Flexing the Future: How AI, Access & Alternative Paths Change Legal Careers - Kate Gaskell - S10E15

0:00Find the people who are going to provide the scaffolding around you, who get you. What keeps me awake at night is thinking through, on our candidate side of things, how we equip everybody who works through Flex for this brave new world. So we've started to experiment with training our interim lawyers and paralegals and our trainee group in what responsible use looks like and some of the various different specific tools that are out there in the market. What has helped me a lot along the way is having people who are at the same stage as you, who are in your corner and who can validate and share with you the highs and the challenges.

0:36Having a peer group, not necessarily in your workplace, but at the same stage as you, to me is one of the most valuable things. On today's Legally Speaking podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Kate Gaskell. Kate is the CEO of Flex Legal. She was previously an associate at Allen & Overy and has more than 20 years of experience in the legal profession. Kate was Director of Transformation at LexisNexis UK and now is an Advisory Board Member for QLegal. So a very big warm welcome to the show, Kate. Thank you so much, Robin. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

1:08And a little birdie told me off air today is actually your birthday. So a very happy birthday to you. Thank you. 28 again. Absolutely, absolutely. And we do have a couple of icebreaker questions here on the Legal Speaking Podcast. get started firstly what is your favorite beverage and what is your preferred choice of footwear on a typical work day oh gosh okay um my preferred choice of beverage is probably a ginger beer um but i've never thought about it so that's uh you put me on the spot there but yeah i love a cold ginger beer with a slice of lime um and my preferred footwear always trainers always trainers comfort over style.

1:50Absolutely we've had all sorts of answers and lots of people are going for like some people even said slippers. Working from home for sure yeah less so in the office. Well yeah absolutely well let's with that in mind let's get into some of the serious stuff so would you start by telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey? Yeah of course so as you mentioned I started off my career in private practice. I was a lawyer trained at Allen and Overy in London and then after qualification I went across to Sydney in Australia for a few years and worked at Freehills over there in a project finance team and then came back to London and was in Norton Rose's mining and infrastructure team and then I left private practice around about 2010 or 11 and joined LexisNexis for a long time.

2:42I was brought in to help build out one of their online practical guidance tools Lexis PSL which some of your listeners I'm sure are very familiar with but back then it was a very new product so there were lots of us hired at once to come in and write content for that and then a few years ago I joined Flex Legal and I'm now Flex's CEO. You sure are and doing a tremendous job and it has to be said and I'd encourage our listeners also to go check out Mary Bonsall's episode on the Legally Speaking podcast from a couple of seasons back. That's a super inspiring story and journey all about the Flex Legal, how it started and where it's going.

3:18Okay, pursuing a career in the law, was it something you've always wanted to do or where did that inspiration come from? Yeah, do you know what? It was a decision I made really, really early on. So I was probably about 11 or 12 when I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. Not because I knew any lawyers, not because I really understood what the law was but because I'd watched an awful lot of LA law and Perry Mason and those sorts of TV shows so yeah there was nobody in my family or in my sort of immediate circle of adults who who was in the law but I really latched on to this idea of I guess it was sort of motivated by a sense of justice and problem solving and lots of courtroom drama that looked quite fun and so yeah it was it was an early decision and then I was lucky actually that my school that I went to which was a very straightforward normal state school offered GCSE law which was quite unusual at the time so I got the chance to study law around about that age and I just loved it I loved the variety of it I loved the like I say the problem solving element of it I loved trying to sort of make sense of complicated issues and simplify them um so then I went on to do A-level law and then from there off to university to to study law at uni so yeah I didn't really deviate my only other career aspiration at that age was um either writing books which I still haven't given up on um or training horses which was never going to happen I don't know where that came from so ended up in law there we go well my mum has a very keen interest in horses if you're Oh, there you go.

5:08Sticking with education then and studying, you know, could you tell us about studying law at one of the best universities in the world, Oxford? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, Oxford was a culture shock for me. I was actually the first in my immediate family to go to university at all, let alone an institution like Oxford. So I was very underprepared for what that was going to be like. as I said I've come from a state school a good state school but you know a state school where not many no people before me I think there'd been one who'd gone before me to Oxford a few years before me and so I had no real idea what to expect and I think the culture shock was primarily how self-directed you had to be so at school the structure of the week and the day was very fixed and that suited my brain and my way of learning very well.

