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Suneeth Katarki: Happy associates make for happy clients

How would you define your firm’s culture? How important is firm culture to you?

We love a culture that is more millennial driven – all elements of a cool and fun work place with flexible office timings etc., without any compromise on quality of service provided. We believe giving a sense of ownership at each level is critical and endeavour to engage and keep people involved at every level in some aspects of decision making on behalf of the firm. We also believe it is critical for associates and partners to build congenial atmosphere amongst themselves. Wanting to come to work, being happy and challenged at work are important ingredients of a good firm culture. Happy associates make for happy clients.

What’s the biggest change or innovation you’ve made in the firm of late that will benefit clients?

The firm’s goal has been to do everything around ensuring lawyers get to focus only on things they want to focus on – such as client delivery, knowledge acquisition, client building – even rest, relaxation, and fun time. This has meant investing heavily in support staff, including hiring a non-lawyer CEO to enable the streamlining of all support staff. This means lawyers at all levels get a greater ability to focus on clients and focus on things that will help them be better lawyers.

What does innovation mean to you and how can Indian firms be better at it?

I think Indian firms need a mind-set change. They too often believe that lawyers work is too unique and no one other than lawyers understand it and so use that as an excuse to prevent learnings from other industries. If we were just open to looking at ourselves as yet another services industry (of course with some unique elements because we are doing legal services) we would be able to learn, adopt, and absorb very many innovative things happening in various other services industries. It needs a mind-set change. Using available technology and artificial intelligence to automate more and more legal services involving less involvement of lawyers is needed to enable speedier and cheaper delivery of services. Law firms can be better at identifying legal needs of the client industry and more innovative in identifying laws that can be used by clients to improve their business efficiency.

How has your firm developed or expanded of late?

We have expanded significantly of late. From being less than 100 lawyers three years ago to being nearly double in strength, we have added more breadth and depth to our capabilities. We have added a new capital markets practice, expanded our employment law and TMT practices, and developed a more robust investigations and anti bribery practice, while continuing to expand on areas we have always covered such as our private equity and M&A and dispute resolution.

What are the biggest challenges facing you in India?

It may seem surprising for a country as populous as India but the biggest challenge is availability of good legal talent. For our demographics and the vast number of colleges providing legal education, the actual employability for top law firms in India is typically restricted to only a maximum of ten to 12 colleges since the rest, unfortunately, don’t have the desired quality or have too few people with the desired quality that it becomes impossible to filter them through the usual interview processes. This lesser talent pool to dip from results in driving up legal costs, too much work being handled by too few associates and thus resulting in associates too often spending nearly 100% of their time on legal delivery without desirable time being spent on article writing, knowledge management, and self-improvement outside learning through direct legal services delivery.

What do you think is the likelihood of India’s legal market opening up to foreign law firms and would you welcome this development?

Looks like this is likely to happen with countries on a reciprocal basis i.e., countries which will allow India-qualified lawyers to practice law in their jurisdictions. This needs to be done when Indian law firms are ready to take on the competition and take on the advantage of being able to establish law firms outside India themselves. Indian law firms should be ready for that in five to seven years’ time but may not be ready immediately.

What do you think are the top things most clients want and why? Have these changed over time?

Fundamentals of legal services and expectation remain the same – high quality delivered in the quickest possible response time. However, there is today also the expectation of understanding of clients’ business and anticipating legal services that they will need. The enlarged role of in-house legal counsel means that law has entered in the boardroom or at least the senior management as an integral part of business and not merely in situations where legal breaches have occurred. This means that using law and developments in law to manoeuvre the client business and anticipate client needs is getting more and more important.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients and the services you can provide them? </h3?

Yes indeed. It means you can provide services that are more comprehensive, will allow you to bundle low cost services along with high cost services make it more efficient for client and to help retain the firm as a one stop shop for the client. Technology can also mean limiting human interaction and allowing technology to drive the first level service to clients, which again should mean more ready use of our services by client. It also means lesser hours spent by associates allowing law firms to be innovative on pricing and reduce or even eliminate man hours as the main basis of pricing services and make it more value driven.

What have you found is the best way to retain talent – both at partner and associate levels?

At the junior levels, it is the quality of work, the learning and mentoring from senior lawyers, general camaraderie and a fun work place. As you move up the levels, it is more important to take the engagement with the firm to a higher level. This means engagement in terms of involving senior associates and partners in various decision making processes of the firm, providing clarity on career progress, communication on all aspects of the firm and not just in relation to their bonus and entitlements, seeking opinion from them on ways and means of growing the practice, the firm, new practice areas and implementing some of their ideas gives them a strong sense of ownership and belonging to the firm which eventually is the best way to retain talent.

How do you convince top talent to stay in India rather than pursuing a career abroad at international firms?

I think it is important to convey to budding lawyers about the importance of being close to the action and being involved in exciting work on the ground. Sometimes, working in international firms as part of an India desk may mean doing India work but without being able to provide in-depth on the ground knowledge about the transaction or matter for which you have to rely on domestic firms. Therefore, the ability to service comprehensively is not the same. Further, the opportunities are only growing in India and law is developing around several new areas rapidly and being in India will also help shape the law. While there is significant uncertainty in law and policy in India and while this no doubt creates business difficulties, it provides great opportunities for lawyers to provide more nuanced inputs to business, all of which makes for an exciting career right here.

What are your firm’s policies on diversity and inclusion?

We had a stated objective of having at least 25% of our partners being female and we are happy to say that we have more than achieved that objective. We also have a differently-abled associate, who is 100% visually impaired, whom we are proud of and it has been a great learning experience for all associates to work with him. We make conscious efforts to see where we can include more differently-abled people in our work environment.

What’s surprised you most about running a firm?

How much it is about running business as opposed to only providing services and practising law. The issues that all business heads face are not dissimilar to what you face in running a firm. Acknowledging and understanding this and most importantly the extent of learning from it has been the biggest surprise.

What advice would you give to the next generation of partners and law firm leaders?

The world is changing. People need to stop thinking of a law firm as a compendium of partners and look at how it can be a cohesive thriving business enterprise with a common culture, work ethic, and branding. Partners need to look at what the law firms stands for and whether that suits their personal thinking, culture, and aspirations before joining the firm, and once they join they should always strive to align their objectives and firm’s objectives in all they do.

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Fighting for merit

Can you tell me a bit about your role at Lavazza and how it’s evolved over the years?

In February, I’ll have been working for Lavazza for 24 years. I joined after seven years in private practice. I joined Lavazza when the legal department was in its embryonic stage so I had the opportunity to build it up from scratch. During my time here the company has changed dramatically, transforming itself from a local Italian company to a real international company. From a company that in 1996 had 80% of its revenues coming from Italy and 20% from international sales, now, after 23 years, we are in exactly the opposite situation. The role of Italy and its market shares remain exactly the same, but Lavazza has experienced global growth.

The same transformation has happened in the legal department. In 1996 we were focused mainly on Italian issues, with some experience abroad in international markets and distributions. The percentage of our work was an exact reflection of our revenue shares. We have since had the opportunity to increase our experience both in terms of organic growth, supporting the company in international contracts with distributors and with corporations of local subsidiaries, and with M&A – specifically within the last ten years.

With the work becoming more international, were there any specific challenges to the in-house team because of this?

Yes of course, growing internationally means that you will naturally experience different patterns, different laws, and different cultures; so you have to work with local lawyers/local counsel and you have to change approach with each country in which you are present, plus you have to improve your knowledge of the local regulations. At the end of the day, it’s always worth the change, even though it’s challenging work.

As a longstanding general counsel for one of Italy’s, if not one of the world’s, most iconic coffee companies, you have certainly been a core part of its trajectory and history. What have been the most monumental and memorable parts of your career with Lavazza to date?

The thing I am most proud of is that I moved from a technical role to a business partner role. I am now part of the high-level leadership team of the CEO. This means I can be part of the decision-making process and more than a legal consultant. This is the most notable result from changing the GC role from a legal technical focus to a business protection focus. This wasn’t exactly easy of course. First of all, because I’m a lawyer, and lawyers are very often seen as individuals who block the business more than help it. I’ve had to work on this during my time at Lavazza. And, secondly, because I’m a woman. These two elements sometimes worked against me, but I’m very proud of my results.

