The rise of COVID-19 cases at universities across the UK has seen thousands of students forced into lockdown.

With this in mind, Legal Cheek spoke to Aleksandra (Alex) Dietrich, a first-year law student at Lancaster University, who has spent the past two weeks self-isolating in her halls of residence after her flatmate tested positive for coronavirus. Fortunately, no one else in her flat developed any symptoms.

When Dietrich was told by the university to self-isolate immediately, she recalls being “frankly very disheartened”. Although she knew it was necessary for the health and safety of others, it meant she didn’t get to experience Freshers’ Week or mingle with her fellow first-year peers. She explained:

“When others were attending the events organised by the university, I had to stay in my room and isolate. This was very tough on my mental health; I feel like I have missed out on any opportunities to socialise, making the first week of university even more daunting and lonely.”

Then there were the practical challenges of getting food in while being stuck inside for two weeks. “At the time we got instructed to isolate, our fridges were empty since our plan was to do our shopping on that very day. We checked online and there weren’t any delivery slots available for the next four days,” she said.

Though Lancaster University offers a daily food delivery system, which couriers food boxes containing three meals to self-isolating students on campus, the plan costs £17.95 a day — much higher than Dietrich’s average spend of £25 on a weekly food shop. “When we ran out of food, it worked out cheaper for us to order takeaways,” she revealed. When their food eventually arrived after four days in isolation, Dietrich and her flatmates made sure to plan ahead.

Without access to Lancaster’s on-campus laundry rooms, Dietrich also explained that self-isolating students have the option to get their dirty washing picked up and cleaned by a private company for £7 per bag. Dietrich and her flatmates, however, hand-washed what they could, with the rest of their laundry to be cleaned after isolation. “Dressing gowns became a staple,” she told us.

According to Dietrich, dealing with basic lockdown logistics, from retrieving delivered parcels from the post office to taking the bins out, fell on students. “It was left up to my flat mates and I to take initiative, be pro-active and reach out to the university with a list of queries,” she said.

Keeping Dietrich busy was her timetable of online law lectures, which were more flexible than in-person alternatives. “You’re able to watch them whenever it’s suitable for you, you can rewind, pause or speed-up the lectures too, which I found very convenient,” she explained. Even so, Dietrich said it was difficult to remain positive and motivated over the fortnight. “Being stuck in doors can be so draining, causing my productivity levels to go down dramatically.”

Outside of her studies, Dietrich and her flatmates killed time in the kitchen playing cards and board games, watching films together and tuning into some evening telly. “Watching The Great British Bake Off together in the kitchen has now become a part of the routine on a Tuesday night,” she said.

After the two weeks were up, Dietrich and her friend celebrated her new-found freedom with a walk around the campus, followed by a long-awaited trip to the pub.

Feeling worried or stressed? You can contact LawCare by calling 0800 279 6888 in the UK.

The post Films, food parcels and online lectures: The life of a self-isolating law student appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Chris Daw QC’s new book, Justice on Trial, has received a mostly positive reception. He thinks this is due to the public having an appetite for the subject matter which has received a lot of media attention as of late.

The coronavirus crisis has magnified debate around prison reform while the Black Lives Matter movement has thrust questions around racial imbalance in the criminal justice system into prominence.

We’ve hit a sort of ‘reset’ point in society. People have realised that some aspects do need to change and have become, perhaps, more receptive to new ideas like the ones Daw proposes in his book.

The COVID-19 lockdown has made us realise that we can do a lot more remotely than we might have thought. For Daw — a serious crime silk at Millennium Chambers and member of Lincoln House Chambers — remote-working has been “liberating”. He’s not on the go as much, travelling to court or to client conferences, and is able to maintain a sense of discipline around his diary, he tells me when we speak.

More broadly, technology and more specifically, remote monitoring, offers creative solutions to improving the criminal justice system, as Daw addresses in his book. The idea is simple: prison is costly; and by embracing technology, and the so-called “virtual prison”, we can remove non-violent offenders, who let’s be honest, “don’t learn anything useful” in physical imprisonment, and keep track of them as they go about their lives. They could go to work or through education, attend counselling or rehabilitation, and “just be more productive” than they are behind brick walls and barbed wire.

Interestingly, where he doesn’t see tech has much of a place is virtual hearings for criminal trials. “There are far too many low-level cases going through the courts that should be diverted away from the system and dealt with in other forms,” he tells me. “By using online courts for criminal cases you’re enabling a system that is already broken. Why online? Well, why do it at all? It’s a waste of time.” This narrative continues in his book.

Justice on Trial is a manifesto, if you like, proposing radical reform to the criminal justice system. It’s at breaking point, he argues, and to break free of the cycle of crime, perpetuated as much by our criminal justice system as by those behind its bars, we must rip up the playbook and start again. Daw lobbies mainly for three things: we should close all prisons but for a few inmates; legalise drugs (under government control); and put a stop to children being tried in the adult system.

Headline-grabbing, that’s for sure, and an ideology the far-right would have a field day opposing. But make no mistake: Daw is no apologist for violence and antisocial behaviour. His views do not arise from some ‘soft’ liberal perspective. He is only interested in hard facts and what works to reduce crime and prevent recidivism. Daw’s ideas are simple; they are steeped in history and intertwined with anecdotes and lived experience from his many cases and travels.

25 years in the justice system and I can tell you that it's broken.

I can also tell you how to fix it…

…but you might not like my suggestions.

Available now https://t.co/K3CN5ASpyW pic.twitter.com/EBwzzeZbjW

— Chris Daw QC (@crimlawuk) July 28, 2020

All in all, Daw presents a compelling case for reform. His ‘blueprint’ for society will make readers question the dogma they’ve been fed for years. Prison is the “default soundbite” of politicians standing for election, for example, while the ‘War on Drugs’ in modern times is, simply put, political point-scoring. It’s no wonder why then that the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Justice Secretary top the list of people he’d most like to read his book.

Does he think his ideas will ever become reality? The answer is, sadly (or whichever way you view it), no. He doesn’t see there being motivation beyond the mainstream “lock ‘em up” mentality nor for radical drug reform. But he has faith it will succeed in parts. We’re likely to see the scaling back of drug classification to some extent, he predicts, and maybe even change in our approach to incarceration, particularly among young offenders.

Before he carved out a career in serious crime work, Daw studied and completed pupillage in Manchester. He started “at the bottom of the criminal bar”, accepting instruction on matters ranging from shoplifting to sex work. He soon progressed over a 20-year period to take on serious and organised crime cases, including murder, and numerous forms of financial crime. It wasn’t until he took silk in 2013 that his practice diversified and he began to accept instruction on “an eclectic mix” of ‘general crime’ — cases ranging from robbery to rape.

Daw has represented notorious drug barons through to premier league footballers. He takes on fewer cases now, about four to six each year, in contrast to the 20 or so he’d have on the go as a junior, but they’re far more complex and tend to last much longer. He tells me it took him just over a year to take Justice on Trial from initial concept to print; all while continuing to accept instruction and shoot a BBC documentary.

Though he has spent the years since he took silk doing private work, I was curious to ask whether he would begin his career in criminal law now, as the system is today, public sector cuts and all? The Bar Council, for example, found recently that almost four in ten criminal barristers are unsure if they will still be practising law by the end of next year. “I still would,” he responds resolutely, adding: “Being a criminal lawyer — it’s one of those things that’s either in your blood or not.”

Daw became “hooked” on the criminal law career path as a teen sitting in on crown court cases in the public gallery. “I became addicted to the whole process,” he reflects. It was never about the money, or lack thereof: 20-year-old Daw made just £9,000 in his first year of practice. “Anyone deciding on a career in criminal practice because they’ll make money from it is looking at the wrong job — there’s never been a guarantee of making money at the bar,” he says. What will get students far in this line of work is, ultimately, passion. That alone is what got Daw through what could sometimes stretch to 70 hours a week of work as a junior barrister.

He expresses sadness at the thought that youngsters could be put off a career in criminal law. “We need bright new blood in criminal law from diverse backgrounds,” he says. “I think it’s a real shame people are put off — they should go for it and that’s really important.”

To help them on their way, Daw has, again, alongside his other pursuits, entered the world of ‘vlawging’. Some of the content on his YouTube channel, which has amassed over 12,000 views, by the way, focuses on current affairs (there are snippets of some of the television interviews he has given) but the rest is chock-full with application tips on how to secure pupillage. Daw tells me he even takes video requests and follows these up if he receives enough interest.

So what’s next for Britain’s top criminal barrister? The epilogue to Justice on Trial touches on the dark web and internet of crime, something that Daw says he is fascinated to see play out in the years ahead and how law enforcement adapts to this new underworld of criminal activity. It could be the focus of a sequel, he teases, adding that he does not intend for this to be his last foray in the world of writing. He concludes:

“I enjoyed the process; and it has been rewarding to see the impact the book has had on debate. If I can contribute to just getting people talking about criminal justice and potential reform in a serious way then I consider that to be worthwhile.”

Chris Daw QC is a serious crime silk at Millennium Chambers. His new book, Justice on Trial, is out now.

The post A life of crime appeared first on Legal Cheek.

The man who brought a private prosecution against prime minister hopeful Boris Johnson has told Legal Cheek he faces an uncertain financial future after racking up debts of around £200,000.

Despite crowdfunding over £500,000 over three years to bring the case, Marcus Ball has told this website in an exclusive interview that “in terms of the overall balance sheet, money owed and money left, we’re in the negatives.” When asked if he’s in debt, the director of Brexit Justice Limited responded: “Oh, massive debt, of approximately about £200,000, roundabout.”

Ball’s candid comments come after he attempted to prosecute Johnson for alleged misconduct in public office, specifically his claim that the NHS could receive £350 million extra a week following Brexit. The High Court reversed a decision to issue a summons against the prominent Brexiteer last month.

Sipping a glass of apple juice in a café in London’s trendy Shoreditch, Ball spoke openly about his cashflow situation. His openness was to be expected. After all, he maintains that “if you’re prosecuting someone for [allegedly] lying about money, you cannot be in a position where you’re seen to be lying about money”.