6:01Whereas at Oxford, it was much more freeform and that you didn't get an awful lot of contact time. So you had to be very self-motivated, self-directed. And of course, I was probably quite naive about the kind of demographic at Oxford. So there were lots of people from private educated backgrounds and I hadn't really come across anybody who was privately educated before that. So there was definitely a huge sense of what I would now understand to be called imposter syndrome. I don't think we had that language back then. I don't remember people talking about that. But definitely a sort of sense of being slightly fish out of water and not really not really believing that I guess it was sort of feeling like there'd been a terrible mistake in any minute.

6:48Now I was going to get tapped on the shoulder and told, no, sorry, this isn't for you. But I was really, really fortunate that I met my now closest friends who had come sort of on similar pathways to me. And the tutors that I had at uni who were teaching in my college were brilliant. And when I look at the demographic within my tutor groups for law, there were quite a lot of us from state school, which was unusual for Oxford. But yeah, I think I sometimes wish I could go back now with the kind of wisdom and experience that I have today. Because anyone who goes to university at 18 really knows, has no life experience at all.

7:31So you're winging it at the best of times. And yeah, I think with the benefit of a bit of hindsight and experience now, I would, yeah, maybe there'd be bits of it that I would find more comfortable, if you know what I mean. Absolutely. And I think I agree on the imposter syndrome. I think that's definitely over the last few years I've seen the rise of that and I don't remember too much of that back when I was at sort of university and I think it's great that you went on and you know you've achieved that and you speak very openly as well about coming from a single parent household receiving free school meals being the first in your family as you mentioned to attend university how did your background shape how you then experienced the legal sector Mm, it's a really good question.

8:12And again, I think, I think at each of those sort of milestone moments in my journey, whether it was going to university, or starting my training contract, I had the misplaced belief that getting to that milestone would be the silver bullet that makes you feel like you belong there and that you deserve to be there. So, as I said, definitely got to university and thought, oh, God, no, actually, I still I feel like a fish out of water. I'm not sure this is this is my place. And then the same thing happened when I when I got my training contract or started my training contract. And I think that that those milestones are really just step one of like of the next phase.

8:58Like it is a big achievement to get to that point. But then there's the work doesn't end. And like you have to continue to sort of back yourself and believe in yourself and seek the people. I think that's what I did at university very instinctively is find the people who are going to provide the scaffolding around you, who get you, who can be your support network as you kind of navigate through the next bits of that journey. So I found starting my training contract similarly overwhelming. I didn't know what to wear. I didn't know what I remember. We had sort of training on networking early on and I didn't know what networking was.

9:45I didn't know one had ever taught me that. I didn't understand what a network was. There were definitely bits of language that I wasn't familiar with. And as I said, I didn't I didn't know any lawyers. So I was it was a big learning curve. It was definitely a big learning curve. And I think that's one of the things I feel more positive about now when I look at the profession is that particularly in relation to social mobility, because as you say, I came from a low socioeconomic background. There was no discussion about that when I was at that stage in my career. I would never, ever, ever have admitted on day one of my training contracts that I was on free school meals.

10:25I just the idea that that would be publicly known was absolutely horrifying. So that gives me a bit of optimism that we're kind of getting a little bit better in that sense. But, yeah, it was always and even when I qualified, that was the next milestone. Right. Well, once I'm qualified, it's going to mean I feel comfortable and I've got this and there's no more imposter syndrome. And, you know, it's just not how it works. no but this is why we want to give the platform to people like yourselves with these inspiring stories because you know you have been very successful in what you've gone on to achieve and i love your mindset there when you're talking about backing yourself and i remember really early days of starting my legal recruiting business and i wrote bta which is believe to achieve you know always believe to achieve and just think about it and i love that you talked all about the people around you it's again a lot of the strands connected to the shows we talk a lot of the importance of mentors and having that good network around you that can lift you up and you're sort of 360 board of directors if you like people ahead of you same level of you behind you and you know you've done a really good job of that and as a result of that you've mentioned you know you've worked at some of the world's best firms you know Allen and Overy now of course A &O Sherman senior associate at Herbert Smith Freehields as you mentioned and then obviously over to Norton Rose incredible law firms you know incredible academic success as well but what was your experience like working at those particular law firms?