As a woman in a senior position, is there any advice you would give to other women trying to break the glass ceiling in the legal industry?

I am proud to be a woman, but as I am married with two children it has, of course, been difficult at times, especially when my children were young. I made lots of sacrifices, not only with time dedicated to my family, but also because I always try to have a healthy balance between work and my personal life. I think that sometimes the most important thing for a woman is to be very resilient. Especially in Italian culture, it’s not so easy to be a woman in a senior level job. Women are against other women sometimes, and I think we have to unite together in a company, work together, and not just for what we in Italy call ‘Pink Quotas’ – the policy of fulfilling a gender quota which says that as a woman you need to be protected in certain ways and that the board of directors in each company has to dedicate a certain number of places to women. I’m not particularly in favour of this. I think we have to fight for merit, not for the fact that we are women. It’s important to be recognised because we are capable and we are intelligent, and not only because we are women.

Do you think diversity is championed enough in the Italian legal market? What are the benchmarks in place within your legal team to make sure you have a balance of ethnicity, culture, or gender? Is that something you particularly look at?

For my team, I always choose my colleagues based on merit – only this. We have tests as part of the application process, and the ultimate decision is based on their CV and experience. None of my colleagues have been chosen based on their gender in order to fill a quota. I always drive the choice. We have had times when we had only women in the team, when women performed better than men in their applications. At the moment, however, we roughly have the same number of men and women and are very well-balanced.

I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you are a visiting professor of business law at ESCP Europe, the European business school. What does that entail? How have you found the experience? Would you encourage in-house lawyers to get involved in academia/further their education?

This is something that I’ve been doing for just the last three years and it really is something that was a new challenge for me. Of course I needed some time to prepare for it, it’s not something that you can take lightly. It was challenging, but it was really exciting for me and gives me the opportunity to meet young people, young learners with a different approach – they are millennials and they are different to how young people were 20 years ago. They have a different perspective and a different attitude. For example, law and technology is part of the business law school syllabus, but when I studied law, law and tech and internet tech were not included in any manual or syllabus.

This meant I needed a refresh of my competencies and I had to study things that I’ve never come across before in my personal experience. I now keep up to date with all things legal technology and AI applied to the legal profession. It’s a good opportunity to stay in contact with the new generation. It’s also important to transfer experience to young people. The thing they want from me is experience more than knowledge. I really enjoy transferring some experience to the new generation.

Focusing on your team at Lavazza, which has won several food and beverage in-house team of the year awards, is there anything you motivate your team to do particularly?

We always call ourselves ‘the dream team’ because, for me, working with someone that you like is really important. I have the great opportunity to do that and I have been lucky to work with people I personally chose. This is a great advantage of course. I always convey the need to act as business partners to my team. That is, becoming a strategic and integrated partner in the advancement of the company’s business, providing not only great legal analysis, but results that improve the entire organisation’s success. That is the role of the law department as a strategic partner in the client’s business.

A question on the law firms you work with. When you are looking for external counsel, what would you say the most important thing is for you in selecting law firms?

The most important thing for us is that they work with us on a side-by-side basis. We try to work with law firms that are able to work with us as partners and as part of the same team. We don’t like the attitude of the external lawyer acting as the ultimate expert with a sort of superiority attitude vis-à-vis the internal lawyer. We like to be involved and we don’t like to outsource anything. We like to work on contracts together. Acting as part of the same team is very important for us. Besides that, the first thing we look for is competencies, of course, and the fact that they have a good track record in the country regarding, let’s say, M&A.

Putting the first espresso machine in space is definitely amongst one of Lavazza’s high points. Giuseppe Lavazza admittedly said it took a lot of years of hard work and tests, including being admitted to NASA standards. Was this something you had some involvement in?

Yes, we were involved in it from the very beginning in the sense that we drafted the contract with the inventor of this machine and followed all the technical developments. We were involved in the communications with NASA. We followed all the legal issues related to this without external counsel. To be honest, from the very beginning it seemed more a dream – when it was initially announced, it seemed something impossible for us to accomplish. Everyone in the company thought it was an impossible project, but then it became reality and I was really excited when we saw Samantha Cristoforetti having the first espresso coffee in space, and it was really a moving moment for everyone who had the opportunity to see it. It was the very first Lavazza espresso in space, an Italian coffee drunk by an Italian woman astronaut. It was a poignant moment for Italian history.

On a more personal note, what motivates you personally and what are the simple pleasures that make your day?

I am lucky to be motivated every day. I like my job. I think that if you can interpret the law and work as an internal lawyer from the perspective of being a business partner that can change your perspective every day. You can change your work and can be focused on what is really interesting for the company. I am proud to be a Lavazza employee. Every day we breathe the sense and the spirit of being a family because Lavazza is a family-owned company and we value respecting everyone here and retaining good relationships amongst employees. The fact that everyone here respects you is very important. This is really motivating – working for a company that respects you is important for day-by-day life.

Is there anything you’d like to add? Any projects that you’re working on?

I’m working on the transformation of the legal department into Legal 4.0 – the digitalisation of the legal department and innovation in terms of our processes. We have to combine the practice of law with appropriate technologies, processes, and innovation to re-design the digital workplace, explore how collaborative platforms, advanced analytics, document management, practice management tools, and artificial intelligence can be paired to achieve the goal of becoming an efficient and innovative legal services provider.

This will be implemented with the creation of a new function – a legal project manager – who will be in charge of developing training, templates, self-help resources, and other best practices to support the team and department, identifying and tracking metrics on usage of tools, user satisfaction, and feedback, and providing project management support for technology adoption and implementation as it relates to legal service delivery on engagements with outside counsel and other legal service providers.

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Bringing diversity to the table

Helen Donegan: To start off, can you tell me about your role?

Verona Dorch: If I think about what I truly do on a day-to-day basis, I see myself as a ‘crisis GC’. There are any number of critical matters that we are typically working our way through as an energy company, so my job really is to deal with issues in a way that is not harmful to the company, to deal with government and regulators, and to ensure that we do things from a governance and compliance standpoint in an ethical and compliant manner.

HD: In the 2019 US GC Powerlist you are described as a ‘strategic business partner’ to your executive and business teams. What does this mean to you?

VD: For me what it means, and what I believe it should mean for other GCs considering, at the end of the day, that we do work for corporations, is that I see myself as a business person who happens to wear a legal hat at times/have an extra tool in my toolbox. My ultimate job is to ensure we can execute on our strategic plan – whether short, medium, or long term – in the same way as any of those on the executive team reporting into the CEO.

There may be a different set of skills that I bring to the table in terms of being able to identify potential legal or regulatory issues, and my job is to work out how to mitigate those issues or ultimately achieve the same goal. It is also my job to translate that to my teams and to how we contribute to the achievement of those strategic goals. It is very much about day-to-day execution and the business side of it is paramount. The role is certainly different to other legal roles in the sense that our client is the company, and that is where the ethical piece and the compliance aspects come into it. At the end of the day it is a for-profit business and it is similar to any other C-suite role with different skills attached to it.

HD: Does that apply to the outside counsel you instruct, and do you expect them to take on the role of business partner to any degree?

VD: Yes, I would actually say to a very high degree. We went through a convergence process last year and narrowed down our firms from over 100 to just 13, and a very strong thing we discussed with them was that we expected them to be business partners to us, and just as much business partners to our internal clients. There are good lawyers out there at multiple firms, and if I just want to go out there for legal advice there are probably 20 different firms I can go to. But what I felt differentiated the firms we picked is that they take that same ‘business first’ approach and they want to get to know our business.

We have had some firms come in and we have held panels with our operators, and our CFO and CEO were there to explain the business and our strategy so our outside lawyers have a very clear understanding of what we are trying to achieve and so they understand that what we want from them is business solutions. We work with some lawyers to actually get them out to our mine sites. The advice really has to be tailored to what it is we are trying to achieve. We have a lot of regulatory pressures and the advice from them has to be practical.

