The Career Move That Changed Everything with Francesca Ainsworth

In this episode of If You Ask Me, Hannah and Sarah speak with Francesca Ainsworth, Corporate Partner at Lewis Silkin, about her journey from training and qualifying at Linklaters to becoming a partner while on parental leave.

Francesca shares why she chose to leave Big Law just three years after qualification, how she found a firm culture that aligned with her ambitions and values, and the moment she realised partnership was a goal worth pursuing.

The conversation explores:

•  Why leaving a prestigious firm can be the right career move 
•  Building a successful legal career without sacrificing life outside work 
•  Becoming partner while on parental leave 
•  The importance of mentors and sponsors in career progression 
•  Lewis Silkin's groundbreaking equal parental leave policy 
•  Why changing workplace culture matters as much as changing policies 
•  The role flexible working has played in retaining talented lawyers 

Francesca also reflects on motherhood, leadership and the societal shifts still needed to create genuine equality in the legal profession.

A thoughtful and honest discussion about ambition, partnership, parenthood and redefining what success in law can look like.

If You Ask Me is sponsored by BlckBx, the life admin personal assistant behind professional working families - saving you time, mental load and giving you back your energy.

Sign up at blckbx.co.uk and get 10% off with code Blue10

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the If You Ask Me podcast. We are Hannah and Sarah, two former employment lawyers, turn coaches, and the co-founders of Blue Sky.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

This podcast is all about the big conversations we wish were happening more often in the legal world. From returning to law after maternity leave to what firms can do better to support working parents, to the coaching and mindset shifts that can help women thrive in demanding careers.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Along the way, we will also be talking to women in leadership positions across law firms, those who've been through it themselves or who bring fresh insights into how the profession can evolve.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Our aim is to create a space that's uplifting and practical, a place where law meets life and possibility opens up. We hope you enjoy today's episode. In today's episode, we are joined by Francesca Ainsworth, a corporate partner at Lewis Silkin. Francesca shares the story of her career so far, becoming a partner during her first maternity leave, and leaving Big Law, and she will be sharing the reasons why she made that change and what difference that has given her. This episode is sponsored by BlackBox. Blackbox is the life admin personal assistant behind professional working families, saving you time, mental load, and giving you back your energy. Sign up and get 10% off with code BLUE10. The link is in the show notes. We are so happy to be uh with you today, Fran. Um, could you give us a little whistle stop tour of your career, what you do, um, where you were before?

SPEAKER_03 1:33

So I am a corporate partner at Lewis Silken. Uh, I was made up last year in April, um, having just returned from parental leave. I started out as a trainee at Link Later straight out of university. Um, so did my two-year training contract there, um, qualified into the mainstream corporate team and left when I was about three years qualified shortly after doing a client's comment. I sort of managed to get myself out of the building for six months and then permanently. Um joined Low Silkin about nine years ago now, um, and do a mix, sort of a very general spread of corporate work, uh, mostly private MA. And I do a lot of work with clients in the creative industries. Um, so work with a lot of non-lawyers, entrepreneurs, people who never think about the law, never uh think about deals. Um, so it's, you know, good fun, exciting, and a nice place to work as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Brilliant. Um, so let's just take um a few steps backwards. Uh what led you to you were three years PQE at Linklators. And so, you know, you left Big Law. What led you to make that decision?