11:43Yeah I feel very lucky and it's nice actually sometimes just to pause and think about that sort of thing because you don't often do that so yeah I've been very very lucky. My experience at all of those firms was very positive. I think I really knew at the time that I was in a fortunate position and that the quality of training and the quality of work was really really high in those places and as I said I think two things really I think I took responsibility consciously or not probably not consciously at the time to to get that peer network of support around me and to make sure that I had the right you know people in my corner and the people who you could sort of share the highs and lows with because I think that's really important.

12:33But then I also was lucky to have not necessarily formal mentors or sponsors, but definitely people who I could see a few steps ahead of me or quite a lot of steps ahead of me who I trusted and who I could go to for advice or not even consciously go to for advice, but just see a little bit of myself in. So I think that, as you said, is just really invaluable. It helps a lot. And I was also, this is partly my nature, but I was very keen to take advantage of all the different opportunities that there were in those firms, because there's obviously the fee earning and that's a huge part of the job.

13:17But there were other opportunities that I would always put my hand up for, whether it was pro bono work or joining committees or whatever it was. And I think that that also builds your confidence because if you put your hand up for things to get involved in things where you maybe do feel a bit more comfortable, it has a trickle across effect, I think, to the bits where maybe you don't immediately feel more comfortable. Yeah. And you're continuously growing your network and wisdom as well. You're connecting with people and there's so many extra benefits from that mindset. and again why you've been so successful.

13:49I want to ask now a question linked to partnership route versus alternative routes because you opted against the partnership route in the hopes of having more flexibility. So what questions did you ask yourself to know that flexibility mattered more than the traditional partner route? Oh, yeah, good question. I think, again, this was obviously when I was at that stage of my career, it was quite a it's quite a long time ago now it's probably you know coming up to 15 years ago and I think my sense is that at that stage the profession felt quite binary so it was it was often this is my sense and it might not be right but I think at the time I felt well it's partnership or nothing or something else, but I'm not sure what that is.

14:42And how did I know that flexibility was important to me? I think because I've always been a very curious person and I've always been, I like to try new things and do new things. And some of that is inside of work and inside my professional day-to-day and some of it is outside. And I felt as I got more senior, there was less and less space for the outside of work curiosity and I just knew again I don't think I necessarily knew it consciously I think I've always been quite just full of the breadcrumbs that's been my kind of career strategy I've not I'm not really one to plan but but I could I could feel at the time that having the ability to carry on exploring other interests and passions and stuff was important so so I actually started looking I but I also was really passionate about the legal industry and the legal sector and I knew I wanted to stay in that and I knew I wanted all of the experience that I had had up to that point to be invested in something else that managed to meet those other aspirations and so I started looking at professional support roles still inside law firms so knowledge lawyer roles and then this opportunity came up that I mentioned which sounded just so unique and interesting and unlike anything else that was a kind of a roundabout at the time it sounded really creative which appealed to me taking all of my knowledge from having been a finance lawyer for however many years and then building something brand new from scratch in an organization with lots and lots of other lawyers which I thought sounded just really fun so I thought I'd give that a go and see what happened and yeah it was a great decision.

16:25yeah and you seem to have made many great decisions throughout your career that that's for sure and talking about hierarchy in law then there's an unspoken hierarchy about what ambition looks like so how do you define success yeah ambition is an interesting one I think for me success is just a very very personal concept I think there's no there's just no one definition of success. And I think, for sure, early on in my career, I think success and financial remuneration were quite closely correlated, to be completely honest. And I think some of that comes from having come from a low socioeconomic background.

17:11I had a lot of anxiety around money and finance and um you know having enough money to support myself and so when i started when i got my training contract on day one i was earning more than my mum was earning who had been in the profession teaching she's a teacher for decades um and to me that was that everybody in my family was like wow you've really made it so that became a kind of measure of success and i think once you get on that path especially in private practice that success measure just kind of keeps ticking along and along up that hierarchy and then as I said I sort of realized success is much broader than that and to me it's it's I guess it's do you feel that you are doing a good job getting energy from your day-to-day being a good friend in my case I now have children, mom, partner, you know, all of those things and of and a good employee.

18:15So yeah, I think it's I think it's important not to get too fixated on title or, or, you know, remuneration or whatever those things are, they do matter, of course, they're important. But for me, it's broader than that. Today's Legally Speaking podcast episode is proudly sponsored by with Clio. If your legal management software feels more frustrating than helpful, you're not alone. Many solicitors across the UK delay switching because moving client and case data sounds like a headache. Clio makes it simple. As the intelligent legal work platform, Clio combines context-aware AI with trusted legal research to power your practice.

