We recently held IAC’s first-ever Women in Legal event. It took on the form of ‘reverse panel mentoring’ – a less traditional idea of mentoring – but also a fantastic initiative.
The concept was to have a panel of junior legal counsels ask an audience of experienced leading legal professionals questions and advice and opinions on various interesting topics surrounding their careers. Holding the event online allowed us to invite across a breadth of distances and a wealth of experience to attend. The idea of being able to jump on a call, mentor, network and reflect, and log out was convenient and engaging for our busy General counsel attendees.
We started the call with some stats:
Mentees are 5x more likely to be promoted than those without a mentor and mentors are 6x times more likely to be promoted compared to their co-workers.
This really set the scene that there is a mutual benefit in receiving advice but also giving it.
A particularly poignant point to make (which was reiterated by guest speaker Tonia Lovell in the debrief) was that only 14% of mentor relationships started through someone asking to be their mentor but 61% of mentor relationships developed naturally – encouraging us to speed up the process of this natural development by inviting our legal professionals guests to our event!
The mentoring:
Once in our breakout rooms, the legal counsels quickly found a flow. With the power to ask whatever they wanted the general counsels, the discussion started on the topic of the decision to move from private practice to the in-house environment. Many confided that it was not necessarily due to the need for shorter hours (as this is not always a perk of being an in-house lawyer) but more the desire to contribute to the outcome of a single business and ultimately becoming a “business partner”.
A great point was made by the General Council of EDF Energy Claire Gooding – that now “we get to keep the exciting work for ourselves”. Candidly referring to the idea that the more tedious jobs of a lawyer can be completed by outsourcing law firms when the necessity arises and the in-house team is able to focus their time on the more demanding and interesting responsibilities.
Other key advice was shared with the junior professionals throughout the session – Fleur Kitchingman of HSF highlighted the importance of “[Being] opportunistic and [taking] opportunities where they come”. To this, Claire Sanders (Huel) added: “Don’t leave it too long (to move in-house)” and Harriet Naylor (Inchcape Shipping Service): “Don’t be someone who lets career changes come to you”.
General “key takeaways from your career so far” sparked some great standalone advice from Noor Al Naeme (Not on the High Street): “The lawyer in the company should be the calmest person in the room. Learn to respond and not react” – indicating the importance of keeping a level head.
Stephanie Hudson (Yuvo Health) explained that “at a General Counsel level you should be hiring people smarter than you. This allows you to free up headspace to focus on strategy.” . Tonia Lovell (Coach for legal professionals) suggested that “you need to build a foundation of trust and make an effort to be present in the meetings. The better you can communicate the more the wider business will trust you and your judgment”.
Riya Joseph (Legal Counsel, Synthomer) and Alex Morris (Product Counsel, Niantic) asked the finale question to their group: “Is there still a glass ceiling for women in in-house legal leadership?” a variety of responses came there two stand-out quotes were:
– “Outside of legal there is still a disparity of women in leadership in business. One way you can work on barriers is by not sitting back and instead accepting that you belong in the room” – Flora Rostami-Bryan (Pure Storage)
– Carmen Di Marino (Amylyx Pharmaceuticals) shared that working internationally is a good experience “So you can better understand different cultures and alternative routes to success”.
Finally, with the success of this initial event so evident – we intend to hold similar sessions in the future. If this is something you would be interested in participating in, please feel free to get in touch with Laura.cutmore@iac-recruit.com.
For more general inquiries for our legal recruitment services you can find out more about our approach and clients here.