SPEAKER_03 2:50

I never intended to stay. Um so it was quite an easy decision. It was more about the timing. Um, I think, you know, big caveat, I know some really fantastic women who've stuck around at Linklators and at other big law fans. None of really close friends, so I don't know how they're finding it, but some of them have made it to partnership. So, you know, it's absolutely doable. Um, but for me, when I was junior at Lynx, I sort of looked at the more senior people around me and just couldn't see how that could possibly be me in the future. Um, it was a fantastic place to start my career, had some amazing opportunities. I got to go to Hong Kong for six months. Um, I pushed myself and worked harder than I could have ever possibly thought um ever possibly thought possible, uh, than I would have ever expected, I guess. Um and I don't regret any of that, but when I sort of took a step back and and looked at the long-term picture, I just couldn't see myself being in the shoes of um the partners. And then when I thought about what I might want um both outside of the office and for my career, um, I also looked at the people who were maybe leaving at, you know, five, six, seven, eight years PQE. And I didn't really think that I wanted to follow in their footsteps either. Um just in terms of a lot of them were going in-house and they weren't going to the sorts of businesses that I perhaps wanted or thought I might want to go into. Um, and so I just wondered if there was something a bit different out there and decided to look at, you know, much smaller firms. When I joined Leo Silk, and it was only 350 people, uh, which at the time felt tiny. Um so that was the reason behind it, really. And I I think I had an idea that I wanted to work with clients in the creative industries um or retail, you know, something that was a bit more tangible and um something that I was passionate or interested in outside of the office, um, which, you know, some people who've left links at much later stages have also found themselves in those situations. But I guess I was just headstrong and opinionated at three years qualified and still am. Um, and then when I thought about life outside of the office, I was uh not in a long-term relationship when I um thought when I decided to leave links. And I remember one of the partners when it was, you know, super busy transaction, three months of working every single weekend, he sort of said, Oh, that wasn't too bad. Um and he had two young kids. Partner, you know, lived in a beautiful house in North London, and it wasn't too bad for him because he sort of logged on for a couple of hours at the weekend, um, was able to see his kids. It didn't really matter to him when things landed. He could just pick them up when he needed to, and and his life, he could still do his life outside of work. Whereas for me, I was living in a flat, sort of waiting for documents to land and couldn't really do life because I was having to wait around for exactly when the documents landed. It wasn't just a couple of hours. Um, so I just felt like I couldn't build the life that I wanted outside of the office if I stuck around. Some people absolutely do manage to achieve it. It was just my, you know, personal, it just wasn't for me, for my sort of personality and mental well-being, I guess, as well. So I didn't have a sense that I definitely wanted to have children. I just knew that I wanted to have a bit more of a life outside of the office. And perhaps that might be possible.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Well, fast forward to now, for those that can't see, Fran actually has a very lovely bump with baby number two on the way and uh a little boy. So you uh managed to do life.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Yeah. I'm very interested in your move from Linknators because I also started at Linknators and I also had a very similar thought process in terms of I have no life. I'm working very long hours, I'd quite like to do a bit more life. And I moved to MishCon hoping that law in a different kind of firm would look different to Linknators, and it did in some ways, but not in quite a few other ways. I think culturally it was quite similar to Linknators, and my hours were a bit better, but you know, still working till 10, not one in the morning. So there's not much room for a life. So interested in terms of, I mean, clearly it's turned out really well. You're now a partner, you've been there for a long time. But just culturally, how Lewis Silken is different to Linklators and that kind of, you know, magic circle type firm. Um, and in was that what drew you to move to Lewis Silken?