18:57And when you switch, their dedicated migrations team supports you every step of the way, ensuring a smooth transfer of your data. You'll also get award-winning support 24-5 via live chat, phone, and email. So help is always there when you need it. Ready to leave frustration behind? Visit clio.com forward slash UK to learn more and discover why so many UK solicitors choose Clio. Now back to the show. I love that you mentioned energy. Everything is energy. And I love that you say it's personal because it is, you know, success is absolutely personal, you know, to some people, you know time is the utmost importance you know it's it's really important to others maybe financial for for reasons you know could be definitely so um yeah i absolutely agree with you and you touched on earlier in the podcast around imposter syndrome showing up quite early in your career how did you then go about overcoming it there's an assumption in that question i have overcome it um i don't think i have overcome it um to be honest i i don't think it I'm not sure I ever will, to be honest.

20:05And I don't see that so much now as the aim, as the objective. I think it's interesting because to me, there are two types of imposter syndrome. There's an imposter syndrome that occurs because actually you are kind of an imposter because you may be, so just taking my example for a socioeconomic background, if I'm in a room with five other people and all of them came from a very wealthy background and had a different upbringing and education experience to me, then technically speaking, I am an imposter. You know, I'm different from the people in the room. So that one I think is just, for me, is I've become better at recognising when I'm in that kind of scenario and thinking and realising that that is a fact only it doesn't necessarily mean you don't belong there or you're not you know you haven't got a legitimate reason to be there you're not entitled to be there and then the other part of imposter syndrome is where you kind of again to me it's a feeling that you have that isn't really based on the fact that you're different in any way from anyone else in the room and I think for me I imagine it's just going to be a continuing ongoing practice to catch yourself in it and give yourself a bit of a talking to and again you know having conversations having people around me who I can share that with and who can kind of reflect back to me what I need to have reflected back to me is really is really helpful but um yeah it's not gone away completely it's definitely got a bit better but I don't think it will ever completely go it's just my personality I think maybe it's something that that drives you as well and it is yeah you've got great people around you that's clear throughout the discussion that you've always kept a good network of people that can champion uplift you up those moments of doubt uncertainty and success as well because you know any career has its ups down twists and turns along the way and that's why we like those you know authentic stories on the show let's fast forward to the present then see you flex legal you know tell our listeners for those who may not be familiar what flex legal is and what the organization champions absolutely sure so flex legal is an alternative legal services provider so it was founded um as you mentioned at the beginning of the show by mary bonsaw um about 10 years ago mary was a former litigator and she spotted an opportunity to build a business that helped aspiring lawyers so junior talents um get access effectively to sort of work experience in the legal sector um and solving on the client side a problem with in-house legal teams and law firms who have unpredictable workloads, whether that's because of absences in the team or peaks in workload or project-based work.

22:48So the business was born a decade or so ago at helping paralegals get their first foot in the door, so placing them on an interim basis, and then it gradually matured into placing interim lawyers, so helping people at the slightly more senior stage of their career, a bit like I was back in the partner, not partner, day. I think that's where these alternative legal services providers and alternative ways of working is really so different from the way it was 15 years ago, because there are so, so many brilliant lawyers out there who do want to be able to retain some degree of flexibility for a variety of different reasons, but still want to keep their legal practice going.

23:32And then most recently, so this was a few years ago flex launched a qualifying work experience training scheme for aspiring solicitors from underrepresented socio-economic backgrounds so I'd actually met Mary quite a few times while I was still at LexisNexis and I thought what flex was doing was really inspiring but it was the flex trainee scheme that really kind of hooked me in because of my own background and because I could absolutely understand and see what the value was that a business like Flex could offer to people who come from that demographic. So I joined the business as we were sort of coming out of COVID.

24:16I came in as head of the client services team. So at that stage I was overseeing the interim side, the candidate team that worked on our paralegal and lawyer placements and then as is often the way in a small business this is my first experience of a small business so that was quite um quite interesting and um yeah it's quite fluid quite you know lots can change quite quickly so I um came in as head of client services evolved into a COO role then Flex was acquired by Mishkondorea at the end of 2023 and then I came into the CEO role um sort of first quarter of 2024 so um yeah it's been a it's been a very busy few years over here at flex absolutely but all going forwards and momentum building when it comes to your own individual career so let's stay with the the present and ceo what does the role of ceo at flex legal entail it is it entails all of the things especially in a small company um or a relatively small, fast growing company.