We are not looking for a 20 page memo on the black letter law or 20 reasons why we can’t do something. If we are bringing an issue to them they have to get in there with us in trying to find solutions and have a good enough understanding of our company that those solutions fit our business and our needs at that particular time. I would much rather get an email or a couple of bullets with ‘here’s how you can do something’ versus a memo that is heavily law focused. If we have those lawyers come in here and spend time with us and with our clients they develop that acumen in terms of our business, and that translates down to the associates they put on our team.

We have also had law firms who send people to us on secondment as we know this is the best place for them to get to know our business. Having their attorneys working for six or nine months within our legal department is a win for us and a win for them. I feel in-house lawyers spend just as much time on strategy and focusing on achieving goals as we do on legal. If you just want to sit in an office and discuss legal advice then I think a company like Peabody is not for you.

HD: You mentioned your convergence process, and in the US GC Powerlist it says that you built a ‘true request for diversity and inclusion’ into your RFP as part of that. Why did you do that?

VD: I look at diversity in multiple ways, whether it is diversity of thought or diversity of gender, LGBTQ, army veterans, or ethnicity. Full diversity. If you don’t have that at the table and don’t have it in the resources you are leaning on for creativity – and if you just have one type of attorney working on your matters – you are not going to get that creativity that you need.

For me it is also about opportunity. I myself am a woman and I’m black and I’m an immigrant, and I know that people gave me opportunities when I might not have been their view of what a lawyer looks like, what a lawyer should sound like, or how they should act. There was a lot of opportunity afforded to me and from a mentoring and sponsorship standpoint that helped me get to where I am today. When I look at the associates working on our matters, and the lawyers that I and my team specifically request to work on them, it doesn’t mean that those associates know absolutely how to do things in the way we are asking them to do it as an in-house team, but I think it is an opportunity for them to develop and learn from us, and for us to learn from them in terms of how to work with different types of attorneys. If we are providing that opportunity it means it is opening the door for them in working with other companies, being able to attract them as their clients, and being able to understand what is important in-house.

I think the profession itself needs to understand – and I do think it is changing – and needs to be more aware of and more accepting of the benefits of diversity just like businesses. You do better when you have diverse individuals and diverse thoughts as part of the team. It’s proven.

HD: So when it came to the RFP with law firms, what were you looking for; was it diversity within their existing teams or were you interested in the ongoing diversity initiatives they take part in?

VD: It was all of the above. We have a relationship partner within each of our firms (and an internal relationship partner within my legal department) and step one with each firm is that I like to ensure those relationship partners are diverse. Some of the historic relationship partners we had were only relationship partners because they were big wigs at their firm and had a 20-year relationship with the company. Sometimes they were not even doing the work. So as step one I wanted to shake things up a bit and make sure we had diversity. Out of the 13 firms we started with about 40% were diverse in terms of women and minorities, and we continue to increase that.

We also look at it in terms of how our matters are being staffed. We request monthly diversity data from the firms to ensure our matters are being staffed in a diverse manner. We have monthly calls with the relationship partners and twice-yearly live meetings (one that is one-to-one with the firm and another that brings all firms together at our company) and as much as we discuss billables, the type of work they are working on, and sharing feedback, one of the very key components of the calls is the diversity data. We talk about how our matters have been staffed, where we see things lagging a little bit, and help them to understand how they can bring some additional attorneys onto these matters or identify opportunities for diverse attorneys to get exposure to us to do some of the types of work that we are doing. So we are pushing that on a monthly basis based on the data. When we first started this we had a lot of resistance from the firms to giving us that data. We are now up to nine out of the 13 firms who give it to us. We are able to go to the other four about the fact that we are still not receiving the data and say that when we redo the RFP in a year and a half it means there is a chance that they are not going to be up there for the RFP.

Also from a diversity standpoint, we share interns with several of our law firms and this summer we had seven interns. Four of the seven were diverse, and they split their time between us and the law firms, so that was an opportunity to give those interns exposure to us even before they potentially join those firms (assuming they get offers). Because they have already gotten that familiarity with us, once they come into the firms those people could be working on our matters.

One last thing that we do as noted above is we meet with the law firms once a year. We meet with them for about two or three hours and on the agenda is meeting with some of their resource groups – their diverse attorneys, their LGBTQ attorneys, their women’s groups. Meeting with those groups and getting that direct interaction means we learn about what we can do differently and hear about what might cause them to leave law firms or what keeps them there. Usually when I go to those meetings I offer the opportunity to talk directly with me and offer mentoring calls. There are about five people right now that I have quarterly mentoring calls with. My goal is for them to stay at their firm so we can build that pipeline and continue to give them work. The number one thing I hear from those attorneys is ‘we need work from you so that we can build our book and so that we can be of value’. At the end of the day that is what is going to keep them at the law firm.

HD: Is diversity and inclusion something you have also championed within Peabody?

VD: It is something that I have absolutely championed. I served for three years as co-chair of our diversity and inclusion group and we are trying to ensure we change the face of mining. We have a large number of people coming into our ranks now who are women. On our leadership team, I joined in 2015 and the new female CFO also coming in was a very conscious decision by the CEO to diversify his leadership team. We were the first women on the executive team. If you don’t have statistics and you don’t have data, and at the end of the day if you are not tying this to people’s goals, things probably aren’t going to change as much as they need to. Right now my push is that we on the executive team should have some type of goals connected to this and should be sending a very clear message to the organisation that this is a commitment. The CEO is also part of a diversity pledge that a number of companies have signed which is put together by PwC. There has to be a message from the top that says that this is important to how we do business. It was refreshing to me having joined the company four years ago that this was the first thing my boss asked me to have a commitment to. I could see his commitment to it and that of the rest of the executive team.

When I am hiring I am very clear that I want to see a diverse slate of candidates as, if I do not see a diverse slate, it is going to be very hard to ensure that my team is diverse. I am very proud of the diversity within my team. I live it, breathe it, speak it and this is probably the thing I am most passionate about and I see the difference it makes from a business standpoint. It goes the whole way up to the board of directors, and I was very proud of the fact that we did a search this year and added a second woman director to our board of ten – and I do not think it stops there. The statistics say that if it is not at least 30% it is very hard to make a difference, so I look forward to adding at least one, and hopefully two, more women to the board of directors over the next couple of years as we have retirements and changes to the board.

HD: Do you think in-house legal teams are more active on diversity and have come further on this than law firms? And is this changing?

VD: Absolutely. Large companies have made that public commitment to diversity and have tried to show – whether through recruiting, sponsorship, or mentoring – that their teams are diverse. I would say we are now finally tackling this in terms of our firms, and if you think about it, we are spending millions of dollars with the law firms so there is real leverage there to achieve that. The partnership between GCs and law firms is the thing that is finally going to get it to change.

I don’t think it is harder for law firms. I think some firms like to believe that there are things about their models that make it more complicated. I do believe there is a better job they can do to make sure their teams are diverse. They need to provide the opportunity to people and then give them a reason to stay at that firm. This GC/law firm partnership should start to push them. I have two law firms that I am going to see next month and I am going to speak with their associates about diversity and why it is important to continue to work their way up the ladder. I feel much more positive about this now. I am more positive about what has happened just this year compared to what has happened in the past five years in terms of the needle starting to move with law firms.

HD: To finish, can you tell me what you are most proud of in your career to date?

VD: It ties into the diversity conversation we have been having. I had gotten to 20 plus years in practice and took a step back a couple of years ago to start to think about what I want my legacy to be. I’ve had a career that I really enjoy and from my own outlook I have been successful, but I wondered what someone would say if they look back about 20 years from now, after I retire. What I am most proud of is really having had an impact on increasing diversity and on making the business case for why that is important with the law firms I am working with (who are top 100 firms for the most part). What I am proud of is that I am not just here to do a job for Peabody, but I am here to develop opportunities for others whom the majority of other lawyers may not look on as ready or polished enough. Through advocating for them and sponsoring I have been able to see those individuals advance their careers. That’s what makes me proud about what I’m doing today, and the fact that my kids and everyone else can look at what I’m doing and say that I’m making a difference.

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Breaking down the barriers facing female leaders

When I joined Irwin Mitchell with two other partners in 1995, to set up the London office, I had five children aged between three and 11 years old and juggled bringing in work, looking after clients, and building a team. No one at that time talked about work-life balance or flexible working, something I would certainly have benefited from. I care passionately about my job as managing partner for the London office and as a medical negligence lawyer, but I also care about advancing women in their careers. I have been a leading advocate of promoting a healthy work-life balance that provides the framework for women (and men) to achieve this goal.