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest things for me was thinking about potential not just necessarily moving to a different size of firm and a different culture, but also a different mix of clients with the with half an eye on perhaps I might move in-house. Um, and I to be honest, I probably did think I wanted to move in-house when I was leaving Lynx. So it was more of a move to, you know, broaden my skill set as well. I knew that working on smaller transactions, you know, you spent time at Lynx. The transactions that I worked on would one of the deals took two years, and that was, you know, the majority of my time for two years. So you didn't feel like you were getting the broad spread of work that would enable you to take on a role that was maybe, you know, a bit more dynamic than just doing large-scale MA. I was very lucky, to be perfectly honest. I think when you're making a move like that, going to a smaller team, they're not all looking for someone at your level of PQE in the exact team that you want to move in at exactly the right time. And I was the first person that we hired into the Lewis Ilken corporate team who came from a sort of big law background. And they were skeptical about it as well because they were like, well, you haven't had the sort of deal experience that our associates have had. So they wouldn't have hired me at 5-6 PQE. Um, I needed to move when I was quite junior. And I just got lucky that, you know, they were looking for someone at my level of PQE. The recruiters that I worked with sent my CVs to a couple of other similar-sized firms, and they just said, look, we're just not looking for someone at that level, like great CV, amazing background. If we were looking, we'd be happy to interview, but we're not going to make space. We don't need someone. So I I just yeah, got lucky that LS were looking at exactly the right moment. And we do have a very different culture. Um, we our chargeable hours target is only 1200 hours. Most people do achieve around that at the end of the year. It's it's not a, you know, the target's 1200, but actually corporate associates work 1600. That's not the case. We still work incredibly hard to get deals done. Um, you know, in the run-up to completion, we can still be working till three in the morning and that sort of thing. But the culture isn't that once you've done that, you'll be straight on to the next. It's take some time out, you know, week to week. The expectation isn't that you're going to be doing five deals at the same time. And so working till 10, 11 o'clock every night. Everyone has a life outside of the office, and we expect everyone to live a life outside of the office. We don't expect people to be working those sorts of hours on the whole. Um, and our clients, you know, some of our clients absolutely work insane hours. Some of our clients are in uh very intense industries. We have a huge employment team, they work for most of the other law firms in the city. So, you know, but for for me as a corporate lawyer, a lot of my clients don't come from that sort of environment. And so, A, they're incredibly grateful when we work really hard for them, and B, they don't expect it. Um, so it's just that expectation shift of of everyone around. Um, but yeah, as I said, we do still work incredibly hard. We're still private practice lawyers, subject to client demands, all of that sort of thing. Um, but I do think there's a difference in culture, and it's such a challenge when you're making a move like that to know from the outside if you're getting that better culture or not. Um I think you know, a firm like MishCon, particularly on the corporate side, they are keen to be doing those bigger transactions in a similar way to Link Laters and working with the similar sorts of clients, and they've grown a lot internationally. Um, we've grown a lot, we're over 800 people now.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

Um, and we do have quite a number of officers, but we're not, you know, we have different ambitions. We still want to maintain that culture and and the values that have always been part of the firm. Um, our most successful partners are the first people to say, please go and pick up your kids at 3 pm if you need to. Um, we don't have a five-day or four-day or three-day in the office policy. We have a two-day in-the-office policy. We're really committed to flexible working. Um, and our joint managing partners are both huge custodians of their culture. Um, rich less publicly, but very much internally. Um, and Jo externally, you know, she's a massive advocate for uh law firms shifting in culture and and being good places for people to work.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Before we get to the amazing flagship uh gender-neutral parental leave policy, can we just um hear from you about partnership? Whether that was always a goal of yours or whether that evolved over time. Obviously, when you left LinkLaters, it sounds like you just wanted better work-life balance. But when you around the three-year PQE, did you say to yourself, I I want to be a partner, or did that just come after you joined Lewis Silkin?

SPEAKER_03 13:39

Uh, don't tell the partners that interviewed me, because I think I definitely would have said it's too late now when you're gonna stick around forever and be a partner. When I joined Lewis Silkin, I actually in some ways thought that partnership looked even harder than it had done at Lynx. Really? Why do you say that? It's much more off your own back. Like, you know, you're not, you don't have the machine of the Lincoln's and the institutional clients. Um, that's not to say like people work insanely hard and commit and have to do so much to make partnership at Linklators, but um it it's much more you have to really think about your own career path, you have to focus on your clients, you have to work incredibly hard to bring in work, to maintain work, to sort of grow the pipeline. And given the size of the team when I joined and that cultural aspect as well, you know, if client demands clashed with the team's really busy at the moment, people are on holiday or on parental leave, whatever it is, the buck always stopped with the partner. They were the ones who had to pick up the slack. If there was no one else to draft the SPA, they would be doing it. Um, if they wanted to maintain a client and keep a client happy, it was on them. And we we've always had a brilliant team and people willing to work hard and be supportive and all the rest. But it's, you know, there's times when it's just that much harder as a partner in a smaller team where there's a bit less flex and people's expectations are to have more work-life balance and that sort of thing. Um, and it it just looks that much harder to um to sort of get there on your own, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

At what point did you say, say to yourself, I think I can do this? What would do you remember that?

