Hot 100 career quiz: “The wisest thing anyone ever said to me? Don’t be an accountant.”

What’s your most vivid memory from being a trainee?

I had the misfortune as a trainee at my former firm to sit with a rather socially awkward and officious senior lawyer. Instead of speaking to me, he would tap out emails asking me to do this and that task, even though we sat less than three metres from each other.

While the individual in question was off on his early summer break, I decided to book a holiday of my own, a couple of months away.  I sent him an email to let him know, not expecting that he would pick it up – let alone respond – until he was back in the office (for reasons already explained, I wasn’t going to be able to tell him face-to-face). Anyway, within five minutes of pressing “send”, I got an email back from him saying I had committed a “CLM” by booking holiday without having first checked with him. I had to ask one of my fellow trainees what a CLM was (career limiting move, for those who don’t know…)

What is the thing in your professional career that has terrified you or taken you out of your comfort zone the most?

In around 2009, shortly after I joined Travers Smith, I found myself acting for the directors/majority shareholders of a company who had found themselves on the wrong end of an unfair prejudice claim brought by a minority shareholder. One day, one of the clients rang me at about 6.30am to say that he had been arrested on suspicion of insider dealing and could I come and help him out straight away? I hot-footed it in a cab from home to Bishopsgate police station, frantically googling The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (not something that I was overly familiar with) on my way in. Thankfully, although hopefully not because I messed up too badly at the police station, he hired a criminal lawyer shortly thereafter – not that it did him much good, as he was subsequently convicted and served time at Her (as then was) Majesty’s pleasure.

What is the wisest thing anyone ever said to you (and who said it)?

By the time I finished my modern languages degree at university, I still had not the foggiest idea what I wanted to do, job-wise.  Two bits of advice stick out – one, from my dad (a chartered accountant), was “don’t be an accountant”; the other was from  Rupert Beaumont, a venerated (and, sadly, now departed) corporate partner at Slaughter and May, who encouraged me to bide my time and not to rush into anything. Perhaps not unpredictably, he suggested I might want to try a law conversion course, and take things from there. The rest is history…

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get to where you are/do the job you do?

Don’t be afraid to say if you don’t understand something you have been told, whether by a client or a more senior lawyer. You’ll save everyone, including yourself, a lot of time and hassle if you ask questions, even questions that you worry might betray your ignorance.

What’s your best friend from law school doing now?

Rather sadly, I didn’t have a best friend at law school.  Those were the days when you didn’t get lumped in with everyone else who had a training contract with the same firm as you. I lost touch pretty quickly with the people I was closest to as we all went our separate ways.