It is now an accepted fact that gender diversity brings multiple benefits to a business, including improving business performance. No one sex holds all the answers and it is only by encouraging a fuller debate looking at all sides of an issue, that the best decisions can be made. And clients and potential clients believe in this, too, and increasingly want to see their advisors showing more than lip service to diversity issues.

Large law firms on the whole tend to employ fewer women than men. Irwin Mitchell is the exception to this rule. Women represented 65% of our qualified lawyer cohort last year, up 1.6% from the previous year. We have worked hard to create a female-friendly environment. Five of our six medical negligence partners in London are women. I lead the IMPowered section of the Irwin Mitchell Diversity Board, which supports our work on gender equality. We regularly host events and run initiatives to address how we can support the development of women in the business.

Through holding workshops we have identified the key barriers to women in leadership. These are: the availability of flexible working; unconscious bias; gender pay; the need for training, mentoring, and reverse mentoring; and the importance of visible role models. We have fed our findings back to our executive board which has acted on our recommendations. This is what we’ve done:

  • Flexible working: We see a flexible working culture as critical to improving diversity and have now introduced flexible hours across our business. There has been a 20% increase in formal flexible working requests in the last year and 43% of our people now work flexibly.
  • Unconscious bias: In a recent survey by the Law Society of England and Wales, unconscious bias was the reason most commonly cited for women failing to reach senior positions in law firms. We have introduced mandatory unconscious bias training for everyone involved in recruitment and all team leaders. People are often surprised to discover they have an unconscious bias – when a woman returns from maternity leave she will feel she wants to be leaving her child for work that stretches her and will help advance her career – but her line manager may, for benign reasons, not give her demanding work, hence removing the opportunity for recognition and promotion. The value of communication can’t be over emphasised.
  • Gender Pay Gap: We were one of the first firms to include partners in our gender pay report and introduced moderation of pay and bonus recommendations to ensure fairness and consistency. We added a gender pay calculation so that the impact of recommendations on the gender pay gap can be seen. Last year we were in the top seven law firms for smallest gender pay gap. Our gender pay and bonus gap are improving year on year. Our ambition is to eliminate the pay gap entirely but that will mean more men working part time and in support roles.
  • Leadership training: We recognise that we need to develop leaders who are currently under represented which will help to not only develop female leaders but also BAME, LGBT, and leaders with disabilities. We have introduced an inclusive leadership programme to help achieve this.
  • Mentoring: We have introduced formal mentoring and reverse mentoring programmes to build more supportive networks across Irwin Mitchell. Feedback has been excellent, particularly from senior male partners mentoring and being mentored by more junior women.
  • We launched a Modern Life group in 2017 creating a safe space for colleagues of all genders to discuss the joys and difficulties of starting and keeping healthy families of all shapes and sizes – be it through IVF, adoption, natural conception, surrogacy and other methods – whilst balancing a career. In collaboration with our HR team the group holds sessions and shares case studies to help improve work-life balance and emotional wellbeing of colleagues struggling with the demands of modern life.
  • We have appointed Healthy Minds Advocates in all our offices to actively promote the wellbeing of all sexes and have signed the Mindful Business Charter demonstrating our commitment to driving a change to how we work to remove unnecessary stress at work and promote better mental health and wellbeing.
  • We celebrate the success of our women. Among our lawyers a number of our leading legal lights are female. Recent standout work by our remarkable women includes the Court of Appeal case XX v Whittington Hospital NHS Trust, in which our senior associate, Anne Kavanagh, acted for the claimant (who was rendered infertile by negligent late diagnosis of cervical cancer), and who recovered the costs of commercial surrogacy in California despite such arrangements being prohibited across the UK. And employment partner Emilie Cole who has just advised Judge Gilham on the high profile whistleblowing case in the Supreme Court. The five justices, led by Lady Hale, unanimously found that to deny judges from whistleblowing protection is a denial of their human rights. This case has widespread ramifications for any office holder, be they in the church, a trade union, or the trustee of a charity. And there’s Anita Jewitt, one of our medical negligence partners, who has been recognised by The First 100 Years project as an Inspirational Woman in Law. Seeing women taking the lead role in high-profile cases encourages and inspires our younger solicitors. They know they will be judged on merit and encouraged to push forward.
  • We have been working collaboratively with the inspirational First 100 Years project and the Law Society this year, celebrating the achievement of women in law. We have produced a timeline of women in Irwin Mitchell and have been sharing case studies of our female leaders every month. Our timeline shows we only appointed our first female partner in 1985, but women have really stepped up with 43% of IM partners now female. Our ambition is to push this to at least 50%. We recognise the need for relatable role models who are able to share their stories of how they made it into senior roles while juggling the demands of family commitments and a life outside of work.
  • Recruitment: We publish our family-friendly policies on our website. We have also implemented blind screening for our graduate and apprentice recruitment, bringing us a wider pool from which to recruit. Recruitment agencies are incentivised to produce diverse shortlists for leadership roles. As a result we have successfully attracted senior female talent; three of our four new senior recruits in IT are female.

So what is the result of all this? There is no doubt we have seen considerable change, particularly in the last five years. 30% of our executive board, 43% of our partners, 62% of our associates, and 73% of our people are female. 77% of our recent partner promotions were women. We recognise and reward leadership qualities in our women. I was the first female managing partner appointed in 2012 and now nine of our 13 regional managing partners are women. The head of our Business Legal Services Division (BLS) is a woman, as is the head of BLS in London. Of firms with more than 40% of female partners, Irwin Mitchell is the largest of these with 108 women in its partnership of 250 last year. This is something I am extremely proud of. And I am delighted to say that diversity is the highest-rated question in our engagement survey year on year.

When I started my career there were no particular senior female role models and no one to mentor me. Fortunately, I did have a male supervising partner who pushed me out of my comfort zone which helped me develop self-belief and to succeed. Support from men is essential if we are to achieve true diversity and inclusion.

Today most firms have recognised the importance of diversity and are trying hard to progress, but it is a long, slow road to change some entrenched cultures. I have been fortunate to have been in a position to help develop the culture of my firm, and as more and more women come into the law, I hope we will continue to attract many of the best and the brightest going forward.

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Exploring new technologies

Helen Donegan: In your career to date you’ve had roles in both private practice and in-house; what specifically interested you in a legal career?

Olga Mack: I went to law school to be a tech lawyer, so I am a tech lawyer by training and by design. I’ve been fortunate enough to work at the cutting edge of technology ever since. I studied at Berkeley Law and my first job as a legal professional was at Yahoo, where I helped them acquire and integrate Flickr. I thoroughly enjoyed that experience and was inspired to get involved in technology for the rest of my career.

While I have had many different jobs – at law firms, a Fortune 500 company, and numerous start-ups – the one common thread running through each has been technology. Parley Pro is a continuation of my work in technology, and even more specifically of my interest in disrupting how we practise law today.

HD: Can you tell me a bit more about Parley Pro?

OM: Parley Pro is a contract management platform that provides real-time, online, and collaborative review and negotiation capabilities. It allows all stakeholders to edit, comment, and review documents simultaneously, and it provides an audit trail of all activities within a document. This way, you can have multiple discussions among multiple stakeholders simultaneously. As a result, you get increased productivity and efficiencies, including a much shorter negotiation time – reduced by 40% or more. It also provides increased transparency and collaboration throughout the negotiation process. Overall it creates a far more pleasant process to draft and sign a contract.

HD: Who uses Parley Pro?

OM: Our software is mainly used by in-house lawyers, but increasingly by law firms too. As I see it, in-house departments are leading digitisation in law. They are increasingly asked to do more with less, and have increasingly realised the importance of using twenty-first century tools to get those results. So, it’s not surprising that the adoption of tools and innovation has been led predominantly by in-house lawyers. The pressures in-house are higher than anywhere else.

