Tell us a bit about your current job. 

I am the founder of a ‘full stack’ legal design consultancy business.  Legal design is still a fairly new concept in the UK and there is only a small community of us in London, but it is growing.  Because it is a fairly new ‘industry’ there isn’t ‘one’ set way that all legal designers work. I personally use legal design to work with legal service providers, businesses and public sector organisations to make the way they use ‘the law’ as accessible as possible.  As an example, some charities use ‘the law’ to try and help their clients understand what legal rights they have. This can be difficult as the rules which make up ‘the law’ are usually long, complicated and use lots of legal jargon. By using certain design methods, the consultancy helps organisations to design things so they are as user-friendly (and therefore valuable) as possible for their clients.  Sometimes, this objective can be fulfilled by simply using graphic and information design techniques and removing as much technical language as possible in a word document, but most of the time it is a lot more complicated than that! Legal design usually also involves navigating how organisations work from a process, technology, data and people perspective, which is why we describe the consultancy as ‘full stack’ – like most legal designers we work within the intersection between the law and design, but our consultancy also has experience in applying skills used by system thinkers, quants, project managers, operation managers and technologists.            

What and where did you study after school? 

After school I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Warwick. My original plan was to do an Art & Design Foundation after school, however within a three-month window my personal statement was revised to apply for a History degree, to an English Literature degree, to Philosophy, Politics and Economics – I definitely wouldn’t recommend my particular approach to anyone, but hopefully it shows that not everyone knows what they want to specialise in after school and it is okay to change your mind.

How did you get from answer 2 to answer 1?  

One of my teachers suggested that law would be a good option to explore, so at university I made the most of the law fairs and law firm open days.  I quickly learnt that there is a pretty straightforward pathway to becoming a solicitor (rather than barrister - who are the ones you usually see in court).  To be a solicitor you are advised to apply for internships at law firms whilst at university. Once you’ve satisfied yourself that you would like to work in a law firm, you then apply to law firms for a training contract.  Once you get a training contract, your law firm sponsors you to complete the postgraduate law courses before joining the firm. You then train for two years at the firm in different teams to decide what type of law you want to specialise in, and after your two years you are a qualified solicitor. 

I personally wouldn’t have become a legal designer without being a lawyer first.  With hindsight, I was doing ‘legal design’ from the moment I was a trainee, because I was constantly curious about how everything I did would be perceived and used by my clients.  It was this curiosity, mixed with the artistic creativity I had developed at school, that formed my initial legal design ‘portfolio’, but understanding the law and how to apply it to my clients is also fundamental to how my particular legal design business operates.  That being said, I know legal designers that have taken the opposite path (i.e. were designers first), so there isn’t one set path to get to this type of multi-disciplinary job.

How does your formal education feed into your present career (if at all)?

When I now look at the types of subjects that I enjoyed at school I see that I have always liked doing lots of different things – I loved the creativity and freedom that Art & Design allows for, but I also really enjoyed the logical nature of Maths. I always picked human-centred History courses, and my favourite part of English Literature was understanding the author’s cultural context and how a reader’s own context impacts their interpretation of the text. My degree showed me how having a multi-disciplinary mindset gives you a tool box of lots of different ways of understanding your context, and there isn’t only one ‘right’ way of perceiving or solving a problem. For example, we use my computing and data analytics and econometrics skills, as much as my formal logic and behavioural economics knowledge in projects – all of which I first learnt at university and would never have thought I would use as part of a ‘design’ consultancy. In that sense, I guess my formal education showed me the value of cherry picking from lots of different disciplines, never being afraid to try to do something differently, and constantly learning from other industries.

What things have you learnt outside of formal education that have been helpful to your career?

The main thing I missed from my formal education was being able to see the value in mistakes. I went through the education system thinking that success was not making a single mistake, and this bled into my professional life as well. One of the things that attracted me to the design sector is that mistakes and failures are seen as fundamental components for risk management and success, and what you actually need is the right framework to make sure you make mistakes in the quickest and least expensive way possible (i.e. there is a time and a place for mistakes, and there are definitely moments where mistakes should be avoided!). The moment that really sunk in (and it took a long time – and only happened after speaking to a number of design academics, reading lots of design books and learning by doing), everything became easier. 

What are the really useful skills for someone in your job to possess?

To be a legal designer you have to see the value in empathy. Having good ‘emotional intelligence’ is a solid foundation, but empathy goes further than that. You have to want (as well as be able) to see things from other people’s perspectives, and on top of that you have to be meticulously motivated to help them achieve their needs, based on your growing understanding of their perspective. It sounds like common sense (and it largely is!), but it is human nature (and therefore very easy) to revert back to your own experiences and needs, and assume that others are ‘like you’. Applying empathy in a methodological and disciplined way can sometimes feel like it clashes against being a ‘creative’, but it is possible for the two to work harmoniously.  

What does an average day at work look like for you? 

Running a business in an emerging sector means that no two days are the same. This is also compounded by the fact that the business tends to have a number of projects with a number of different clients in any given week(!), so it really is very unpredictable (in terms of location, type of work, tools used, objectives for the day), so you have to either love or embrace that side of things.    

What’s the best thing about your job?

There is no one telling me how to work. If I work long hours on a really difficult project, it is because I can see the value of doing it, and I know I have a responsibility (and control) to balance out ‘over working’ with less work later. If I decide not to take on a certain project, I take full responsibility for the implications of that decision too. If I do a project that may not be profit-making, but is the right thing to do, there is no one else I need to ‘convince’ before doing it. I have ownership of every decision I make on behalf of the business, and I find that incredibly empowering. 

What’s your least favourite aspect of your job?

The admin -  drafting invoices, chasing invoices, corporate filings etc.   

What (concrete) advice would you give to someone seeking a job like yours? 

Be very clear on what you love doing and what impact you want your business to have.  

When thinking about a job, it is very easy to think about which of your current skills are the most ‘valuable’ and apply for roles based on those, or try to find people you respect and try to replicate their journey.  But both of these methods tend to ignore why you are looking for a new job in the first place - you aren’t enjoying how you are using your current skill set and want a job that reflects who you are more closely than your current one.  

One thing I am incredibly thankful for is the genuine support I got from my mum and close girl friends when I made my move.  Whether they realised it or not, they gave me the mental space and energy to separate what I was ‘good’ at from what I ‘loved’ doing. I recently caught up with one of my mentors and she described this as identifying what you are genuinely ‘curious’ about (opposed to what you are ‘passionate’ about) – with hindsight for me this curiosity is usually also accompanied with getting butterflies in my stomach, a flutter of excitement (and a healthy dose of fear) about doing something with the skills I want to use more. I sometimes get asked how I predicted a gap in the market that the business could fill. But I honestly believe that this question is framing the journey upside-down, what I genuinely did was spend some time to really get to know myself, and built the business around myself and my principles, rather than trying to make the business fit into what was already out there.  

Applying for a job, changing a job, doing a job – these are all really big life decisions and take such a large amount of our time. The least we owe ourselves is to make sure that we keep what we (not anyone else) want out of our jobs at the centre of the decision process. The funny thing I found is that once you are clear about your business’ mission statement and what you ‘love’ doing, figuring out how to make it sustainable is in fact far more straightforward.