25:20That was one of the reasons why I joined the business actually is because I wanted to challenge myself in an organisation that had less, less rigidity around structure, you know, less established sort of processes and ways of working, and that was looking to kind of scale and grow. So the CEO role is absolutely everything from, we don't have enough forks in the kitchen we need to sort that out all the way through to what is the five-year plan for the business and everything in between so it's incredibly varied and I really like I really enjoy that about the role I think what Flex is really good at internally as an organization as well as trying to make sure that the roles that people are doing really do play to their strengths and again that's one of the benefits of being somewhere that's small because you can we're nimble and we're very agile and so if somebody shows an aptitude for something or a strength in something then we're so supportive of them you know following that thread and and if it adds value to the business and then then it's the it's the win-win so yeah so the ceo role is some of it is inward facing so making sure that the team is um working the teams are working well together that everybody's got what they need to do to do a good job that everybody sort of understands the direction we're going in um and what the priorities are and obviously external facing as well so building client relationships and keeping in touch with people in the market both on the candidate and on the client side to make sure that the business is evolving to support both of those sort of cohorts of people and it absolutely is and now probably the most important question of the podcast now is um have you sorted the forks out yep we're all good for forks at the moment yeah forks are fine i was going to ask a sort of follow-up in jest there of a you know a typical day i think you've outlined that they're probably not a typical day there's so many different angles to it so maybe a better follow-up is sort of what initiatives are you working on this year as part of your role that you're most excited about yes um so there are a few i think the the first one and the most kind of um challenging and creative one is obviously ai i mean everybody's talking about it um and we did get to around 26 minutes i know i'm sorry i'm sorry um no we're You can't not be.

27:38I think it is a really interesting topic. And I think what kind of keeps me awake at night is thinking through on our candidate side of things, how we equip everybody who works through Flex for this brave new world. So we've started to experiment with training our interim lawyers and paralegals and our trainee group in how they think about use cases for AI, what responsible use looks like and some of the various different specific tools that are out there in the market, because the reality is none of us knows really what this is going to look like in a few years time. And so I think it's just constantly reviewing and keeping track of how we make sure that our people feel confident to navigate this kind of period of uncertainty and to make good decisions about what they use and when they use it and how they test the output of it.

28:30So for me, I feel like AI is a real opportunity for Flex, for an alternative legal services provider. Wherever there's kind of uncertainty and disruption, small organization, small, nimble organizations have a really good opportunity to have an impact. So I feel quite excited about it. And alongside that, I'm kind of getting my own getting comfortable with my own knowledge and understanding of it. So it's nice to feel like there's something kind of very new to get your teeth stuck into. um so uh so there's that that's one um sort of initiative and then it's thinking about somewhat related to that um you know what's the ambition for the business over the next few years when it comes to um the interim side of of our business but particularly on the trainee side so how do we make sure that we're continuing to um bring people through the trainee program give them opportunities, work really closely with clients who can provide the QWE element of the experience, because that's the bit that we can't do ourselves.

29:32So we're very reliant on in-house organisations coming on board and supporting the mission with us. And again, I love that. I get lots of energy from that. We're so lucky to have lots of in-house organisations who believe in the mission as much as we do. and it's just fantastic working with them to help build up their sort of pipeline of junior talent. Yeah, that shared vision is powerful, isn't it? Definitely. You know, I love your glass half full, really, when it comes to AI and the opportunities and the growth mindsets and go with that. And you were touching on it. And I know it was what attracted you, as you mentioned originally, the FlexLegal, the trainee social mobility scheme.