Despite facing a potential hefty costs order, Ball believed that, going forward, he can crowdfund more cash. “If I did not believe in this case and the evidence we’ve got, I would be terrified. I would be fucking panicking,’ he explained. Asked if he intends to take proceedings against Johnson further, Ball told us:

“It is highly likely we will appeal. However, the legal team and I have to define exactly what the appeal is going to be before I confidently announce it. Because I don’t want to be in a position where I’m saying, ‘Oh, I’m definitely appealing, I’m definitely appealing’, and then in two weeks my legal team, finding something, are saying, ‘Marcus we can’t appeal because of this’. I have to be 100% sure otherwise it’s not responsible to say it.”

And yet, Ball admits he’s “totally fucked” if his campaign against Johnson is unsuccessful. “Financially, I’m ruined if this doesn’t happen”, he said. As if to prove his entrepreneurial mentality, he stressed his willingness to bear this costly burden to achieve his ulterior aim: eradicating dishonesty from politics which, he believes, kills democracy. Ball continued:

“I understood this from the beginning, you have to be willing to take that and absorb that risk otherwise nobody else will. This is the advantage I’m in: I’m young, I don’t have a wife or kids to be responsible for, or a mortgage or a car. I don’t have things that rely upon me.”

Such self-sacrifice fits well with his campaign’s narrative, which relies on familiar imagery of an outsider fighting against the establishment, as illustrated by Ball’s widely used hashtag, #BallVJohnson. Indeed, as he was told early on into his campaign, people (and, more importantly, financial backers) respond better to a story if there’s a clear protagonist and an antagonist. Ball didn’t say which one he was in this scenario.

Despite his new-found public platform, the Canterbury Christ Church University history grad expressed no interest in pursuing politics, nor legal practice. Rather, providing he can successfully prosecute Johnson, Ball revealed plans to take other politicians to task over their misconduct in public office. Without naming names, Ball cites “obvious cases” including the US elections, MEP expenses scandals and the Iraq War.

Predicting he would crowdfund these endeavours too, Ball appeared inspired by the ‘move fast and break things’ mantra previously popular among the tech start-up community. “Why don’t we use that same way of thinking when it comes to older systems? Why don’t we reform the law and the way democracy works with small, fast-moving teams that are funded in unusual ways?” he questioned.

That said, the sustainability of this crowdfunding model is unclear and depends on first building a track record of success, starting with Johnson. “If I get to the point where I feel that absolutely nothing can be achieved, I cannot justify raising more money from people.”

The post Exclusive interview: Man who brought private prosecution against Boris Johnson faces ‘financial ruin’ over £200,000 debt appeared first on Legal Cheek.

The 2020s will be the key years for the legal profession, according to Professor Richard Susskind, who spoke exclusively to Legal Cheek ahead of his keynote speech at yesterday’s Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019.

“It’s [2020s] the decade when many of the radical tech-led programmes being designed now will really come to life: namely artificial intelligence and online courts. These will replace our old ways of working,” Susskind said.

The top futurologist, who is currently advising the Lord Chief Justice on the UK’s online court-future, argues that there is a choice for lawyers now. He told us:

“If you are a young lawyer or you are running a law firm, you should ask yourself, should I compete with these AI/online systems or should I be one of those who is building these systems? Which will you do?”

Susskind is convincing in his belief that the next generation of lawyers will have a different job to do: “Lawyers will less and less simply advise clients, they will build systems that will, in turn, advise clients.”

If this is the future, then this impacts on what legal education and training will look like, according to Susskind:

“If you are going to simply compete with AI, then you may feel that the current system of training is fit for purpose. But if you want to be involved in that latter project I outlined, in building and design, then may be you would argue that your training needs have changed, that legal education needs to adapt to be fit for future purposes.”

There is a concern, however, that many young lawyers do not have proper insight into this: “I don’t think they really appreciate how significant a shift there will be.”

. @richardsusskind doing a quick interview with @pollybots in the green room ahead of his keynote speech at the #legalcheek Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019 pic.twitter.com/O4kJcU4TNg

— Legal Cheek (@legalcheek) May 22, 2019

Susskind does agree that there has been a “far wider acceptance of change within the profession” since he has been working in this area, and that we have got to a stage where the conversation is not about “if” but about “when”. But there are still issues which lawyers struggle to overcome. He continued:

“Lawyers worry about AI because they think that the machine will simply replace him or her: that if someone were to break the job down into specific tasks, they’ll believe that the machine will ‘take’ a percentage of that. We call this the ‘AI fallacy’. It is not either as straightforward or as bleak as that: AI does not replicate what a lawyer does, it has a problem that needs solving and finds a machine-like way to solve it.”

View this post on Instagram

Closing this year's Conference is our keynote speaker, Richard Susskind, the preeminent voice on lawtech, who questions whether we're adequately preparing trainees for the upcoming "decade of transformation" ?

A post shared by Legal Cheek (@legalcheek) on May 22, 2019 at 8:57am PDT

In researching for his next book, Online Courts and the Future of Justice, being published in November, Susskind explained how he has been looking at the challenge of law and tech in global terms: he said there are great things happening in many countries such as Canada, China and Singapore. Luckily for the UK, it appears, there is also “good work” being done here, for instance, with the judiciary taking a lead on online courts.

The post 2020s is the decade of legal change, says Richard Susskind appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Change is coming. From September 2021, the new solicitor super-exam will replace the Legal Practice Course (LPC) and the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) — sounding the death knell for the existing route to qualification as a solicitor.

But not all universities will be embracing the overhaul. According to Ken Oliphant, head of the University of Bristol Law School, the main reservation lies in the exam’s content. SQE1 will cover key black letter law, including civil and criminal procedure, areas not usually explored on the ‘traditional’ undergraduate law degree. Similarly, SQE2 will test future lawyers’ practical skills such as advocacy and client interviewing, which are currently assessed on the LPC.

For some universities, the SQE’s practical outlook works to their advantage. “Those universities with a greater vocational focus that offer students a skills-focused path will likely see the SQE as an opportunity to provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ that gives undergraduates a law degree and preparation for the SQE,” Oliphant says.

Indeed, several universities have already come forward with plans to provide combined LLB-SQE courses, ensuring students will be ready to take SQE1 upon graduation. The ‘one-stop-shop’ will also allow aspiring lawyers to save money, too: rather than fork out extra cash on a SQE prep course, costs will be included in their undergrad fees, which can be covered by government student loans.

However, the same cannot be said for traditional Russell Group universities, including Bristol, which are more “conservative” in how they teach law, Oliphant explains. Their main concern being that the SQE’s practical focus extends beyond the remit of their existing law degrees rooted in academic research-led teaching. He tells us:

“For the University of Bristol, the SQE presents too much of a disruption for our teaching model. It would require us to hire new staff with a new skill set, which would be detrimental to the research focused and research-intensive educational programmes that we provide — and this is the same for more research-driven Russell Group universities.”

It’s for this reason that Oliphant does not foresee Bristol offering an SQE-facing law degree anytime soon. “We’ll continue to provide foundational knowledge in those areas, but Bristol, like other universities, is not going to offer any labelled SQE preparation units,” he explains.

That’s not to say that the super-exam will simply pass Bristol by. “It’s given us a bit of a nudge in re-thinking the skills graduates need for their legal career — beyond the traditional emphasis on reading, writing essays and prepping for exams,” says Oliphant, who will speaking at Legal Cheek’s Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019 on Wednesday. This fresh approach includes the law school’s plan to embed extra-curricular activities such as mooting and client interviewing into the assessed core curriculum of its LLB. Doing so, Oliphant believes, will take the pressure off law students who, despite facing huge academic workloads, “feel obliged to complete co-curricular activities in order to complete their CV”. Although Bristol does not aim to produce SQE1-ready students upon graduation, Oliphant believes it will put students in good stead to take the exam following a short SQE prep-course.

When applying for training contracts, Oliphant is confident that it will be a candidate’s undergrad law degree rather than their SQE score that will help them stand out: “Russell Group universities carry a quality mark for the reputation of their law schools within the legal sector, which will help students transition into legal practice,” he says.

In contrast, Oliphant questions whether law firms will rely on the SQE as a good indicator of candidate quality. He points to the super-exam’s heavy use of computer-based multiple-choice questions (MCQ) as an example. While the assessment has yet to be finalised by Kaplan, the education giant tasked with developing and delivering the SQE, universities and law firms alike have expressed concerns that the MCQ format will end up testing memory rather than legal knowledge. Oliphant explains:

“It’s regarded as a retroactive step in terms of legal education for future generations because instead of expanding the range of assessment measures, the SQE1 narrows it to a set of multiple-choice questions. If you narrow the assessment methods, you narrow the skills you’re testing.”

Professor Ken Oliphant will be speaking during the headline afternoon session, ‘The SQE: Next Steps’, at the Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019 on Wednesday 22 May at Kings Place London. Final release tickets are available to purchase.

Follow @KenOliphant

The post Why the SQE won’t change Russell Group law degrees appeared first on Legal Cheek.

The gig economy is forcing industries to rethink how they deliver its services — and the legal profession is no exception. Leading such change is F-LEX, an online platform connecting law students with law firms and in-house teams for short-term paralegal placements.

How does it work? All a firm needs to do is list their requirements (such as location, availability or additional skills, including languages) and F-LEX then use software to quickly find and match paralegals meeting these criteria. Once booked, paralegals are sent to work, where tasks can range from basic contract review to preparing bundles and attending court.

The idea first came to Mary Bonsor, the co-founder and CEO of F-LEX, while she was practising as a property litigator at Winckworth Sherwood, whose London office happens to look out onto a law school. During the peaks of her workload, Bonsor recalls seeing law students pass her window and thinking: why couldn’t she seek help from these aspiring lawyers who, although eager to hit the ground running, often struggle to find paid legal work experience to fit around their studies? “The core idea was to use tech to make it super-efficient for firms to get in contact with good law students — and vice versa,” explains Bonsor.

At first, this tech was simply Google Sheets, a free online spreadsheet programme. “I put together a spreadsheet of law students and approached a law firm, asking them to let me know if they needed any paralegals. I managed to place five people in that firm for two weeks,” says Bonsor.

With the help of co-founders Jimmy Vestbirk, founder of Legal Geek, and software entrepreneur, James Moore, Bonsor secured funding through angel investor and ex-managing partner of Clifford Chance, Tony Williams. It was at this point Bonsor left legal practice to become a full-time entrepreneur. On making the switch, Bonsor says:

“I absolutely loved being a lawyer and really enjoyed the area in which I practised, but I wouldn’t look back. Setting up your own business is a complete rollercoaster. You really feel the highs when it’s your own thing — and you really feel the lows a lot more too.”