In smaller departments, it is GCs and one or two of their reports who may be using Parley Pro; in bigger departments, legal operations may also be involved. The platform also has high-level dashboards for CFOs and COOs to allow legal departments to provide transparency for management and to their internal clients. Because of the collaborative nature of the platform, other stakeholders such as the risk team, sales, or IT can also interact with the contract at a clause level. The tool is optimised for use by lawyers, but it also allows other stakeholders both internally and externally to contribute in a way that GCs can control at a high level.

HD: You mentioned some law firms use it also. What have you found their initial reaction to the software to be, and do you think they feel it competes with their traditional working practices in any way?

OM: We are in a pilot phase with some law firms. They have been feeling pressures too, just a different type of pressure. You see trends across law firms where they are now hiring CTOs and are exploring technology a bit more. They may be a bit slower and more careful, but they are curious about technology, understand its value, and are interested to learn more.

It is hard to talk about law firms as if they are all one and the same. With the introduction of any new technology or change there will be professionals who are excited by it, and there will be those who decide to wait and see. There will also be many who are critical. I have had different discussions and some definitely see this as an opportunity, while others want to wait and see what happens in the market. Overall, there is a growing consensus that we need better tools. Frankly, when your clients from in-house are exploring new technologies, it is only a matter of time until you have to do the same.

HD: Would you say organisations such as Parley Pro are encouraging firms to become more innovative with legal tech in any way?

OM: Absolutely. Parley Pro provides lawyers with the tools they need to do the job they need to do. We all go to law school and feel passionately about the law, and no one wants to get stuck bogged down in the tedium of cutting and pasting. We went to law school to provide excellent legal advice to our clients. Parley Pro allows our lawyer clients, both in-house and in law firms, to do exactly that. It allows them to practise law the way they are trained to do it, and the way they want to do it: in a strategic and impactful way.

HD: From your experience, do you think lawyers are wary of using online or cloud-based technology, or is there more openness to it now?

OM: Lawyers are increasingly open-minded. It is time! The world has adopted technology into every aspect of our lives and, in turn, our daily lives have improved through numerous online services and technologies. It is just a fact of life.

We know when we work with our in-house clients that they have already adopted newer, more sophisticated tools to improve their ability to make smarter decisions and work better and more efficiently. They already know first-hand how technology improves their personal lives, and the professional lives of their colleagues in other departments, and they are increasingly open-minded to how it could help them in the legal department. We also have a new generation of lawyers who cannot imagine practising law without technology because they have grown up with it in all aspects of their lives. Combined with the pressures of businesses, this increasingly leads to open-mindedness to new technology, even if they are still cautious.

HD: Are there any trends you have noticed in the legal profession’s adoption of technology?

OM: Yes. Contract management solutions is not the first technology adopted by lawyers. There have been others, such as very sophisticated e-discovery tools that have paved the way. Contract management solutions are a strong second wave, I would say, and provide such a big opportunity. At the end of the day, if you look at in-house practice, a lot of it centres around contracts – sales and procurement contracts, M&A contracts, partnership agreements, etc. – and there is an opportunity to streamline it all and increase efficiencies.

We are also seeing the development of new disruptive technologies, things like AI and blockchain. There are new technologies in e-billing. The more disruptive technologies – that use blockchain, in particular – are a little bit newer and more premature, but at the end of the day I believe that we are going to have an increasingly broad range of sophisticated technologies to choose from and it will transform the way that we practise law. They will free us from repetitive tasks and free up time for more strategic thinking and for us to work more collaboratively with our clients. For me, that is why I went to law school, so I think this is an amazing time to be practising law.

HD: What advice would you give to a lawyer, whether in-house or in a law firm, in terms of exploring and adopting new legal technologies?

OM: A good place to start is with pain points. You need to identify where the vulnerabilities and weak spots are in your department or business. Then look for solutions or processes that have been developed or are being developed.

You then need to become a beta tester. This means not only seeing a demo, but actually trying it out. And don’t just try one thing, try at least a couple, because: (i) you will learn a lot about what is available in terms of solutions; and (ii) you will gain a different view of the problem you have. I guarantee that by the time you are done beta testing and thinking about the challenges you have, you will find a selection of possible solutions to address those challenges. That allows you to: (i) do what you are trained to do and focus on solving complex problems; (ii) have an impact for your business and enjoy the future influence that it brings in shaping opportunities down the road; and (iii) impact relationships not just within your organisation, but in the market as a whole. By solving a challenge in a novel way and sharing that solution outside your organisation, members of the legal community can learn from you and come to view you as a leader and an authority in the field.

HD: There are an increasing number of solutions in the market all the time and new ‘innovative’ ways of doing things. What would you personally say is the biggest innovation right now in legal tech?

OM: I strongly believe it is in contract management! Any legal practice will be filled with contracts, and there are more and more opportunities for improvement. When people talk about blockchain and AI, those are not solutions; those are technologies. Things like blockchain are backend technologies that are not useful on their own. When you think of electricity for example, it’s in the background of the things we use, but it is of no use on its own without something for it to power. The same is true of blockchain. It can exist in the background to make everything else run more smoothly. Lawyers do not need to be any more aware of blockchain than I have to be aware of electricity when I am using a computer. In fact, a sign of a good blockchain technology is that the lawyer doesn’t need to even know it exists.

It’s exciting to learn about disruptive technologies like blockchain and AI, but when you innovate and develop products or buy solutions, you are not necessarily focusing on how they work. That’s not your job. What you care about it is whether it solves your problem and allows you to do things better. As a lawyer in-house, when I was considering digitising my own department, I was simply thinking about what my problem was and what solutions there were to solve them.

HD: Do you think it is important for in-house and law firm teams to work together to use legal technology, and what impact do you think it will have on how they work together?

OM: At Parley Pro, we strongly believe in collaboration. Together we are greater than the sum of our individual parts. We believe in creating a strong network that has roles for in-house lawyers, for law firms, and for alternative legal services providers with technology. Anything that is worth doing can be done better together.

Let me put it this way: email changed communication and replaced letter writing. Did it reduce the number of communications we have? No, it increased them because it made it easier. Technology does not decrease the need for legal advice, but opens it up and allows it to be more efficient. I understand the fear around technology. By using bigger, better tools is that there will be even more important, strategic decisions for us to make to have an even greater impact. Technology presents opportunities for us to have greater impact and more exciting work that we enjoy doing together.

HD: What is next for you and Parley Pro?

OM: We’re going to keep focusing on exactly what we are doing now: building products that delight our customers, helping legal teams with their problems, and providing sophisticated ways to use contract management and contract negotiation to optimise contracts assets. I believe I am fortunate to be in this position of building the next generation of legal technology. Not only have I been in a law firm and in-house in various practices and capacities including as general counsel, I have been involved in cutting-edge technology the whole way through. I am now fortunate to combine all of my experiences to serve the legal community and change the way we will practise law tomorrow.

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Spotlight on: Arnold & Porter rising to the competition

Helen Donegan: Can you please give me a brief overview of your team?

Debbie Feinstein: We have more than 100 people in our antitrust practice across the US and Europe. I lead the global group and focus on merger control, with some work on civil conduct investigations and litigation. Jonathan leads the US group and focuses on similar areas. Two DOJ veterans, Bill Baer (who led the DOJ antitrust division) and Sonia Pfaffenroth (who is one of Bill’s deputies) lead our criminal cartel practice, but also do merger work, civil investigations, and litigation. In our New York office, Saul Morgenstern, Scott Lent, and Jennifer Patterson have antitrust practices that cover the full range of work, with Saul often handing matters for clients in the life sciences. DOJ veteran James W. Cooper focuses on cartel and white-collar work. Laura Shores and James L. Cooper in DC and Dan Asimow in San Francisco are primarily antitrust litigators, while Michael B. Bernstein in DC is merger focused.

HD: Congratulations on your team’s consistent rise in the rankings over the past couple of years. What would you attribute this to?

Jonathan Gleklen: We are fortunate that our clients look to us on their most challenging government investigations, mergers, and litigations. We have a strong roster of former senior government enforcers – Bill and Sonia from the DOJ, and Debbie and Pete Levitas from the FTC. Plus, our strong team in Brussels allows us to coordinate antitrust matters across the globe. For clients that take comfort in our ability to anticipate how the FTC and DOJ will see things based on our experience in government, we’ve strengthened our capabilities in Brussels by adding Alexander Italianer, the former Director-General for Competition in the European Commissions (and, after that, the EC Secretary General – the highest-ranking EC civil servant).

