hard and not taking enough breaks.
Luckily, this is something I don't struggle with: because I’m not accountable to anyone for my time, I will let myself rest when I need to and am able to be kind to myself. Ultimately, it’s to everyone’s benefit if I’m not burned out.
Do you ever find being a LinkedInfluencer stressful?
Sometimes, you can become the victim of your own success if your posts prove to be too successful. I have certainly felt a little overwhelmed by LinkedIn at least once in my time on the platform, and have learned to take intentional time-off into my posting routine every once in a while. And by time off, I mean reading as well as posting.
The algorithm may punish you slightly if you’re not present for your audience for a month or so, but it’s only ever a wrist-slap and a price worth paying for good mental health. And, personally speaking, I have always found that my audience was there waiting for me each time when I resumed posting. At the end of the day, they’re all my friends, so I missed them and got back to the platform feeling refreshed and able to give it my all.
The legal sector still has one of the biggest gender pay gaps, and a lack of women in senior positions. How do you see the future of the legal sector changing in this regard?
I think a lot of law firms talk a good game about the number of women they have at partnership level, but in many cases I think this is virtue-signalling and means very little as long as women don’t have seats on the board. There is ample evidence that having women represented on senior leadership teams produces better outcomes.
But those are traditional, private law firms, and I think they are in danger of becoming superannuated. The legal industry is being fundamentally reshaped at the moment, and I think the model that many of these pyramid-style firms are built around is being increasingly revealed to be akin to the emperor’s new clothes.
The truth is coming out that, as long as you have learned your trade and have a good background, you can earn a very decent living as a self-employed lawyer without having to work yourself into the ground.
But you must first shed your desire for the title and status of law-firm partner before you can free yourself from the traditional paradigm.
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