Almost three years on, F-LEX has recruited over 2,500 on-demand paralegals and, after their latest round of fundraising, is set to expand across the UK — adding the South West and Scotland to its list of existing hubs in London, Manchester, Cambridge and Birmingham.

Key to F-LEX’s growth has been maintaining a reputation for trustworthy service, which largely depends on the calibre of paralegals on offer. “The quality of our paralegals is paramount, because if they’re unreliable, no one would use us again,” stresses Bonsor. Before they become paralegals, all law students and graduates are assessed on their academic achievements, relevant experience, preference of practice area and level of skill. Bonsor continues:

“F-LEX is run by experienced lawyers so we understand the level of difficulty of potential work that needs to be done. Drafting up a shareholder agreement may be too hard for some paralegals, but not for others, so it is all about understanding what our candidates feel comfortable doing.”

Having this expertise on hand, the ability to understand the standards law firms and in-house lawyers require, enables pre-vetted paralegals to be matched with clients quickly and easily — something which traditional placement agencies often struggle with.

The desire for greater flexibility in the legal profession is not just limited to paralegals — it can also be seen in changes to how lawyers are trained, Bonsor argues. She points to the Solicitors’ Qualifying Examination (SQE), which is set to replace the Legal Practice Course (LPC) and the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) when it comes into force in September 2021 — something which Bonsor will discuss during the Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019 on 22 May. Under the new guidelines, students can complete the two years qualifying work experience with up to four different legal employers; offering greater freedom when choosing the areas they specialise in. Work completed as F-LEX, for example, will count towards their SQE qualification. “It puts the power to law students to build their own training contract,” says Bonsor.

Greater demand for flexibility can also be seen in the mounting support for the gig economy among lawyers. F-LEX, for example, has recently expanded its services to include on-demand junior lawyers. In light of the recent findings by the Junior Lawyers Division, which found that 94% of survey respondents reported feeling stressed in their role and with almost a quarter of those individuals being severely to extremely stressed, the gig economy offers a viable solution. For example, self-employed lawyers can have greater control over the way they work — which may allow for a healthier work/life balance. “Some lawyers may not want to move around and prefer to stay and train in one firm, but a large proportion of lawyers have chosen to stay put when they potentially don’t want to,” she adds.

One factor which may go some way in explaining why lawyers are hesitant to switch to flexible working is the uncertainty around leaving the traditional law firm set-up. This cautious mentality, typical of the legal profession, is something that Bonsor soon unlearned as she settled into her new role as a legal entrepreneur. She explains:

“As a lawyer, you have to be very risk averse and so you end up fearing failure. But in a start-up, failing is something you become used to. As a technologist, you build something and if it doesn’t work then you move onto the next thing.”

For example, F-LEX was initially designed with the independent contractor model in mind, which would see paralegals classed as being self-employed. But the business quickly steered away from this model as law firms wanted to avoid any employment risk. F-LEX paralegals are now classed as employed workers, meaning they are paid a competitive hourly rate (above the living wage), that goes up when working past 6:30pm, and are also entitled to basic employment rights — including retention, holiday and sick pay. Having such precautions in place is vital to prevent exploitation in the gig economy. On this Bonsor explains: “ It is so competitive for law students at the early stages of their career, so it’s important that as employers we take responsibility as much as we can.”

Mary Bonsor will be speaking during the morning session, ‘Embedding entrepreneurship into legal education and training’, at the Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019 on Wednesday 22 May at Kings Place London. General release tickets are available to purchase.

The post From lawyer to legal entrepreneur: You’re programmed to be risk averse — but you can’t fear failure appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Within the first month of studying law and French at the University of Nottingham, Femi Oluwole realised that he couldn’t see a future in legal practice. Speaking to Legal Cheek in an exclusive interview, Oluwole attributes this to the UK’s common law legal system, which places a heavy emphasis on legal precedent. “You can’t argue, ‘judge do this because it’s morally right’, you have to argue, ‘judge do this because a judge 100 years ago chose the same thing’,” he explains.

Although advocacy appealed to Oluwole, a self-confessed natural arguer, he reveals he couldn’t face arguing from a set of laws that he didn’t fully believe in. “I wouldn’t know for sure that I was always going to be arguing on the right side, whereas in politics I can choose which side I’m going to be on,” he says.

Oluwole graduated in 2013, initially with a 2:2 but left with a 2:1 after a successful academic appeal. From there he eventually found work in Brussels, and later in Vienna, for a non-profit organisation (NGO) and various human rights agencies, where his bilingual French skills came into play. But, following the 2016 referendum result, which saw the UK vote to leave the European Union (EU), Oluwole found his priorities shift.

He tells us:

“I was working at the EU level on human rights because I felt that I was helping protect the human rights of the whole of Europe, and as a Brit, I was protecting the human rights of my own country. If the UK is no longer in the EU, then I would be working for the human rights of every country but my own — and so, for me, Brexit came the priority.”

In 2017 Oluwole quit his internship at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and returned to the UK to begin a one-man Twitter campaign against Brexit. His goal was to fill the vacuum of accurate information around the inner workings of the EU that often led to a misinformed Brexit debate. Having studied EU law during his undergrad, Oluwole took it upon himself to explain jargon-heavy legal concepts, like the single market, and making it as easy as possible to understand.

Oluwole, 29, now has over 150,000 Twitter followers, and his YouTube channel, where he posts explanatory videos on the EU, boasts a total of nearly 100,000 views. Beyond social media, Oluwole tours the country as chief spokesperson and co-founder of pro-EU pressure group, Our Future Our Choice. Whether he’s engaging to voters directly, appearing on the BBC and Sky News, or speaking to LBC, Oluwole’s message is clear: young people voted heavily against Brexit but will end up being stuck with any long-term negative consequences.

As he reflects on his own journey from law student to political activist, Oluwole is almost in disbelief. “There’s no reason that some random guy born in Darlington, growing up in the West Midlands, should make it onto national television at a time where everybody is clamouring to be heard, and somehow I managed to cut through,” he says. Having a law degree, Oluwole believes, grants him a competitive edge. “It’s because I studied law specifically that I’m different to all these politicians who studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford,” he adds.

Regardless of how Brexit pans out, Oluwole anticipates having little choice but to remain politically active — whether it be to stop the UK swinging too much towards the political right or to address growing disillusionment among the electorate. While not opposed to eventually running for parliament, Oluwole stresses that it would unlikely be with an established party due to, what he believes to be, public mistrust in mainstream politicians.

For now, the EU’s recent decision to push back Brexit to October 31 has bought the Remain campaign some extra time. But for Oluwole, the victory is bittersweet. Although relieved by the extension, he reveals to have “mentally budgeted” for Brexit to have finished by May. He explains:

“I have not been taking care of myself at all. I eat, sleep, drink and breathe Brexit, and so the idea of doing this for another six months is tiring, but it’s necessary… the stakes are simply too high not to finish this.”

To find out more about the legally-minded political activist, watch the video embedded above.

The post Exclusive interview: We met the Nottingham Uni law grad trying to stop Brexit appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Wheelchair-user Yasmin Sheikh is asked the same questions five to six times a day: ‘Are you okay? Are you on your own? Do you need help?’ For Sheikh, these questions, however innocuous they may seem, exemplify subtle microaggressions that disabled people face on a daily basis. “They’re a way of reminding me of how different I am, but this is my new normal,” Sheikh tells me when we met in a Central London café ahead of her appearance at Legal Cheek’s Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019. Underlying these comments is a “soft bigotry of lower expectations”, degrading wheelchair-users into objects of charity and pity. The former City lawyer continues:

“Let that person get on with it. They’re just living their normal lives. If they need assistance, they will ask for it. For example, sometimes I need help reaching something off the top shelf — but that’s me asserting my own independence on my own terms. When you lose the use of your legs, you fight for what you can do yourself.”

Such microaggressions have been commonplace in the 11 years since Sheikh, who at the age of 29, sustained a rare spinal stroke injury that suddenly led to her losing the use of both legs. When, after a year in rehabilitation, she returned to work as a personal injury lawyer, Sheikh recalls being confronted with attitudinal barriers.

“I found that after the injury, people had lower expectations of those with visible disabilities. People went from asking, ‘What do you do?’ to ‘Do you work?’… I found people were almost surprised that I went back to work in the first place,” she explains.

Sheikh reveals how blatant prejudicial incidents, known as macroaggressions, slowly chipped away at her confidence. For example, she recalls her then boss telling her: “If I employed everyone in the office with your disability, the business would collapse. I’ve got the same problem with part-time women workers.”

These attitudes can, in part, be attributed to how disability is viewed in a mainly ableist society. “I realised when people are talking about diversity and inclusion, they aren’t talking about disability,” says Sheikh. She found this revelation surprising considering that disabled people compose the largest minority group in the world. Driven to put disability onto the mainstream diversity agenda, Sheikh left legal practice to pursue this new sense of purpose. “This massive life event forced me to ask difficult questions about what I wanted. In many ways, this is the worst thing yet best thing to happen to me,” she reflects.

In 2015, Sheikh founded Diverse Matters, a training consultancy firm that uses workshops, tailored seminars and interactive events to give confidence to those with disabilities and support organisations striving to be more inclusive. The business, which Sheikh hopes to eventually take global, partners with a number of City law firms.

Sheikh explains that in order to build an inclusive culture, law firms must master the four B’s: business, bias, behaviour and belonging. The first element involves stressing the business incentive for putting diversity on the agenda. Barriers preventing access for disabled people means there’s an underutilised pool of talent, which if tapped into, could yield greater profits for the firm, according to Sheikh. Law firms must also eradicate institutionalised unconscious biases, she explains, such as those found in recruitment practices that indirectly discriminate against people with disabilities during the application process. As a result, Sheikh has found applicants with non-visible disabilities, such as dyslexia, are nervous about disclosing their health condition to potential employers. To eradicate bias, firms must first change their behaviour, especially those associated with micro and macro aggressions, with the aim of creating a safe space that is inclusive to all. Doing so will then achieve a sense of belonging, encouraging disabled people to bring their authentic selves to work, rather than spend valuable time and energy compartmentalising their lives. “Fitting in is a hollow substitute for belonging,” Sheikh stresses.