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Yeah, five, six PQE. And I had a fantastic mentor who was um a very senior corporate partner. She retired last year and she was chair of the firm uh for the three years prior to retiring. Uh, I think it was about six PQE maybe. She'd sort of just said, Well, when are you gonna go for partnership? And she'd put the onus on me to be like, oh, okay, I do actually need to think about this and focus on it, not just do a good job of um the transactions that I'm working on. And because of the size of the team, size of the firm, the number of partners in the team, I'd sort of thought, well, actually there's no point thinking about it too much for a few years because we don't need more corporate partners in the team. And, you know, the size of firm, it's not necessarily down to the individuals. There's also elements of luck and a business case beyond you as an individual. Um but actually at LS, that's not how we try to see it. We try to see it as a, you know, does this person add to the business? And within the corporate team, we are more heavily geared towards partners than most corporate teams in London. Um, and she just made that point to me of like, well, actually, if you want to be a partner, then we'll support you. We're not gonna block you from that just because we have another, you know, we have a bunch of good partners and we don't necessarily need another one. Um yeah. Um, again, down to you know, luck of the drawer, and um, I found myself in the right place.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Um, I think it's more than luck, actually. Stop you there.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

I think a little bit more than luck put you in the position you and COVID, I think also was a massive um, you know, it shifted how we work. I worked incredibly hard during COVID doing a transaction with with Joe, that partner. Um and I think, yeah, she saw me go from being an associate to a senior associate, and that shifted mindset of really taking control of a matter. And she was very happy to let people drive things and do as much as they possibly could. And I was very happy to step up. I always felt much more comfortable and much happier in my career having a level of autonomy and seniority. I think that was probably the thing that unlocked for me as I got more senior. I just realized actually I really like being in the driving seat. Um, so that was probably the moment where the mentality shifted and then just hard work, drive in the right direction, having the right conversations.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

And having a baby as part of that as part of that process. Take us through where when you actually got promoted because it's we we we love to hear these kind of the timing is interesting here.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

I had Joe, that mentor partner, and then Paul, who's the head of my team. Um we'd sort of had conversations over a few years. They very much knew it was on the radar. Um we had Joe and I had been talking about potentially going for partnership in 2024. Let me get that right. Um, but at the same time, you can't guarantee anything. I didn't want to hold off life um in order to achieve that goal. It never occurred to me being in a firm like LS and knowing how many female partners have been made up around parental leave, uh, that deciding to have a child and doing the family thing would hold me back or cause an issue in terms of the timeline. Um and life doesn't work that way. Um, and you know, trying to have a family is not something that you can plan the timing of. Uh so when I fell pregnant, I realized that the uh interviews for promotion for 2024 would have been pretty much around the time that my son was born. Um, so it seemed like a no-brainer to um not go for it in 2024. Um I did have some wobbles in that process where I thought perhaps I shouldn't miss out on the opportunity and I should make it work and I should still go for the promotion, but luckily had some sensible partners telling me that I should, you know, take a step back, think about what was right for me. Um, and so we we sort of committed before I went on parental leave to 2025. Um, I'd done all of I could all that I could at that point. I couldn't possibly have picked up any more work or anything like that because uh I knew that I was going to go through the process whilst I was on parental leave. It's quite unusual getting a call sort of halfway through your parental leave to say, you know, you still committed to that, you're gonna have to do your application now. Um crack on with it. And you know, when you're out of the business, you don't know what's going on in the business, you don't know what's been happening with your clients. Um, and you have that mentality shift and that slight crisis of confidence, I guess, as well. Of would it be easier to just go back as a I was a legal director at the time when I went on parental leave in so many ways, it would have been easier to just go back on on that basis. But I also had a unique opportunity to say, well, there's nothing more I can do in terms of my business plan or my workload or anything like that. I do have to commit a portion of my parental leave to doing my application and going through the process, but you know, I can commit time to that on kit days and that sort of thing. It was a unique opportunity to be able to commit that time to the process. And that was it, the idea of um coming back as a legal director, taking on the workload again, having a small child, doing the nursery juggle, and then adding on trying to apply for partnership. It felt like actually, if I didn't go for it whilst I was on parental leave, I might have ended up pushing it out for a few years.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Was there anything about returning as a partner that was almost easier?