30:11So let's dive a little bit deeper on that because there's an award-winning initiative launched in 2021 designed, as you say, to boost social mobility in the legal profession. So as a champion of DE &I, in what ways does it aim to actually support candidates from underrepresented and indeed low socioeconomic backgrounds? A good question. I think it's a few ways. One is the scheme is a dedicated social mobility scheme. So that means that all of our talent attraction and hiring processes are built around that as an objective. so we really try to make sure that we have we give people a really positive experience of coming through the assessment centres for example so they are whether they're successful or not when they come through those we always give them really good feedback on how they did what they can improve the next time and of course we're making sure that when we are going out to try to attract candidates into the scheme we're looking in the right places so for example we partner with charity called Strife we partner with the 97 % club who all share our mission and our vision I think then it's also about how we prepare people for the workplace when they come through so a little bit based on my own as I said on experience of what it was like being kind of parachuted into a law firm with no real preparation or anything like that we we don't do that so before the trainees go out onto their first secondment they spend three weeks with us on what we call our readiness program and we take them through core skills training you know things like how to prepare for a meeting with your supervisor how to have a good one-to-one how to how to receive feedback how to seek feedback how to manage stakeholder expectations we do some technical training with them around drafting and reviewing documents legal research that sort of thing and And we also invite industry speakers in to talk to them about what life is like in-house.

32:13So they get to meet GCs and heads of legal and hear people's stories. I think for me, storytelling is so powerful and it really helps, I think, a little bit chip away at that sense of imposter syndrome. If you have somebody in the room who's maybe five years ahead of you or 10 years or 20 years ahead of you who says, I found this hard and I came from this type of background and here I am it gives you a sense of belief that you can do it too so the readiness program is really important for those three things and then once they're out on placement again it's not just drop people in and go figure it out see you on the other side you know there's lots of ongoing mentoring and coaching from us at flex so they get access to coaching and mentoring here but it also we we link them up with industry mentors as well who can just bounce ideas around and I think facilitating that peer group it goes back to what I was saying about what I found so what has helped me a lot along the way is having people who are at the same stage as you who are in your corner and who can validate and share with you the kind of the highs and the challenges and that's not necessarily easy to do when you're training in-house independently because for a lot of the time you're the only trainee in that organization or you're the only paralegal in that organization so having a peer group who are not necessarily in your workplace but at the same stage as you I to me is one of the most valuable things about it yeah and it's fair to say you do a lot and yeah it can be very lonely and you know absolutely so having that peer group is great and I love that you talk about the stories you know facts tell but stories sell you really connect with people and people can understand and you really connect with their journey think oh that's me right now and I can get to you know where I'm looking to go absolutely okay sticking with law firms then and social mobility what is still misunderstood about social mobility and what steps should firms be taking to promote and support social mobility one of the issues in the profession in general is just that we don't necessarily have good data on it um and the first so the sra obviously collect data um every every couple of years on diversity and as and fed through from the from the firms um and i think it's probably one of the diversity characteristics that's least well understood so for us um our our social mobility um benchmark is driven by the social mobility commission and our um aspiring trainees have to meet two of the social mobility commission markers and the the one that's most typically used it asks a question about parental occupation when you were 14 um but it relies on people you know filling that in and so i think the first step is is is the firm encouraging people to do that and to share um share that information as honestly and openly as they can um i think that it's also misunderstood in the sense not necessarily misunderstood but i think that there's more that firms can do to understand what the impact is of coming from a low socioeconomic background so I talked a little while ago about financial anxiety and that can have a huge impact on the way you show up at work and it's again naively I think I thought when I'm on a trainee salary that financial anxiety will go away it actually almost intensified because I didn't know know how to handle that.

35:44I didn't really know what to do about pensions, didn't really know any of those sort of things that maybe firms might take for granted. So I think putting effort into understanding what the anxieties or issues might be and then building some support around that is really important. And I also think it's role modelling. It's always role modelling. I think, again, I have definitely seen more senior people prepared to say that they came from low socioeconomic backgrounds. But unless they actively do that, it's you don't know who it is in the room. So it's it is a hidden diversity characteristic. You can't make assumptions about somebody's socioeconomic background.

36:35I mean, shouldn't make assumptions about anybody's diversity characteristics, but that one definitely is harder to know unless somebody is prepared to say it. And I think platforming people in the firm who share that characteristic is very helpful. Yeah, absolutely. And just raises visibility, doesn't it? Definitely. It's just so helpful all round. OK, we talk a lot about obviously around legal careers. It's the heart of the show. So how do you think flexible resourcing models and alternative career paths will reshape what a successful legal career looks like over the next few years? I think it's all about choice, really.

37:13And I think the pandemic, sorry to use that word as well, but that really shook things up a bit, didn't it? In the profession in general, I think the profession pre-COVID times was very rigid around things like even flexible or hybrid working. And then suddenly overnight, everybody was working from home. And I think it's quite interesting seeing now what's happening in terms of the kind of recalibration of that with some firms going back to the default the way it was before and other firms kind of picking that, staying with that middle ground. And I think what the last few years have done and will continue to do is put people more in the driving seats of their careers.