The real challenge to achieving industry-wide change is to convert those who are unmindful of the workplace barriers facing those with disabilities. Indeed, Sheikh admits to not fully understanding this bias and discrimination before her injury: “I was the first disabled person I’d ever met”. One way that Diverse Matters strives to overcome this is through the Wheelchair Challenge — an eye-opening initiative that involves senior leaders in organisations spending all day in a wheelchair. “These are people used to being noticed for the right reasons and not necessarily needing help, so there’s a feeling of vulnerability that they’re probably uncomfortable with,” Sheikh explains. The exercise is designed to give visibility to disability — raising awareness of the fact that every eight hours someone in the UK is paralysed by a spinal cord injury.

But how does being an entrepreneur compare to life as a lawyer? “I miss aspects of legal practice, but I will always be a lawyer — no one can take that away from me,” Sheikh says. If anything, having spent 12 years delivering legal services to clients has offered useful transferrable skills. After all, being an entrepreneur is about seeing a gap and providing a service to fill that gap. Lawyers must be able to negotiate and argue on behalf of their clients — presenting a convincing case for disability and inclusion is no different, she adds.

Also impacting Sheikh’s entrepreneurial outlook is her disability. Having to overcome complex challenges requires thinking outside the box — a skill which she applies when problem solving for her clients. Additionally, like many people living with disabilities, the greater threat of facing secondary health problems down the line puts into perspective what can be done now. She says:

“It forces you to think about your future more deeply because things can change very quickly. This happened to me overnight. As a result, there’s no time to waste. Now, I’m one of those people very impatient for things to change. You have to really get out there and hone that message to include disability on the diversity agenda.”

Yasmin Sheikh will be speaking during the morning session, ‘Embedding entrepreneurship into legal education and training’, at The Future of Legal Education and Training Conference 2019. First release tickets are available to purchase until midnight on Wednesday 17 April. General release tickets at full price will be available from 18 April.

The post How my disability sparked my entrepreneurial spirit appeared first on Legal Cheek.

High street solicitor Sarah Ann Magson has revealed she has no plans to quit law following her time on The Apprentice.

Speaking in an interview with Legal Cheek, the 37-year-old civil law specialist, who was fired from the show last week following a chaotic Christmas chocolate task, revealed she’d already returned to her day job at Watson Woodhouse Solicitors in Middlesbrough.

It’s in her spare time that Magson runs her online business, Little Arrivals, which manufactures nursery furniture. Had Lord Sugar chosen Magson to be his next protégé, she would have used the £250,000 investment to build a complimentary business selling soft textiles.

However, being fired hasn’t put a stop to the solicitor’s business ambitions. Magson tells us:

“I do want to be my own girl boss so I’m going to continue pushing my own online business — and why not? I can multi-task!”

As Legal Cheek readers will know, Magson wasn’t the only legally minded contestant in the competition this year. Joining her was aspiring actor Kurran Pooni, a University of Law grad. When asked if she ever talked shop with Pooni, Magson responded: “We tried to steer away from legal questions — I didn’t want to embarrass him”.

To find out more about the solicitor’s life inside and outside The Apprentice, watch the video embedded top.

View this post on Instagram

Just chatted with @apprenticeuk contestant and solicitor @sarahannmagson following her departure from the show last night! *spoiler* ? Article coming soon on Legal Cheek — stay tuned! ??

A post shared by Legal Cheek (@legalcheek) on Dec 6, 2018 at 5:07am PST

The post The Apprentice exclusive: Solicitor Sarah Ann Magson reveals she won’t be quitting law anytime soon appeared first on Legal Cheek.

For the latest instalment of the Legal Entrepreneurs series I caught up with the founder of one of the first legal tech companies of the post-2008 wave of start-ups. Dana Denis-Smith launched Obelisk in 2010. It now has a host of awards under its belt and more than 1,500 freelance lawyers. From a laptop with £500 from her bank account to a multi-million pound company in less than a decade.

It’s an impressive feat. So how did the idea for Obelisk come about?

“I was in India,” says Denis-Smith, who worked with Linklaters for two years after a first career in journalism as a reporter for Reuters. “Maybe it’s the heat, I don’t know. But I was in the Himalayas when I had my first idea for a business beyond the law, and then again when I thought of Obelisk.”

Denis-Smith’s first business venture was in 2007 when she set up Marker Global, a research agency specialising in strategic investment advice and emerging market political risk analysis. She knew on her first day at Linklaters that the law wasn’t for her on a long term basis:

“On the first day, the minute I swiped in through the barrier, I just felt trapped – trapped from my sense of freedom to be creative and be invited to contribute,” she recalls.

Marker Global was an award-winning success but Denis-Smith had a yen to achieve, as she puts it, “something bigger than myself”. It was then, on a second trip to India, that the idea for Obelisk came to her. “I needed a sense of purpose, and a sense that I was making tangible, important changes,” she says.

Being pregnant at the time undoubtedly added to the rationale for Obelisk. Denis-Smith looked at the legal industry and saw too many women lawyers who wanted to continue to work but were denied opportunities because of prevailing societal norms.

Her sense of injustice was piqued. “I could see this vast untapped resource of excellent women lawyers who only needed to be able to structure their work around their family commitments. That’s what Obelisk set out to remedy. It was created to harness the talent of ex-City lawyers and provide quality, affordable legal support for law firms and businesses.”

And some. Obelisk has been a whirr of activity and progress since its inception — but what was it like in the early days? Surely, Denis-Smith was nervous about whether her idea could be turned into a viable business?

“To be a successful entrepreneur, you have got to give it all up and be willing to start with nothing. Risk and uncertainty go with the territory; you have to embrace them. I’d learnt this from setting up Marker Global. With Obelisk, I concentrated on the basics — trademarking the logo and creating a website, and then spreading the word. The business was small but ambitious back then, but it’s important to have all your ducks in a row. You can’t make mistakes. Even typos can detract from your brand, so you need to be excellent as a rule, and appreciate that excellence has to have a foundation.”

Obelisk has grown to include FTSE100 clients of the calibre of Vodafone, BT, Siemens, ING and Barclays. Alongside its rise, Denis-Smith, who concentrates on her role as CEO, has somehow found time to establish the First 100 Years Project, a digital library charting the history of women in law. This has included the commissioning of 100 original films that will all be freely available online. And, as befits her company, her family life is relatively unaffected by her business and professional commitments:

“I rise early and often feel as if I’ve done a full day’s work by 11am, but always make time to take my daughter to school each morning. I try to limit the number of events I attend, and am quite strict about my time generally. I want to see plenty of my daughter and husband, and don’t let work jeopardise this.”

Does Denis-Smith think that lawyers make good entrepreneurs? She has some doubts, mainly because of the risk-adverse emphasis that goes with the territory in the law and too many lawyers’ ingrained fear of failure: “Often you speak to people in the law and realise that they’ve never failed. They’ve worked hard, they got their grades, they achieved, whether it was going to Oxford or Cambridge or bagging a magic circle job,” she says. “Along the way, they never experienced any push back. But to make a success of your own business, you have to be comfortable with the falls. Unfortunately, lawyers seem to be trained to believe that there is no such thing as failure — which is not a good way to be trained.”

But equally, she says that legal skills can be a great asset for a budding entrepreneur — and that being a lawyer itself is far from a bad thing. “The law is a great profession and no one says you’ve got to be an entrepreneur. If you stay in the law, enjoy it and take pride in it. Don’t regret things and daydream about another life. But if the daydreams nag away too persistently, do something about them. Don’t be afraid. Expect the unknown, embrace its surprises, the highs and the lows. And remember: there is no such thing as perfect timing. Timing is right when you feel you just have to do it and give it your best shot.”

Dana Denis-Smith will be speaking at Legal Cheek’s Future of Legal Education and Training Conference on Wednesday 22 May 2019. Super Early Bird ticket sales close at midnight tonight.

The post Lawyers who ‘daydream about another life’ are in the wrong job appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Not many junior lawyers manage to combine the demands of early-phase legal practice with writing a book, but this is exactly what Littleton Chambers barrister Jamie Susskind has managed to do.

‘Future Politics’ is Susskind’s analysis of how society must adapt to the rapid developments in digital technology that he believes are only just beginning.

Having got the top first in his year at Oxford University, where he studied history and politics, Susskind converted to law and completed his pupillage at Littleton Chambers in 2015. During a year as a research fellow at Harvard’s Kerman Klein Center for Internet and Society, he bashed out the majority of his debut book, which is a must-read for any law student interested in technology.

I caught up with Susskind over a bottle of wine on Friday evening. Watch our chat below.

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech, by Jamie Susskind, is available on Amazon.

You can also listen to the interview on SoundCloud and on iTunes.

The post A conversation with barrister Jamie Susskind about his new book Future Politics appeared first on Legal Cheek.

I’m in the offices of Brandsmiths in Whitechapel. Think neon lights and exposed brickwork for this firm, established just a few years ago by former Mishcon de Reya partner Adam Morallee.

Morallee greets me. Since he set up the firm in 2014, Brandsmiths has carved out a reputation as a boutique litigation firm to watch.

Clients include celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, former world champion boxer David Haye, Microsoft, The LadBible Group, Wiggle, Pure Gym, FeelUnique and Queens Park Rangers football club, as well as car manufacturers such as Rolls Royce, Mini and BMW. In just a few short years Morallee’s firm has grown from its founder, a newly qualified solicitor and a paralegal to comprise 16-17 full-time lawyers and seven consultants, with an office in Manchester as well its London hub.

I’m keen to find out how Morallee has done it.

“I was on holiday in 2014, thinking about things and how my career at Mischons had gone,” he tells me. “I’d spent a decade at the firm, including five years as a partner, and it’s one of the best in the country. I’d really enjoyed my time there, and I realised that whatever issues I might have about life at Mischons would only repeat themselves if I joined another firm. Issues like how you deal with other partners who aren’t contributing as much but still want to be remunerated, or how you deal with the fact that all your colleagues have all been trained in a certain way and all have a specific mindset. And suddenly it struck me: what if you had a firm that was a true meritocracy?”

