No more stereotypes: let’s have honest conversations

I am still buzzing from the Inspirational Women In Law awards, what a night! And I must say a special thank you to my 13-year-old daughter, Alma-Constance, who was in charge of the music to accompany the celebrations.

Am I proud of Alma-Constance? You’d better believe it – more than I could ever express with words. And I’m glad she’s surrounded by role models who show a realistic picture of the legal sector every time she joins me for an industry event., Which brings me to discuss two ‘horror-story’ news articles recently published that talk up the toxic culture at City law firms (here and here are two recent (paywalled) examples, which I also posted about on LinkedIn here and here). These stories are enough to put any young person off seeking a career in law!

But truth be told, I don’t fully buy into these stories, for several reasons. They never seem to mention that there are some actual positives to come from being at a Magic Circle firm or indeed any of the top City firms beyond the huge salaries. The fact is that having one of these firms on your CV gives you a real cachet in the wider legal sector and beyond. And working at these firms will also instil some key foundational principles and give you a certain polish that you simply cannot obtain elsewhere.

It will open all sorts of doors for you later in your career, as long as you time your exit properly before burnout can strike. It is disingenuous to not acknowledge these advantages alongside all the negative aspects.

And those negative aspects form the substance of my next gripe with these kinds of articles: to a certain extent, they peddle in stereotypes. Talk of all-nighters, having an in-house gym that everyone is too afraid to go to, lawyers relying on cocaine to get them through the day – sure, this will have been some people’s lived experience of life in City law firms; however, I really don’t think it accurately reflects the daily reality of the majority of people who work there today. But that doesn’t make for interesting headlines.

I am not denying that there are still many problematic aspects of culture in the City, or that people are suffering. Hugely demanding workloads are real. The impossibility of balancing individual wellbeing with maximum billable hours is real. Burnout and mental health crises are real.?

But – and here is my final problem with the articles I referenced above – we don’t move the conversation forward by constantly spelling out the symptoms in the most lurid terms. The real question is how we plan to treat the disease.

Published earlier this year, our World in Motion report provides insight into some potential answers and some much-needed hope for the future. As our panel discussions with next-gen lawyers have shown, many young people in the profession are not blindly chasing the biggest salary but are instead hugely concerned with whether or not they can have a positive impact on society.?

Of the young lawyers we spoke to, nearly three-quarters agree or strongly agree that they would not join an organisation whose values did not match with their own, even if they were offering more money. As we say in the report, the movement to embed new principles into the practice of law and management of legal practices is growing.

Being efficient where it counts

In some ways, the articles I mention above are a form of abbreviation in the way that they reinforce stereotypes rather than properly interrogating the same tired narrative. I’m not a fan of that, and prefer expanded communication.

I’d rather take a human first approach, which provides a good segue to something else that caught my eye in the newspapers recently – a study showing that using abbreviations in text communications makes you seem less sincere to the recipient.

Having a teenager gives you a real insight into how the younger generation communicates. I am struck by how they abbreviate absolutely everything in their text messages to a point where it becomes impenetrable to anyone above a certain age.?

It raises interesting and slightly (okay, very) concerning questions about how well young people actually get to know each other or have important conversations if their online communication is reduced to the barest minimum in this way.

Certainly, it’s not a habit that these young people should keep up when they leave school and go into the workplace, where proper effort must be invested in communicating clearly and professionally so as not to appear flippant, lazy or unreliable.

However, this is probably not an issue for the vast majority of high-flying young lawyers. They are more likely to be hamstrung by the inverse impulse to the laziness that gives rise to abbreviated text speech: a perfectionism so gripping that they end up submitting work late because they wanted to make sure every last “i” is dotted and t crossed.

Here, too, the newspapers have recently supplied some interesting food for thought, highlighting the results of a psychological study that found that work submitted late is often judged to be of inferior quality to work handed in on time – even if it’s the same piece of work.?

It’s much better to deliver something that’s 80% of the way there, on time, rather than being late while you try and add the remaining 20%, which won’t even make the difference you want it to.?

This study is a timely reminder of Voltaire’s aphorism that we mustn’t let perfect be the enemy of good – it’s true of so many aspects of life.

What I’m excited about this month…

I am heading to Belfast with Next 100 Year Patron Lady Hale to hold a conversation with the Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland at Queen’s University Belfast, something which I cannot wait for!?

And on the 2nd of December, we will be hosting a Women in Legal AI event together with She Breaks the Law and 年利达 . You can find the event on our LinkedIn page Next 100 Years: Women In Law .