37:58And I think there's a little generational element of that as well. I think the new generation of talent that's coming through for a variety of different reasons are more conscious about what they want out of their professional working lives and are less afraid to say it. so you know I can't imagine a world in which when I was at the beginning of my career in my training contract there's no chance I would have gone in and asked for any kind of flexibility on ways of working or asked for anything actually I was just grateful for whatever I was given so I think that that shift in expectation and mindset will um will continue and in a way I think it sort of also might filter upwards I think that I think we might be coming into a period of kind of reverse mentoring reverse apprenticeship type of dynamic where we've got some good things to learn from the from the generation coming through now about about what success looks like and so I think that organizations like ours anything any any organization or any institution that facilitates people to be able to make choices I think will will have a really positive impact yeah and you know and I advocate for a lot of the the change as well because if nothing changes nothing changes right and you know if the next generation you know maybe they don't see burnout as a badge of honor maybe they don't see you know life just being behind a desk and nothing else not being able to travel and see the world and you know various other things of having choice so you know within within reason I think it's it's great that you know hopefully with all the different routes now available into legal you don't just have to be the traditional legal route you can do other things connected particularly with AI which I'm saying now and everything else but I feel it's very exciting time for people in and around the world of law that's for sure okay I want to talk now about you were recently diagnosed with ADHD so what insights can you share about navigating c-suite with neurodiversity well that is a big question um I think what I would say as a starting point is I'm still learning about that so you know being late diagnosed is um means I don't completely know myself um but and I think that's where it's important to make time especially when you're in a busy demanding role it's very very easy to start work on a Monday morning and get to a Friday evening and you've just been on the go all the time so I'm starting to um learn that it's important to take time out of the weeds.

40:35Again, support is so critical. I have an ADHD coach who I work with to help me start to understand the way my brain works and what works and how I can. So I should actually say that for me, there are definite challenges that come with the way my brain works. But there are I'm also aware that there are lots of ways that my brain works, which have been very supportive to me in my career. So I think going back to that, always putting my hand up for opportunities, that's because I love novelty. And I my brain responds really well to something that is challenging and new. And I'm very curious. So so it's just beginning to piece together exactly what that looks like.

41:23Like, I think one of the things that I have, this isn't your question, because your question was about C-suite, but actually what I've found most positive about my diagnosis is the impact that I've been able to have on more junior members of the team who have also disclosed. um so I haven't really talked openly about it you know sort of an organizational level at flex but um but I have had some really positive one-to-one conversations with various different people and and that's very um it's a real privilege actually to be able to do that so yeah I might need to come back to you in you know 12 months time and tell you exactly the answer to your question about navigating the c-suite but um uh yeah it's a bit of a voyage of discovery at the moment yeah but as you say you certainly realize the the limitations but also the strengths and and you know the the opportunities through understanding this more as you go through this journey i love that you also have a coach as well because they can help bring out the best of you and guide you through so yeah it's a really good um piece of advice actually people going for other things you know coaches are seriously powerful you look at any of the top sports people in the world they've got coaches you know definitely business so if you can have them i think they can bring out the best in you definitely what practical changes should the legal sector be making to provide an inclusive environment for neurodivergent leaders the simple answer that to your question that comes straight into my mind is not to esteem that it's one size fits all i think you know that there's lots of um people who say you've met one neurodivergent person you know you've met that neurodivergent person the way neurodivergence manifests for people is is very bespoke so I think the the the simplest thing to do is to create an environment where somebody who wants to disclose and have a conversation can do that in the most positive way possible and so asking questions about what works really well for you and sort of leading with the strengths of your neurodivergence puts you in the mindset of this is a support, this is going to be a supportive conversation and this is here to help me.

43:42So like subtle shifts in language like that I think can help a lot. And then the sort of broader aspect of that is creating an environment where people feel able to do that and making sure that all conversations and disclosures are welcome, regardless of what it's about, and that the outcome of that is going to be support and something positive. And I think it's sort of somewhat related, just not making assumptions, you know, and I think it's incumbent on leaders, I think, to educate themselves if they're not educated and don't feel comfortable in this sort of thing. There's so many different materials and resources out there and you don't have to be an expert, but just read a little bit around it and, you know, sort of follow your instinct and your judgment.