Morallee warms to his theme, and explains:

“If a firm was a true meritocracy, wouldn’t the politics be left out of it? Politics are part and parcel of being in a law firm, or any big organisation, but it seemed to me that politics can stop a firm being a meritocracy. I found myself thinking about setting up my own practice as a place where people could get on with their work — where they could enjoy their jobs, without having to look over their shoulders and worry about climbing up a greasy pole.”

The die was cast. Sitting by a pool on holiday, Morallee’s vision of a firm free of politics crystallised. He found himself in a fortunate position. “As an internal promotion to partner at Mishcons, I didn’t have any restrictive covenants. Everything moved really fast when I handed in my notice, and I was able to bring two big clients with me — Microsoft and BMW. Before I knew it, I’d moved into serviced offices in Southampton buildings. I had to lug the photocopier up the stairs.”

Working with one lawyer and a paralegal, Morallee soon learnt an important lesson about running your own business. “There are all kinds of overheads that you don’t appreciate, beyond staff wages, from VAT bills to the cost of PI insurance and counsel’s fees. When I started off my running costs were £10,000 a month. Now they’re more like £150,000 a month. At the beginning it was all too easy to worry about the work drying up. You might be really busy, with a couple of big cases, and you might work out all your finances and think that everything is ticking along fine, but then you’d be hit by fear. What if the work dries up? But the truth is that you can’t let yourself think like that. You have to keep going, and keep believing in growing the business.”

Morallee, a graduate of Liverpool University, also experienced another challenge that will be familiar to entrepreneurs from all walks of life: how to demonstrate credibility, but at the same time not alienate smaller would-be clients? Or, as he puts it: “People come to us with very, very serious problems — civil disputes with lots of money on the line. They don’t want a bunch of kids doing it, so projecting experience and ability is important. But it’s also vital not to deter SMEs who might think ‘this is going to cost me a fortune’.”

That Morallee figured out how to walk this tightrope is clear from the success of Brandsmiths, which opened a Manchester office in 2016. He says:

“I was recruiting and met a lawyer who basically told me he’d love to join the firm but wanted to work in Manchester. I could see the potential, so took the plunge. Our Manchester office is probably the fastest-growing area of the business now. Seven people work there, it’s a terrific place handling lots and lots of IP work in a really interesting, entrepreneurial market.”

A large dose of entrepreneurial spirit underpins not just with the Manchester venture but Brandsmiths’ entire ethos, as Morallee confirms. “Building up your business is pure sales,” he says. “It’s about going out there, backing yourself, using the brand of the firm, using the platform of the firm to convince people that you should be trusted to handle their legal work. I love this side of the business.”

Does he think lawyers can be entrepreneurs?

“Yes,” is Morallee’s unequivocal answer. “If you’re a fee earner in a law firm, you’re probably very intelligent and very good at achieving things. Anyone working in the law thinking of pursuing their own idea shouldn’t underestimate the innate aspects of what it takes to be good at what they do. It may sound horribly pro-lawyer, but when I meet the chief executive of a company and find they used to be a lawyer, there’s a minimum level of competence you know they have got. Not everyone wants to be entrepreneurial, and some lawyers may enjoy the purely technical side of law. But there’s no reason why lawyers shouldn’t also be successful entrepreneurs.”

David Burgess is the founder of media law practice Reviewed & Cleared. Check our more of David’s interviews for the Legal Entrepreneurs series.

The post Why I quit Mishcon to launch my own law firm appeared first on Legal Cheek.

It’s a familiar conundrum for young lawyers. You’ve bagged a job at a big City firm. You’re well-paid and respected, and, not too far away in the future, there’s the holy grail: partnership. Trouble is, you’re not happy. You work long (very long) hours, but it’s not just that. It’s the disconnect between your hourly rate, and what seems fair for clients.

Lexoo’s founder, Daniel van Binsbergen, is a lawyer who experienced the conundrum – and solved it. “I was working for a very good firm,” he tells me, when we meet in his offices in Old Street, London, “but it was hard to balance the meaningful things in my life — like family, friends and hobbies — with my workload. And roughly 80% of my hourly rate didn’t go to me. It went to the building, the partners and overheads. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something different.”

Deadline

Van Binsbergen gave himself an ultimatum. “It was a deadline by which I’d quit the firm,” he says. “I had a few ideas and had managed to put some savings aside, and I knew that if I didn’t force the issue I’d still be doing the same thing in another few years.”

That was back in 2013. To fast forward to the present is to find Van Binsbergen working as the CEO of Lexoo, an innovative, tech-focused and fast-growing legal solutions business. “Lexoo helps businesses and in-house legal teams find the right external counsel,” explains Van Binsbergen, who is dual-qualified in Dutch and English law. “The lawyers in our network often spent years at the largest firms but for lifestyle reasons have now started their own practice or joined a smaller firm. Clients get first-class legal ability at half the usual rates.”

Remarkably, though, Lexoo was not a fully-fledged idea in Van Binsbergen’s mind when he told his then employer, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, he wanted to leave. “I had a little book of ideas that I wanted to investigate, and knew that I needed time to research what would stick,” he says. “Those ideas morphed into what Lexoo is today.”

The process of leaving De Brauw was not as daunting as Van Binsbergen feared. “I was apprehensive about handing in my notice but they were incredibly supportive. I told them I wasn’t leaving for a competitor but to set up my own business. I was very fortunate — they gave me work on a freelance basis while I looked into my ideas.”

Essential reading

After plenty of research, and one or two ideas that didn’t fly, Van Binsbergen hit upon Lexoo. He credits Eric Ries’ book The Lean Start-Up as essential reading, and says conventional legal thinking isn’t always helpful when it comes to setting up a business. “Lawyers are often naturally risk-averse,” he says. “One of my lawyer friends warned me against the risks, saying ‘You might get sued!’ Basically, that’s the lawyer brain in action. But it’s not necessarily the way you can get a business off the ground, so ultimately I read a lot of business books. The Lean Start-Up is really helpful.”

Then came investment. “I pitched to Forward Partners, one of the very few idea stage investors in London,” says Van Binsbergen. It was a serendipitous choice, in more ways than one. “Without knowing it I fitted exactly what they were looking for. But not only did funding come from them, so did my co-founder, Chris O’Sullivan. Forward Partners’ model is to provide access to developers, marketing people, designers and the like. Chris was a developer and we got on well from the start. When he mentioned that he was thinking of moving on, I said ‘Hey, why don’t you just join Lexoo and it’ll be a lot more fun that way’, and he did. That was about four years ago.”

Have tech, will succeed

O’Sullivan is Lexoo’s Chief Technology Officer — and Van Binsbergen makes no bones about how vital tech is not just to the business, but to the legal profession as a whole. “Technology is making work more flexible, and it’s making services more efficient. It’s providing more cost-effective solutions for both businesses and consumers. Why shouldn’t the legal industry benefit too?”

This is Lexoo’s USP. Set up in early 2014, it uses cutting edge tech to enable businesses to tender out legal work; Lexoo’s pre-vetted array of lawyers are then on hand to quote for it. The client receives three to four quotes from the most suitable lawyers within one or two working days. Same day quotes can be provided if needs be.

There are some 400 firms on the Lexoo platform, and the business, which in October 2018 secured a further round of $4.4m financing from venture capital investor Earlybird, as well as Forward Partners and Zoopla’s General Counsel, currently employs 14 people. Van Binsbergen was proud to see Lexoo scoop an FT Innovative Lawyers Award in 2017 — and sees nothing but growth ahead: “We’re expecting to double the team this year. In five years? I will still be here, working as the CEO, but I think we’ll be a truly global player by then — a top ten legal brand in the world, with a few hundred employees.”

The smart money says that Van Binsbergen is well on course to realise his ambitions. But if you’re reading this and wondering what it might take to follow in his footsteps — how to solve your own conundrum with the same panache — here’s Van Binsbergen’s final word:

“The law has a habit of inhibiting entrepreneurship. As lawyers we’re trained to be very careful. Our job seems to be to find holes and problems, and not to be bold. Often when we hire former lawyers they need a month or two to get used to the fact that their mindset needs to change, to realise that they need to look for opportunity and not always worry about what happens if something goes wrong. Often enough, it can be fixed anyway. What’s interesting is that two months later they will have changed, so I don’t think it’s the case of lawyers are inherently forever more burdened than that. They just need to adapt and embrace one simple fact: it’s very hard to win if you’re playing defence.”

David Burgess is the founder of media law practice Reviewed & Cleared. Check our more of David’s interviews for the Legal Entrepreneurs series.

The post Why one lawyer quit the daily grind to launch his own tech company appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Since leaving the Love Island villa, Rosie Williams has been rubbing shoulders with reality TV’s finest, making club appearances and has even done an interview with Piers Morgan. It’s a long way from her old life before she shot to stardom in the hit reality TV show.

Williams trained with Manchester law firm Just Costs Solicitors and was only three months qualified before she entered the Spanish villa in June — a decision fuelled by her search for romance.

Indeed, studying law gave her little time to find love. She didn’t have much luck either; having been dumped by the man she was seeing only a few months prior to joining the show. So when the chance to go on Love Island came about she grabbed it — strutting into the villa in the first week of the fourth series.

Growing up, law was “embedded” in Williams’ family. Both her parents studied law at university and her aunt is a barrister and uncle a solicitor-advocate. They were naturally supportive of her decision to study law and Williams went on to complete the first two years of her undergraduate degree at Swansea University and spent her final year at the University of South Wales. She then started the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) before switching to the Legal Practice Course (LPC) at The University of Law in Chester.

Having completed a training contract, why then did she decide to put her fledgling career on hold? Speaking exclusively to Legal Cheek, she explains:

“I was putting everything into my job to the point where my salary was not worth the hours I was working. My focus on cases meant that my social life dwindled and I was just not reaping the rewards. It’s a bit of a shame that what I worked towards my entire life and dreamt about didn’t match up with the reality.”

But Williams isn’t ruling out a possible return to the law. “My heart’s still in it — it was a lifelong ambition I harboured since I was 12-years-old. I’m still very much a legal eagle,” she adds. Williams is hoping to meld her legal knowledge with her newfound fame. Her appearance on Love Island might not be the last we see on our screens. The Welsh-born lawyer tells us she’s currently in talks to appear on a new legal TV show later this year. Could Rosie be the new Rinder? “I hope so. I love Rinder, I think he’s great,” says Williams, who has also been approached by a media law firm about a possible job since her departure.