HD: Our Historical Data shows you have other highly ranked teams which have enjoyed a consistent standing in certain tiers. However, with the antitrust team having gone up in the rankings, I wanted to ask if you undertake individual practice group efforts to improve performance?

JG: Arnold & Porter’s practice groups have increasing responsibility for their performance, but they depend on the strong support of the firm overall. For example, we may have priorities as far as hiring laterals with strong government experience, but the decision to bring anyone into the firm is in the hands of the entire partnership.

HD: What do you think has been your team’s biggest success within the past couple of years?

DF: We have seen success across all areas of our practice. We have worked on our clients’ most significant transactions – AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, Monsanto’s acquisition by Bayer, GE’s combination with Baker Hughes, and BP’s acquisition of BHP’s onshore oil and gas business. On the litigation side, we have significant wins for Samsung, Harper Collins, General Electric, and sports teams like the Golden State Warriors and the Oakland Raiders, and are continuing to handle very large and complex matters for clients like Visa and Novartis. We have represented clients in all of the recent major cartel matters, including auto parts and generic drugs.

HD: What do you think you do differently to competitors? Do you think your team is clearly differentiated from similar practices in other firms?

DF: We understand how to work with and advocate to the government. Some of that comes from firm culture – one of our firm’s founders, Thurman Arnold, led the antitrust division under Franklin Roosevelt, and the firm has a long history of bringing in partners with government experience. And some of it comes from the recent return to the firm of senior government enforcers. We know that pounding the table is not the way to convince the government – it is in saying ‘come, let us reason together’. We are ready to go to court if that’s necessary, but you want to win before that happens because the delays and expense of litigation are significant. Many deals can’t hold together long enough to litigate with the government, and if the government sues alleging anticompetitive conduct the reputational harm is often done, regardless of the end result. There are other firms with large antitrust practices, but we don’t think any other firm has the depth of government experience or the deep bench that we do.

HD: How does the US team compare with competition teams within the firm’s European locations?

JG: We have smart, client-focused lawyers and we cover the full range of competition issues on both sides of the Atlantic. While the ‘revolving door’ from government is better-established in the US, we are somewhat unique in having senior EU enforcers – Alexander Italianer and Luc Gyselen – in Brussels as well. We’re very proud of our ability to work seamlessly on global matters. We have all worked together for a very long time, and that experience working together lets us deliver results for clients no matter where they face a competition issue.

HD: Let’s talk about clients. Has your team adopted any new processes or technology to help improve service levels for clients?

JG: Different clients have different needs, and there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. We have recently significantly ramped-up our in-house litigation support and electronic discovery technology, and while that’s very valuable to some clients, we know others prefer to work with their own established vendors.

HD: Arnold & Porter was named one of the 2019 ‘Best Law Firms for Women’ by Working Mother magazine. Can you tell me a bit about this?

DF: Working Mother recognises law firms and companies that utilise best practices to recruit, retain, promote, and develop women. Arnold & Porter has been on Working Mother’s Best Law Firms list for five years and on Working Mother’s 100 Best Companies for Women for more than 18 consecutive years. These accolades are important to us for a number of reasons. For example, they allow us to benchmark with peer organisations to ensure that we are staying abreast of and implementing the best practices to advance women and foster an inclusive workplace.

For almost twenty years, Working Mother has recognised our steadfast commitment to cultivating an environment that empowers women and provides opportunities that enable women to achieve their career aspirations. In addition to our family friendly benefits like our gender neutral caregiver leave and our parent mentoring programmes, we have a number of initiatives and programmes in place to support the retention and advancement of all working parents, but especially working mothers who still own a disproportionate level of parenting responsibilities. For a number of years, our partner promotion rate has averaged at least 50% women. In fact, this year, 60% of our newly promoted partners were women.

HD: Can you expand on the firm’s wider D&I focus? Is there anything that you think you are doing differently or particularly well to recruit and support a diverse workforce within the firm?

JG: Diversity and inclusion are among Arnold & Porter’s core values. Our D&I strategy is grounded in five pillars: recruitment, retention, advancement, engagement, and service. Firm leadership, including our D&I committee which is led by the co-chair of our product liability practice group, work closely with our D&I professionals to develop and implement a broad range of initiatives that strengthen our ability to foster an inclusive workplace.

As a firm, we are always exploring opportunities to further our D&I goals. We are particularly proud of our partnerships with clients who share our commitment to D&I. In recent years, we have collaborated with clients on a number of recruitment and retention initiatives aimed at increasing the inclusivity of the legal profession and ensuring that our diverse attorneys have opportunities to interact with clients. For instance, we include client AT&T’s summer legal interns in a variety of networking and professional development programmes hosted over the summer to provide them with opportunities to learn more about the law firm experience. We have had an AT&T intern participate in our 2L summer associate programme and then join the firm after law school.

In addition, we have participated in the Mansfield Rule since its inception. In 2018, we received Certification Plus status for our efforts to diversify key roles at the firm. Although [at the time of the interview] we are currently awaiting results for 2019’s certification, we are optimistic and look forward to continuing our participation in Mansfield 3.0.

From speaker programmes featuring authors to visiting scholar presentations on unconscious bias, we regularly seek opportunities to engage our colleagues through formal and informal education opportunities. The consensus at this point is that there is no magic bullet to achieving and maintaining a diverse and inclusive workforce, each day we strive to improve upon our efforts and explore innovative approaches to meet any challenges.

HD: What are the biggest challenges facing your team and the firm overall?

JG: Our challenges in the Antitrust/Competition Practice are similar to the challenges of the firm overall, and are the same as the challenges across the legal profession. We need to deliver top-quality work cost-effectively. Technology and training can help with that, but in the end success depends on having a client-focused mindset. If you view the client’s problems as your problems, you are well on your way to addressing them in a way that makes good legal and business sense for the client.

We also need to continue to recruit, train, and advance the brightest young lawyers. We do that by offering them a firm whose values they can be proud of. That includes our commitment to pro bono work and diversity as well as legal excellence. Once they’re here, we need to make sure that they get responsibility because in much of antitrust work you can only learn by doing. Letting the junior members of the team do everything they’re capable of means better value for the client and a better experience for our junior lawyers, and it helps to ensure the long-term success of the practice.

HD: What have you been doing so far this year, and what do you plan to do within the coming months, to maintain the Antitrust/Competition team’s Tier 1 ranking?

DF: We have been busy across merger work, cartels, and litigation. Our reputation depends on doing first-rate work and delighting our clients, and we have no plans to do anything any differently.

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Protecting your assets

Modern barristers’ clerks are not a ‘new breed’ but the evolutionary result of the shifting forum in which they operate. Their history may hark back to harsher and more subservient times, but their current expertise is recognised by successful sets of chambers who require effective management of individual barristers’ practices and chambers’ business. The poet, Charles Lamb (1775–1834), whose father had been a barristers’ clerk, wrote of him: ‘He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his “flapper”, his guide, stopwatch, auditor, treasurer.’

Most clerks of a certain era, including me, can probably identify with the duties expected of Charles Lamb’s father 250 years ago and can easily add to them, in spades. But fortunately the servile, sometimes degrading duties of yesteryear, including archaic customs like renaming the junior clerk simply to suit the set they worked in, ‘dressing’ silks in the robing room, and carrying dozens of heavy, dusty books using only a canvas strap through rainy London streets have died out. Fortunately modern clerks bear little or no resemblance to the caricatures epitomised in literature by John Mortimer’s Albert Handyside, the clerk to Horace Rumpole (succeeded by the harried Henry Trench). On TV we’ve seen the humble yet super-rich Tom, the clerk to John Thaw’s Kavanagh QC and Peter Moffat’s grotesque creations – including the Machiavellian Peter MacLeish in North Square and latterly the conniving Billy Lamb in Silk. These fictional clerks were all loosely based on real clerks, their real-life counterparts perhaps even more bombastic and more colourful. There is, of course, no longer a place at the table for these brutes in a client-focused, professional services industry like the modern Bar.

Clerks – many of whom bulldozed their way to the top job in chambers whilst learning critical business skills dealing and negotiating with barristers, solicitors, judges, and civil servants – will claim to having a unique, deep understanding of the machinery and psychology of practice at the Bar; a conceit that many would excuse them not least because of the pioneering role that many clerks have played when driving their businesses forward. However, eliminating the burden of administration from the ‘talent’; seeking-out and securing new work and providing technical and logistical support so that barristers can concentrate exclusively on their clients’ cases all remain fundamental to the smooth running of a successful set of barristers’ chambers.

In the behemoth ‘mega-sets’ a traditional clerk may not necessarily sit at the top of the corporate ladder (but ‘a rose by any other name’), however, there is always a cabal of clerks – sometimes labelled otherwise – carrying out the essential role of clerking the barristers; re-labelling the role of clerk hasn’t changed its necessity to chambers.

Modern senior clerks earned their spurs transitioning from junior clerks and, along the way, garnered knowledge of the ingredients of running a modern business, such as a solid understanding of regulation, equality, wellbeing, and technology, as well as the value of providing a premium, bespoke service. They have adapted, through necessity, to all the challenges and modifications that have taxed the legal profession at the behest of legislators and regulators and have seen them as opportunities to engage with work providers.

Clerks have been at the forefront of the implementation of the digital modernisation of the legal marketplace. Indeed, many have insisted on pioneering and developing the systems currently in use and will no doubt be demanding further, constant review and enhancements to keep their chambers and barristers ahead of the curve.

Perhaps the most important, client-facing function of any clerk has always been the ability to place particular cases confidently with the best choice of barrister based on the clerk’s instinctive and informed understanding of the skills and the abilities of the stable of barristers available in their set of chambers. In a modern set all such referrals must be recorded and fairly distributed by the clerk with due consideration given to a client’s own expectations.

Growth in any business is essential; if your business isn’t growing its dying. There is a need for progress, perhaps not necessarily in terms of sheer numbers, but progression in terms of the quality of work attracted, undertaken, and completed. In a market saturated with clever lawyers all vying for the same finite amount of cases, successful clerks know that their barristers’ and chambers’ offering must add significant value to the advice and representation that their clients will already be receiving from those instructing them. Given that most senior clerks’ remuneration is, in some way, linked to the overall financial success of chambers, clerks have a fiscal interest in the welfare of the talent they administer.

Wellbeing in chambers

Any team, whether sporting or legal, needs to protect its assets. In an industry which relies heavily on the capacity and abilities of the human mind, modern clerks know they must ensure that good mental health and wellbeing is at the forefront of their strategies for chambers. Outdated, unhealthy working practices must be replaced with a respect for individual mental health to ensure optimum performance from the entire workforce. Balancing the wellbeing of everyone in chambers with the need for economic success is a skill that requires a sophisticated understanding of modern business methods.

A bigger picture view is helpful. Collectively small businesses make up a significant proportion of the UK workforce and nearly all barristers’ chambers could be categorised as SMEs. The professional services sector (which includes legal services) is the second-highest category for work-related mental ill health (“Thriving at Work” – Stevenson/Farmer Review 2019). Huge strides have been taken in recent times towards providing better support for those who perform highly pressured, ‘knowledge leadership’ roles along with those who manage them.

The website www.mentalhealthatwork.org.uk provides useful guidance and toolkits to help SMEs (such as barristers’ chambers) learn and implement plans for good mental health. The stigma relating to mental ill-health remains but there is now a much more open forum for discussion. The effective implementation of policies to ensure good mental health in chambers will help eradicate the damaging, sometime catastrophic effects that mental ill-health has on individuals within chambers, both personal and professional.

Focusing on the welfare of the workforce and its effect on the bottom line, a keen sense to spot opportunities as they arise, and an innate duty to deflect the non-profitable drudgery of the mundane and workaday away from their principals, will keep the tradition of the old-style ‘king-maker’ alive among the ranks of the modern clerk; entrusted to administer the business of barristers and their chambers, they are still clerks through-and through, however they might be labelled.

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A day in the life…

Usually a ‘day in the life story’ starts with the morning, but for this job it usually commences the evening before, readying myself for the following day. The adrenaline of being in court brings with it a rush of activity close to the hearing date. I tend to prepare for examining witnesses the day before a case, to keep matters fresh in my mind. It also helps me to stay on top of any last minute developments.

The work I deal with concerns extradition, where an individual is wanted in another country to face trial or to serve a sentence. Cross-border crime is becoming ever more prevalent and this has meant that states increasingly have had to cooperate to find ways to fight it and to protect themselves from becoming ‘safe-havens’ for fugitives from justice.

One only has to look at the change in the criminal landscape over the last few decades to see that terrorism, human trafficking, and crimes against humanity are on the rise. So too are cross-border frauds and financial crimes. Thus, there is a drive to ensure that mechanisms can be relied upon to bring perpetrators to justice, bringing the need for international collaboration through extradition.

But the process of extradition will frequently involve the deprivation of someone’s liberty during the course of proceedings and then their forcible removal to another country. Extradition can be misused as a tool by state authorities against a political enemy. It is, therefore, an area of law which commonly gives rise to human rights arguments, used to resist extradition.

All the extradition caseload in England and Wales is conducted before Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London. Appeals come before the Administrative Court based in the Royal Courts of Justice. It is a relatively small group of barristers who regularly practice extradition, when compared with the wider criminal Bar. This comes with a number or positives. There is a good deal of familiarity among members of the Bar and this means there are always colleagues around who can be a useful soundboard when a tricky legal issue crops up.

Intense mornings

I am a mother of two young girls, so my mornings tend to revolve around the theatre of appeasing the demands of their ever-changing breakfast requirements, then the coaxing and bribery to get out of the house and to the school gates before the 8:50am cut-off.

The court day starts at 10:00am but before that, if I am defending, I will need to take instructions from my client or advise them on the court process. If my client is in custody, then it’s worth getting to the cells early to avoid the scuffle for one of the five legal rooms. Many of my clients require interpreters, which means the conferences can take longer. This, when coupled with the service of last minute material, can mean that the need to be able to take focused instructions on the essentials is paramount. Mornings can be quite intense.

Court hearings vary from day to day. One day might bring a series of case management hearings and a bail application. Another, a full extradition hearing, which may last a day or more. I find myself in the High Court about once a month. This can involve an application seeking permission to appeal against an extradition order or a substantive appeal. The court work can be exciting, challenging, and sometimes emotive. Other times it can be plagued with long periods of waiting with no canteen to supply a decent coffee. I always bring work with me to fill those gaps – my office is my laptop.

After my hearings have concluded, I will update my instructing solicitors as to what happened at court and to advise on the next steps to take in the case. Extradition work involves a fair amount of drafting, including skeleton arguments and written advices. There is sometimes a limited amount of time in the day to get this work done, so I try to keep a day free each week for papers. But the court listing doesn’t always accommodate this precious day I factor into my timetable and thus my evenings never stay clear for very long.

One part of my daily timetable that I do manage to protect is being home in time to read a story and put the children to bed. I am fortunate in this regard as my work-life and home-life are in London. I treasure the moments I get when I manage to get a school day snippet here and there.

So, after dinner, but before my own retreat to bed, I will check emails and squeeze in the case prep for the following day. While my social life, hours spent watching Netflix, and sleep tend to suffer, I go to bed happy as my days are rewarding and full.

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All you need to know about the UK Bar 2020

Congratulations to every barrister and chambers that appears in The Legal 500’s 2020 UK Bar rankings. The latest rankings are a culmination of all your hard work and expertise as well as the painstaking research carried out by our dedicated and talented research team.

This latest guide is our most expansive yet. The 2020 guide recognises almost 4,500 barristers and arbitrators from more than 190 chambers, as well as featuring new Agriculture and Data protection rankings for the London Bar, and separate clinical negligence and personal injury rankings, along with a new immigration section, across the circuits. Our biggest development, however, was the introduction of tiered rankings for the regional Bar, a feature we’ve long had for the London rankings. But with all those developments, which sets came out ahead overall?

Once again leading the Bar, with an improved ten tier 1 rankings, is Blackstone Chambers. Those sets closest to Blackstone are Essex Court and Monckton with six top tier rankings each. When it comes to chambers with the most leading set rankings, Blackstone again leads the way with a whopping 24 rankings, and followed by 39 Essex Chambers and Matrix Chambers with 19 and 18 rankings respectively.