When she was lounging around in her bikini soaking up sun rays in the villa, Williams says she did miss the day job and “getting dolled up” each morning to go to work — more than she thought she would. Yet she conspicuously avoided talking about her life as a lawyer — unlike the medic contestant Alex, who frequently references his work as a doctor. Why did we not hear more from ‘Rosie the lawyer’ in the villa? “I was very careful about what I discussed in the villa. Solicitors’ regulations meant that I had a code of conduct and ethics to adhere to and client confidentiality meant I couldn’t discuss my caseload,” she explains.

Viewers did, however, get to see some of Rosie’s advocacy skills when she confronted “sneaky” Adam Collard, who she was coupled up with, for flirting with fellow Islander Megan Barton-Hanson.

The fiery showdown was entirely “off-the-cuff”, contrary to members of the public thinking it was “staged” or that she had written down and rehearsed what she planned to say. “You can’t plan an argument,” says Williams, likening the experience to the courtroom where “the judge or your opponent will throw something up” and it’s down to you to bounce back.

A post shared by Rosie Anna Williams (@rosieawilliams) on Jul 27, 2017 at 3:11pm PDT

Had the offer to appear on Love Island not come through, the 26-year-old thinks she’d still be in her job. “I loved my job, but I’ve never been the girl to sit around and I’m always looking for something more,” she says. Williams has plans to complete her higher rights of audience and train as a solicitor-advocate, following in her uncle’s footsteps. She’ll also be taking on activities to maintain her practising certificate.

Since exiting the villa, Williams has managed to find the time to visit her former colleagues at Just Costs. They didn’t know that she was entering the villa, so seeing her on TV was a bit of a “shock” to them. However, they were “very supportive” when she saw them and admitted they knew “she was never made to sit behind a desk”.

Now having amassed over 650,000 followers on Instagram, Williams is hoping to use this platform to “make a difference” and already has a list of charities she wants to work with.

Her influence doesn’t stop there. Williams, who refers to herself as “Legally Brunette” in several of her Instagram posts, says she’s received messages from young women in law school seeking her advice. They’re keen to hear from someone who does not fit the average solicitor-mould.

That’s something this self-confessed party girl prides herself on. Williams counts Legally Blonde and TV series Ally McBeal as two of her favourite legal dramas. “I was drawn to the glamour. I loved their outfits,” she says. For likeminded law students Williams offers some practical advice:

“Never change yourself to fit a stereotype. We all sit the same vocational exams and it’s practically the same route for everyone looking to become a solicitor. So why should I be judged if I like to wear a pretty dress and post bikini photos on Instagram. I’ve had to work a lot harder to be taken seriously in my job but if I can make it as I am, there’s no reason why others can’t either.”

With newfound fame comes dangers. It has been widely reported that Williams received a series of threatening messages from an online troll. Never one to back down, Williams says she will be using her legal knowledge to make a stand and show this behaviour is not acceptable.

Commenting on her interview with ITV Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan where Williams was forced to justify her decision to appear on the show, she says:

“I think Piers was under the impression that the job is very well paid and glamorous across the board. He mustn’t read a lot about what’s going on and there is a lot that people outside the profession don’t see. I think his opinion was ill-informed and don’t think he can really have one unless he’s been in my shoes.”

Since then, research by a leading economics consultancy has been released that shows appearing on Love Island boosts your lifetime earnings more than an Oxbridge degree, further vindicating Williams’ decision to go on the show.

In that Piers Morgan interview, the junior lawyer described working 18-hour days getting sleepless nights. So what advice can she give others experiencing the same? “Make sure you’re happy otherwise there’s no point staying in your job. But if you want more out of your job — go and get it. A law degree opens up many paths and it’s not only about making it as a lawyer.”

Williams was evicted after two weeks in the villa, but with the final airing on Monday, she’ll be watching to support fellow housemates, Jack and Dani, the “down to earth” duo she’s hoping will win.

Comments on this article are now closed.

The post Exclusive interview: Love Island solicitor Rosie Williams says she’s not ruling out a return to the law appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Politics is full of lawyers.

Of the 650 MPs who sat in the 2015-17 parliament, 91 (14%) were qualified to practice and a further 28 (4%) had a legal background. Lawyers at the forefront of the current House of Commons include: David Lammy, Harriet Harman, Chuka Umunna and Emily Thornberry, while sitting in the Lords are the likes of Baroness Helena Kennedy and Lord Pannick.

But it’s not just the big political stars who have a background in law. Sebastian Salek, whose newly-launched newsletter lets subscribers know what’s coming up in parliament that week, does too.

Enrolling at the University of Cambridge in 2010 to study music, keen violinist Salek switched to law in his second year. Then, he wanted to become a lawyer. But, he re-evaluated when he interviewed for a training contract in the summer before his third year. Speaking to other candidates for the big-name City law firm, he realised “everyone else wanted it more than me”.

A job in law is “an attractive option” for students who want to make good money and work in a profession that’s well-respected, Salek concedes, but by the time graduation season had swung around, he had caught the media bug. Mid-way through his degree, he’d begun blogging about the goings-on at Cambridge and pitching articles to newspapers, eventually being published in the likes of The Independent and The Guardian. He followed his passion through and now works in news broadcasting .

The idea for his weekly newsletter, Clear the Lobby, sprung up in 2014, a year after he graduated when he was a freelance journalist. A really important bill which led to the Investigatory Powers Act (known as ‘the Snoopers’ Charter’) was in the Commons, but didn’t find itself onto Salek’s news-savvy radar. He says:

“Had I known about it I would’ve written to my MP or otherwise got involved somehow. I realised there was a lot of stuff happening in parliament that was just passing me by, and surely others too.”

Though parliament has its own online public diary, Salek thinks there are myriad problems with it. He doesn’t think it’s clear on the official website what’s a bill reading and what’s a debate, and, because there aren’t links to it, if you want to find out more you have to search for the bill, read it, read around it, and put it altogether yourself.

Salek — who has interned at the likes of Sky and BBC — floated the idea of his plain-English email newsletter. It was well-received by the Reddit community but he had to put it to one side because by then he had landed a full-time job.

The idea was resurrected and Clear the Lobby launched earlier this year, at a time when Salek was working “crazy” shift patterns, waking up at 3am to produce a breakfast TV show to air at 6am. Now, his schedule is much better and Salek is able to dedicate about five hours a week to the project.

His aim is to produce a newsletter that is short and punchy enough that it can be read in two minutes and informative enough that it gives subscribers a solid lowdown on the week to come. Last month, the newsletter included information about the Tenant Fees Bill, the Social Justice Commission Bill and the Terminal Illness (Provision of Palliative Care and Support for Carers) Bill.

Clear the Lobby currently has about 4,000 subscribers; students are a big part of that as they tend to be very politically engaged.

Casting his mind back to when he was a student, the 26-year-old says his law degree has been a big help with the newsletter, not least because it helped him understand legislation. And, like many law graduates, Salek remembers (the horror of) having to read particularly dense textbooks and cases in not a lot of time at law school and then having to summarise them; this has proved great practice for Clear the Lobby.

It’s good to know that even though someone doesn’t pursue a career in law, they can still, like Salek does, describe their law degree as “great”.

The post Interview: The Cambridge law grad who shunned legal practice to launch a politics newsletter appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Cheaper, less risky for students and better for diversity: the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) had plenty good to say about its new solicitor super-exam when it was formally announced last year. Now, one year on and with just two years to go before the Solicitors Qualification Exam (SQE) is set to be rolled out nationwide, how much more do we know about the new legal training regime now than we did then?

Though the Legal Services Board (LSB) has provisionally approved the exam, we’re missing reams of operational detail and that’s concerning The University of Law Pro Vice Chancellor External Peter Crisp. For starters, “the exam is completely uncosted”, he tells me over breakfast in the City one rainy morning, “we’ve seen no evidence it’ll be cheaper than the current LPC”.

Postgrad solicitor courses currently cost up to £15,000, Legal Cheek‘s LPC Most List shows, and are prohibitive to many aspiring solicitors who don’t have sponsorship from a firm. However Crisp, a legal education veteran who recently crossed over to lead ULaw after two decades at the helm of arch-rival BPP, says it’s difficult to see how the SQE would be much cheaper than this.

The SRA will be splitting the SQE into two parts. SQE1 will test black-letter law and may take the form of a computer-based, multiple-choice assessment, which Crisp says should be cheap to deliver, possibly in the hundreds of pounds. The SQE2 will cost more: it has ten assessments in five skills and requires face-to-face assessment by a qualified solicitor as well as the help of an actor for its client interviews and advocacy parts. It could cost £5,000 or so to sit both exams, but this doesn’t include the prep course costs needed to sit the exam, which could total thousands too.

While SQE costs may come in at similar levels to the LPC, Crisp concedes this sum will be spread out across the two SQE parts. Under the current system, students may fork out for the LPC and never secure a training contract nor qualify at the end of it — the ‘LPC bottleneck’. By contrast, the SRA advocates part one of the SQE to be completed pre and part two to be completed post training contract.

This should be less financially risky, as students need only pay for the cheaper exam before they get into a firm and start earning. If they never find a training contract, they’ve forked out less money than would’ve been spent on the LPC.

With practical skills not tested on SQE1, Crisp suggests that asking students to complete only this section of the exam pre-training contract will produce worse day-one trainees, who show up to firms without a postgrad qualification. He says:

“Working as closely as we do with law firms we know that they will want to maintain the same high level of training that our LPC delivers. They will not want to recruit people who on day one of the training contract know less than they do now and have fewer skills. The SQE is a retrograde step for the depth of understanding law firms want from their trainees. SQE1 is not a qualification, you don’t get a certificate — it’s just part of the SQE, so you’re not even part-qualified by having done it.”

Small wonder, then, that some City law firms are pushing for future trainees to complete SQE1 and SQE2 pre-training contract, as Legal Cheek revealed last year. The SRA claims there will be a higher failure rate unless students sit the exam post-training contract, when they have more experience.

Crisp, again, is unconvinced by this, and gives the following example of a trainee finishing their two-year work experience without going anywhere near advocacy, then being tested on this in SQE2. This particular scenario seems to undermine the regulator’s claim that aspiring solicitors will garner the skills needed to pass SQE2 during their training contract. Trainees may, Crisp thinks, need to complete weekend and evening classes in prep for SQE2 alongside their training contracts — the thought of which probably won’t delight already at-capacity City trainees.

“Despite our reservations, the SQE does present an opportunity to do something dynamic and innovative,” Crisps says. ULaw’s approach is to amend its undergraduate law degree so that it’s SQE-compliant and to offer postgraduate courses that encompass SQE content.

On the former, the amount of SQE content to cram in means it’s “likely” non-essential, elective modules will be stripped from students’ law degrees, the super-exam’s effect being like a “straightjacket”. At postgraduate level ULaw will produce three types of masters degree courses, one offering more law modules, one offering business modules, and one offering lawtech modules. All will have SQE1 and 2 test prep included, meaning students would, theoretically, be ready to sit SQE2 pre-training contract (seems a lot like the LPC, doesn’t it?)

Though only one organisation will be given the tender to run the super-exam, ULaw will not be the only law school offering postgrad preparation for it.

The SRA is not proscribing routes to qualification nor regulating the SQE prep courses, meaning candidates are free to choose which courses they do and at what provider. Different courses will suit law degree holders and non-law degree holders, which differ in content and, crucially, price.

This is where fears about diversity and social mobility come in.

Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds or students who are less informed may, understandably, punt for cheaper courses which cover the “regulatory minimum” of SQE content. Richer students or those with swish training contracts lined up may complete a more expensive prep course, leading to a, seriously concerning, “two-tier profession”.

For those students who have done budget courses, trying to secure a training contract in, say, family law, will prove tough if they have just studied basic SQE content (family law doesn’t feature). Even if you do complete your training, which no longer needs to take place in one firm, you may still struggle to qualify into a firm having never studied its area of practice. Is the SRA merely moving the LPC bottleneck until after qualification?

Against this backdrop of concern and with time ticking away, Crisp urges some SQE realism. He says:

“The University of Law will be ready if the SQE is introduced in 2020 though we think the timescales for launch are probably unrealistic. We don’t yet know who the assessment provider is but we should know in the next few weeks. Then there’ll be about 18 months to design and prepare, as the SQE will have to be tested thoroughly in early 2020 ready for launch later in the year. We think it’s very, very tight.”

Whether the SQE is launched in 2020 or later, Crisp remains uneasy about how things might pan out.

SQE1’s content “leaves a lot to be desired”, the lack of proscribed routes will lead to a “market free-for-all” and Crisp has “serious concerns” about the new exam’s potential impact on social mobility and diversity. Law students seem to share these worries: more than half of respondents to our legal education survey think the super-exam is a bad idea, and less than a fifth said it was a good thing.

Interestingly, the same students rated the quality of practical skills training over course cost, and also want more legal tech training — suggesting that ULaw’s new LPC replacement masters courses are well pitched.

Crisp’s feel for what both students and the profession want clearly remains strong. Now for the considerable challenge of putting all the theory into practice.

The full results of Legal Cheek’s student legal education survey will be announced at The Future of Legal Education and Training Conference next week.

The post The super-exam uncertainty that lies ahead appeared first on Legal Cheek.

In 1991, a good barrister argued before the House of Lords in R v R that it should be illegal for a man to rape his wife, which at that time was legal. The House of Lords agreed, and the law was changed.

In the same year, Daniel Holt, who has cerebral palsy, was born. Now in his mid-twenties and inspired by cases like R v R, Holt hopes he too can make legal arguments so strong and effective that they change the law for the better.

Over a coffee in Shoreditch, Manchester-born Holt says he’s wanted to be a barrister since he was 14. Before then, he’d decided to become a police officer but, pointing to his wheelchair, he smiles as he says: “I don’t think being a bobby on the beat would really work for me.”

Holt’s time studying law at Queen Mary University of London was “awesome”. The degree was challenging: it took him twice as long to prep for exams and, in his first two years, he sat assessments over eight hours instead of the usual three so he could have breaks. This was “exhausting”.

Holt and his university arranged for him to sit shorter exams in his third year. He did much better, returning for a masters degree in human rights the following year and there scored a first.

He’s hardly let his disability hold him back in his personal life, either. He relocated to London from Manchester and now lives away from family in a flat in the capital. He’s pierced and tattooed, goes to the gym regularly, loves to read, and is involved in multiple charities covering topics such as disability rights and education. He is the founding director of Being Disabled in a Normal Society and a trustee at Disability Rights UK.

Next on Holt’s to-do list is to complete his barrister training.

He’s passed the Bar Aptitude Test and accepted an offer from City Law School to study the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC), and is looking forward to getting started:

“I’m excited because I’ll be on a journey to become a barrister, and I’ve wanted to do that since I was 14. But I am a little apprehensive about how difficult it’s going to be; people say it’s incredibly hard but I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

During our coffee, Holt mentioned he was hoping to be able to start in September, but that this depended on whether he could secure funding. He was, then, anxiously awaiting news on this from Middle Temple. Happily, yesterday he let me know he secured the Middle Temple Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Award and the Blackstone Exhibition Entrance Award, which will cover the BPTC.

He’s also fresh from a gruelling round of pupillage applications, in which he applied to seven sets. Holt, who has completed two mini-pupillages and has more work experience lined up for this month, did well, getting to the final round at two chambers. One put him on the reserve list; another, unfortunately, rejected him the morning we went for coffee.

The pupillage process is ultra-competitive and can be difficult for anyone to navigate. It’s even more frustrating for Holt, who has to try to prove to chambers that he, physically, can advocate effectively. He knows he can, he says:

“I’m well aware of what my impairments are and the way they affect me with mobility and communication, but I am more than confident that I can be a barrister. I really value the way you put an argument together and I can communicate well enough to be able to share that with an audience.”

Holt is working on his communication skills, giving presentations to schoolchildren and others as part of his commitment to various charities, and he also mooted at university. He’s “very confident” he’ll secure a pupillage at some point in the future.

But he knows the hard work won’t stop there. Not only because Holt wants to be the best barrister he can and one day become a QC (“or a KC!”), but also he hopes to be part of the move towards a more inclusive and diverse legal profession.

A good step, he says, would be for the profession to loosen up its ‘work, work, work’ culture. He tells me:

“The profession needs to recognise that it can change how its lawyers work. You absolutely can change this. Everything now is the way it is because we made it that way; when you’re prepared to change the way you’re run, you become a better profession for many different people, including non-disabled, middle-class white men.”

It’s all in the attitude, and I think it’s safe to say Holt has a great one.

Comments are now closed.

The post ‘My cerebral palsy may affect my speech and mobility, but it won’t stop me becoming a barrister’ appeared first on Legal Cheek.

To describe Helen Tse’s career as unconventional would be an understatement.

The Cambridge-educated lawyer’s impressive CV includes stints at magic circle titan Clifford Chance (both in London and Hong Kong) and big four accountancy giant PwC, as well as a sun-soaked spell at Cayman Islands-based outfit Walkers. But it isn’t her stellar legal credentials that caught our eye.

Manchester-born Tse also happens to be a published author and a restauranteur. Her 2007 family memoir Sweet Mandarin, charts the extraordinary life of her grandmother, Lily Kwok, from her childhood working in Hong Kong’s silk factories, to the tragic murder of her father. The book shares its name with a Chinese restaurant that Tse co-owns with her twin sister, which was given the thumbs up by Gordon Ramsey on his The F Word programme.

Tse was encouraged to write about her grandmother’s life after publishing a series of cookbooks based on family recipes. “A friend of mine who is a literary agent wanted to know more about the story behind my grandmother’s recipes,” she says “so, with that in mind, I started to research her extraordinary life and career.”

The book has now been adapted for the stage as Mountains: The Dreams of Lily Kwok by Korean playwright In-Sook Chappell. Tse tells Legal Cheek how the play came about:

“I was keen for people to hear about my grandmother’s incredible story. So, when the producer of a local theatre company was using our restaurant as the setting for a different play, I approached her with the idea of doing something for the stage based on my book. It’s been three years in the making and it’s exciting that her story is being brought to life.”

While play audiences will be treated to a spot of onstage cookery in homage to Kwok’s culinary past, Tse also sells food, specifically a range of sauces, to wider audiences thanks to a £50,000 investment she secured during a 2013 appearance on BBC hit show Dragons’ Den. In 2014, she was awarded an MBE for services to food and drink.

It’s clear Tse is a very busy woman. Now a corporate partner at national outfit Clarke Willmott, she tells us that she survives on just five hours sleep a night and answers client emails around the clock.

For all her other ventures, Tse says her passion principally lies in law. When asked why she decided to study the subject in the first place, Tse has a response a world away from the ‘because it’s interesting’ stock answer given by many law students. She tells us:

“When I was 12, I worked in my family-run chippy in Manchester. Unfortunately, one evening we were robbed and my mother was injured in the process. Not knowing my legal rights, I felt helpless, I didn’t know what to do. This was a turning point for me and acted as the catalyst to pursue a career in law.”

The post ‘I studied law at Cambridge and worked at Clifford Chance, now I own an award-winning Chinese restaurant’ appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Late last year, Blue Planet II fans watched in horror and disgust as the series’ final episode showed the destructive impact plastic pollution is having on our oceans and wildlife. Every year, around eight million tons of plastic in dumped into the sea, the show’s host, David Attenborough, saying bluntly of the synthetic material: “It kills.”

Now, the sights of punters sipping through paper straws in Wetherspoons and shoppers bringing reusable bags to supermarkets are familiar. But sustainability isn’t just about plastic. You can now dine out in eco-friendly restaurants, shop ethical and green labels and order food online that would have otherwise been thrown away.

Also riding the sustainability wave is Get Wonky, a company founded in 2016 that urges juice lovers to “give wonky fruit a chance”. The eight-person team buys fruit from farmers that they would have otherwise struggled to sell for sometimes three quarters off the market price, then juices them. Food used includes: apples, strawberries, beetroots and chokeberries.

You may assume the brains behind the business is a hotshot food and drinks specialist, or someone with a background in the eco-system and sustainability (particularly given the founders’ plan is to become one of the most sustainable food brands in Europe). But you’d be wrong: Maciek Kacprzyk, who founded the company with his girlfriend, is a law graduate.