But what about the individual rankings? Starting with leading silks, 39 Essex Chambers takes gold here, with 40 Queen’s Counsel ranked to Blackstone’s and Essex Court’s 39 silks each. At the junior end, this year sees Garden Court Chambers overtake No5 Barristers Chambers, with 73 juniors ranked to the latter’s 68; national sets 3PB and Kings Chambers come in a very respectable joint third, with 56 junior rankings a piece. And finally, what about the overall number of barrister rankings? This year Garden Court Chambers takes the crown, with 99 silk, new silk, and junior rankings, while 39 Essex Chambers are just behind on 98 rankings, and No 5 Barristers in third thanks to 83 rankings.

While congratulations are due to all chambers, it’s time to turn to our next guide and some exciting new developments. The 2021 rankings will see the introduction of a brand new barrister ranking – Rising stars. This new section is designed to highlight junior barristers between four and eight years call undertaking legally complex and challenging cases, either unled, or as a first or second junior to senior counsel. They will already be recognised by clients and peers as leading juniors in the making. This new section is open to counsel in London, the regions, and Scotland.

As for new practice areas: in London, please note some updates to pre-existing practice headings and the introduction of a new section, Local government (including rating law). In the regions, we have expanded and rearranged our practice areas – please see our guidelines for full details – including new practice rankings for Agriculture, Professional disciplinary law, Professional negligence, and Social housing, among others. Meanwhile, in Scotland, we have also tweaked our practice headings, with the separation of Personal injury and Medical negligence of particular note for stables. Again, please see our new guidelines for full details and practice area definitions.

Referee confusion

In conversation with various chambers it is clear that not everyone appreciates our policy on referees. In short, you are not limited to just five referees; you can provide as many as you want, and the more the better. Moreover, barristers are not limited to just instructing solicitors; you can also include your lay and in-house clients, opponents, leaders, and juniors from the cases you work on throughout the last year, even those members from within your own chambers (although the weight we give these will be slightly less than those from other sets). All referees will be contacted as long as our referee spreadsheet is filled in correctly. Please see our guidance online for more information.

Ease of submission

Finally, ahead of the 2020 UK Bar guide, The Legal 500 introduced its first-ever submission template for chambers use. The reason for doing this was twofold: first, to ensure every set was on a level playing field and aware of all the factors we consider when ranking individual barristers and chambers; second, to ensure our researchers have, at their fingertips, all the information they require to accurately and efficiently research the independent Bar.

I’m pleased to say that a large number of sets across the UK saw the sense in us introducing this new template and have praised various elements of it. That is not to say, however, that the 2020 template was set in stone and we were not willing to make amendments where constructive feedback was provided. In consultation with the recently established Marketing in Chambers Group (MICG), as well as members of the Legal Practice Management Association (LPMA), we have made some alterations to our template ahead of the 2021 research.

These changes, along with the launch of ConvertNow for the UK Bar, produce the most efficient submission form for chambers to use, while also providing The Legal 500 with the depth of detail needed for its researchers to continue to produce market-leading research. Full details of how to use ConvertNow is available on our website.

If you have any queries about the new guidelines, then please do not hesitate to get in touch ([email protected]). Otherwise, I wish you the very best of luck with your 2021 submissions.

 

 

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Selendy & Gay reimagines the modern law firm

The result: Selendy & Gay, a powerhouse litigation firm which opened its doors in February 2018, and today is one of the only elite, majority women-owned firms in the United States. In announcing its launch, the firm vowed to deploy diverse critical thinking to transform ‘the most challenging litigation scenarios into net positives’ for its clients.

Helen Donegan, US editor (content) at The Legal 500, spoke with Selendy & Gay as it nears its second anniversary to learn how it’s building a next generation firm focused on diversity, inclusivity, and excellence.

‘We wanted to work someplace that looks like us’

Perhaps one of the biggest differentiators for Selendy & Gay is the diversity of its lawyers, particularly in positions of power. Founding partner Faith Gay explained that, when conceiving the firm, she and her co-founders wanted an egalitarian climate where everyone could have a voice. ‘We wanted to work someplace that looks like us. The world is diverse. Clients and jury pools are diverse. We recognised there was a real opportunity to reimagine how law firms work, and to bring about the best possible result we would need to draw from a diverse set of minds and experiences.’

Its strong number of female lawyers, especially at the equity partner level – where firms are typically deficient – is something the firm is particularly proud of. ‘It sends a message to our clients and the market when our large cases are led and won by all-woman teams. You just don’t see that elsewhere,’ said Jennifer Selendy, co-managing partner. ‘But it happens here – regularly.’

In addition to its majority female equity partnership, Selendy & Gay also boasts diversity in LGBTQ lawyers (21% of attorneys), as well as in associates who identify as persons of colour (over 30%).

Unique perspectives welcomed

David Flugman, a partner and leader of the firm’s diversity and inclusion efforts, believes workplaces that promote an unfettered exchange of perspectives enjoy a competitive edge. ‘Organisations that foster cultures of open sharing are better innovators and problem solvers. It is equally important for individuals to feel they can safely communicate who they are. For instance, many people at our firm are openly “out” as LGBTQ. They know they don’t have to censor parts of themselves, which in turn signals to others that they can also freely express themselves without fear that doing so might hinder them in some way,’ he said.

This open culture also allows the firm to go beyond the expected. Like many organisations, Selendy & Gay organised an event in 2019 to commemorate WorldPride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Unlike other firms, Selendy & Gay’s celebration included a special performance by Aquaria, the season 10 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, demonstrating its appreciation for cultures that have not historically been represented in the workplace.

The firm’s commitment to diversity and inclusion also includes partnering with outside organisations that share similar values. The firm’s attorneys have collaborated with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the American Immigration Representation Project, Equal Justice Works and Legal Aid – among many other groups – on issues ranging from LGTBQ rights, to preserving affordable housing, protecting immigrants’ rights, and advocating for environmental conservation.

Mitigating unconscious biases

The firm’s approach to associate recruitment is unique. It has adopted a blind testing model to ensure a focus on recruiting candidates with the greatest abilities rather than concentrating on meeting diversity targets or, worse, allowing unconscious biases to influence the process.

Under the blind test, potential new associates are given a sample case study and asked to brief it before meeting any partners. The briefs are then individually blind graded by partners, with the grades factoring heavily in the candidates’ overall evaluations.

‘This process hasn’t just resulted in an incredible number of women, attorneys of colour, and LGBTQ individuals joining our ranks,’ Andrew Dunlap, the firm’s administrative partner, said. ‘It has allowed us to attract the best attorneys in practice.’

Diverse attorneys are visible and empowered

At Selendy & Gay, women helm several of the firm’s most high-profile engagements. Faith Gay, who is openly lesbian, and three other female partners lead the representation of McKinsey & Company in multiple highly publicised litigations.

Diverse partners and associates also handle significant public interest cases concerning the advancement and protection of women, LGBTQ individuals, and minorities. For instance, several female partners serve as lead counsel to a group of teachers, nurses, and other public servants in a major class action lawsuit accusing student loan servicer, Navient, of unfairly denying them access to loan forgiveness. These partners also represent the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) – a union of teachers, healthcare workers, and others – which sued the US Department of Education and the Secretary of Education for failing to properly administer the nation’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness programme.

The outcome of these cases, and America’s US$1.6 trillion student debt crisis, disproportionately impacts people of colour who are statistically more likely to have to take on student loan debt than their white counterparts, and women, who make up the majority of AFT’s members and who historically repay their loans more slowly than men due to the gender pay gap.

Flugman, who is also openly gay, recently defended a ban enacted by the State of New Jersey on the practice of so-called ‘sexual orientation change efforts,’ also known as ex-gay or gay conversion therapy, on minors by state-licensed professionals.

‘We take pride in devoting our skills and expertise to cases in which doing well for our clients also means doing good for the public,’ Gay said.

The founders of Selendy & Gay set out to reimagine modern law practice. Poised to celebrate its two-year anniversary, the firm says it will continue its disciplined growth while remaining laser-focused on the practices that make it a leader in diversity and inclusion.