Maybe ‘law graduate’ doesn’t quite do it justice: Kacprzyk has studied law in three institutes, first enrolling on a five-year degree in his native Poland, at the University of Wroclaw, for which he obtained a masters. Later, he obtained a further masters degree at the University of South Wales, and has also studied in Tallinn, Estonia, as part of his Wroclaw course.

It’s a lot of studying to not end up in legal practice, particularly given Kacprzyk concedes he was interested in starting his own business long before he began his law degree. Aged five, he was making and selling shoes out of paper, was whole selling fizzy drinks at school by 12, then stock trading by 16. Why not just study business, then? He explains:

“I came from a family of lawyers. My godmother used to be a judge, my dad is a solicitor and my brother is a barrister. I think I was just brought up in an environment where studying law was the done thing.”

Interested in law and aware of its ‘a good, solid degree’ status, Kacprzyk was turned off the idea of legal practice and the “boring office work” it almost inevitably entails early on. “I guess I could’ve dropped my studies after the first year then gone straight into business,” he says, “but I don’t like giving up.”

Degrees complete come 2016, Kacprzyk turned his hand to the “huge” problem of food waste. “Four million apples are wasted everyday,” he says, “we’re working with farmers in the UK to help stop this being the case.”

Kacprzyk — who was the chairman of the European Cooperation Student Association when he was at law school — is hopeful Get Wonky will help farmers all across the globe, too. “The plan is for the business to become global in the next few years,” he says. A big ask but: “We’re ambitious people”, he says of himself and the business’s co-founder, Karina Sudenyte.

Skills that spring to mind when you think about what it takes to expand a business include: tenacity, confidence and market savvy. But it’s also pretty useful to know some law, Kacprzyk tells us.

Navigating EU rules on quality of produce and labelling come far easier to Kacprzyk given his legal background, as does business negotiation and also drafting. He cites his general understanding of how business contracts and health and safety laws operate as further benefits to him having studied a law degree.

“Perhaps having studied business would have been more transferrable to what I do now,” he says, “but I’m thrilled with what I’ve achieved on the back of my law degree.”

The post ‘I have two law degrees, now I sell juice made from wonky fruit for a living’ appeared first on Legal Cheek.

On the day news broke that Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) had become the first law firm in the country to fund employees’ gender affirmation surgery, Legal Cheek‘s comments section was rife with “pathetic virtue-signalling” cries. Clare Fielding, a transgender lawyer and a former partner at HSF, takes a very different stance.

Now a partner at Town Legal, Fielding began her legal career at Slaughter and May as a trainee and later an associate. She interviewed in 1994 for the position while she was living as a man named Matthew, and recalls writing to the magic circle firm just before she began her training contract to inform them of her transition.

“They were fab about it,” she tells Legal Cheek, “they wrote back, arranged a meeting with me and completely took it in their stride.”

Fielding transitioned while she was working at the Bank of England, where she joined as an analyst but later moved into their legal department. At the same time she was completing her legal studies in the evenings in prep for her Slaughters’ TC, which she began in 1998.

At Slaughters, Fielding’s seat supervisors “took differing approaches” to her transition. Some spoke to her about it early on, others didn’t say anything. “I did spend time wondering who knew and who didn’t,” she says. Though not specifically referring to her time at Slaughters — nor at HSF or Gowling WLG where she later ended up — planning solicitor Fielding does concede:

“There are lots of environments that are quite non-trans friendly, still, and non-gay friendly, still, actually. There’s just a blokey culture in some places, not hostile or anything but a little bit excluding. And I have to say law firms do tend to be a bit like this.”

With that said, Fielding has nothing but praise for HSF’s “great” announcement that it’ll fund transitioning staff members’ surgeries. As for Legal Cheek commenter reactions about virtue signalling, Fielding points to the financial commitment the firm has made to the scheme. Gender affirmation surgeries total tens of thousands of pounds, and Fielding says she knew of at least two other trans staff members at the firm when she was a partner there. “You shouldn’t underestimate the amount of money this will cost the firm,” she comments.

Virtue signalling aside, another theme that came through in the Legal Cheek comments section was whether parallels can be drawn between firms paying for gender transition surgeries and firms paying for cosmetic procedures (“bigger breasts”, “designer vaginas” and “fillers”, in our commenters’ words). Fielding, on this, says: “They’re two totally different things. I’ve obviously had the gender reassignment surgery but I’ve also had surgery I would regard as cosmetic. I wouldn’t dream of asking a law firm to pay for that, I’d be too embarrassed!”

Fielding expects other City outfits to follow HSF’s lead in its private healthcare initiative (“big firms do tend to jump on the bandwagon”). In the meantime, firms have already fired the starting pistol with the development of trans inclusion policies.

Our interviewee’s feelings on these are mixed — partly because she thinks the process is almost circular. The kinds of organisation that would, regardless of having a policy, treat trans people humanely are likely to be the ones who’d adopt a policy anyway, so its content is “slightly a side issue”, she says. Fielding, who has worked on big projects involving the Canada Water regeneration and the Emirates Stadium development, continues:

“What’s more important [than having a policy or what the policy says] is that there’s a signal of some sort that the people who run the shop are aware of trans issues and that people who want to transition will be treated humanely and in a balanced way.”

Indeed, Fielding’s firm doesn’t have a trans policy and: “We don’t feel we’re bereft because of it.”

Trans initiatives in corporate law firms have, undoubtedly, gathered momentum in recent years, as have other LGBT+ initiatives. But that doesn’t mean all law firms are wholly inclusive and welcoming; Fielding says:

“I do think there’s a lot of outward-facing portrayal or even trumpeting of diversity credentials, yet questions remain about how truly diverse these firms are in reality.”

With this said, and given the personal nature of gender identity, it can still be difficult for trans trainees and lawyers to know how best to approach their firm about the issue. Do you bring it up in interviews? On your vac scheme? Once you’ve got a training contract? After qualification?

The answer is, of course, subjective. When Fielding, who studied history at the University of Warwick, moved from Slaughters in 2005 to HSF, she decided not to tell her new colleagues about her gender reassignment. What she, personally, learnt from this experience is that she thinks it’s “far better to be out and open and honest about these things, rather than clam up and not say anything”.

The post ‘When I interviewed for Slaughter and May I was living as a man called Matthew, by the time I started my training contract I was a woman called Clare’ appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Tony Kent was in his early teens when he first saw the barrister in action who would inspire him to join the bar a decade or so later. One of his brothers had unfortunately ended up in court on a robbery charge. The cross-examination by a barrister called Selwyn Shapiro, 2 King’s Bench Walk, so bewitched young Kent that he forgot about his brother and his predicament completely; Kent calls it his “lightbulb moment”.

Fast forward to March 2018 and Kent has had a successful career with 2 Bedford Row, the stellar criminal set, appearing in serious crime cases, fraud and “rogue trader” cases as well as sports law-related hearings.

Now practicing as an independent barrister, he has just published his first crime thriller, Killer Instinct, and is currently editing his second, Mark the Death, as part of a six-book commitment with publishing company Elliott and Thompson.

Although he had been dazzled by the law, “I also really wanted to write. I had been working away at that first novel on and off while practising at 2 Bedford Row”, Kent tells Legal Cheek. “My first book is a political thriller, but the second one is more of a legal thriller and features a crime barrister and a character who is in part drawn from my one-time pupil master.”

But there is also another dimension to Kent’s very full life, and that is his boxing past: “It was a tradition within my family to learn how to box.” Or as Kent has nicely put it: “Where I come from, when you can walk, you wear gloves.”

Indeed, Kent, who was a super-heavyweight, chose to study law at the University of Dundee “because the boxing club featured prominently in the prospectus!” He was put in charge of that club in his first year as an undergrad; it, and he, went on to win a number of titles on the amateur circuit.

As a practicing barrister, Kent now represents a number of sports people and is proud to recall how, in 2011, he helped out the now world heavyweight champion boxer Anthony Joshua, who at the time had been charged with possession of cannabis with intention to supply. Kent says:

“At the time, Anthony was in the British Olympic team and was about to have his life taken away from him. We felt really sorry for him because if he was found guilty of the intention to supply, he could have got a two-year custodial sentence. Not only would he not have qualified for the Olympics, it would also have meant he could never box in the US and that would have cost him his career.”

With Kent’s representation, Joshua pleaded guilty of possession but was never found to be guilty of intention to supply. He went on to win gold at the Olympics the following year.

Kent, who is known as Tony Wyatt in the law world, was brought up within a large working class Irish family on a council estate in Northolt, North West London: “In my family, we were all expected to be builders, that was our background.”

But he didn’t like the idea of being on an exposed building site in the depths of winter, and first thought about a career in the army. By the time Kent was choosing his A-levels, that “lightbulb moment” he had had in the courtroom steered him towards choosing law as one of them.

By then an amateur boxer as well as a prospective law student, Kent went to university where he narrowly missed a first in his LLB (“because I didn’t get on with my employment law tutor, and argued too much”).

Great speaking and signing event for #KillerIntent at @WaterstonesKR last night. Great of them to have me and amazing that so many people braved the #Chelsea ice to come along and listen to stories they’ve no doubt heard before!! Thanks to all!! #amwriting #THRILLERS #amreading pic.twitter.com/Ae9oTqu2Ac

— Tony Kent (@TonyKent_Writes) February 8, 2018

In 2001, Kent joined the Inns of Court to complete his bar finals. He was underwhelmed by the course, however, and even chose to take on a job “hod-carrying” (lugging bricks up ladders) to help with the fees.

Kent strongly believes that you only start learning anything about being a good barrister with pupillage:

“When I was studying for the bar, I did most of the work myself. In comparison, my pupillage was the best learning experience of my life. That year as a pupil, watching my pupil master in court, day in day out, was the most incredible education.”

That is if you can secure one, of course.

“Trying to get a pupillage these days is incredibly tough,” concedes Kent. “When I was in chambers and having to look at applications, I saw, first hand, how the system makes it so hard for candidates to stand out.”

Kent’s advice to aspiring barristers is to do something “different”: “You have to offer something which is unusual and interesting about you and then find a way to get that across in the application.”

As an amateur boxer and a jobbing builder, Kent was certainly not your average wannabe barrister. It takes all sorts, but, from what Kent says, chambers want all sorts.

The post From law school boxing club to representing the most famous boxer in the country: A criminal barrister shares his story appeared first on Legal Cheek.