SPEAKER_03 22:47

In some ways, um, it was certainly easier coming back knowing that all of the partners knew that I was about to be promoted because I didn't get put back onto transactions or client relationships as a legal director. We all knew that I was being lined up for certain client relationships. I was going to take over some relationships from Jo when she retired. Um and no one was going to bring me onto a transaction with clients where like there was absolutely no need for two partners. Um so having just everything shifted, you know, return from parental leave, everything shifts. You have to reset how you want to work and approach things day to day anyway. And then I was resetting into a new role as well. So yeah, definitely having that level of autonomy and being much more in the driving seat and not having to make that shift from legal director to partner. It was just boom, straight in.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Yeah, we do see that kind of uh it can be a career pivot, maternity leave, rather than um something that's all about penalty and negativity. People step into a new role and kind of reinvent it themselves in some ways. It sounds like that that was quite a helpful break in time. Um, but interesting that you call it parental leave. And I think there's a reason for that, which I think we can't avoid. Um we know Lewis Silken, if anyone's been on LinkedIn in the last year or two, we all we will know that Lewis Silken has had a groundbreaking policy on um parental leave and the gender neutral angle. Can you tell us a bit about that and your involvement in that?

SPEAKER_03 24:33

So I was part of our gender group. We don't have a women in LS group. Um, I was part of our gender group in the years prior to going on parental leave. Um, and I do sometimes still call it maternity leave. I was part of a group of mostly women driving for equalizing our parental leave policies. It had very much been on the agenda back in 2018-2019. There were a few people who had been working incredibly hard and pushing, including Joe Farmer, um for a while, but then COVID obviously derailed everything. Uh, budget is always a concern with these sorts of policies. Um, but as a core group of women who were sort of, we sort of made it our focus um for a couple of years, we fundamentally think that the biggest issue for women in work is an expectation that if you choose to have children, you will take a period of time out. You will then want a level of flexibility when you come back in order to raise your small children. Um whereas for men, there's an expectation that they won't take, you know, if if they're career driven, if they want to be promoted, etc., etc., they won't take a significant chunk of time out, they won't seek any flexibility. And it's impossible then to compare someone who's taken time out with someone who hasn't. And for us, the way to balance that, rather than saying, well, we should give women all of this flexibility and still promote them when a man is saying, Well, I've worked harder. We thought, well, actually, we need to be saying to men, well, you should step up outside of work, you should take the time out. And so many men want to. Um, but they need that, you know, positive push. So it's not just the policy, it's also the culture.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yes, definitely. Because actually, other firms do have the policy, but they don't have the same culture around talking about it so openly on social media. I'd be really interested to know how many men take leave and how long they take on average.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

So even before we had the policy, um, Joe, who I mentioned earlier, uh one of the men in my team who was promoted not soon not long after I joined Lewis Ilkin, had a child around the time he was promoted. And she asked, How long are you taking off? Not, you know, oh, we'll miss you for a few weeks. It was you have to take at least three months. You know, we didn't have the equal policy at the time. It was never going to be six months at the time, but it was we expect you to take time out. And so we already had that culture. And actually, bizarrely, for even within the LS, uh, there's like five men in my team who've taken at least three months off work when having children. Um, since introducing the policy, every single man who has been eligible across partners and non-partners has taken at least 24 weeks fully paid leave. Okay. Either in a continuous block or discontinuous. So it's not the full year, no one's done that yet. Um women are still taking the full year generally, men still are largely taking the paid element. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you know, I don't know that we're gonna get that to that full point. I'm sure at some point someone will. Um, but shared parental leave wasn't working, and it particularly financially wasn't working for people. Um, so we felt we needed to completely equalize the policy to give people that push of like there's no financial impact, you can take six months out, your career expectations will be the same as for the women within the building. Yeah, which I guess is the key bit. Yeah. And there's still, you know, there's still some mentality shifting that needs to be done. People aren't used to men taking six months out in the run-up to a promotion, for example. Whereas within LS, we're very lucky we are used to that for women. Um, but I think we're pretty much there. And because so many senior men have done it, everyone else feels like, you know, that's the norm now. Yeah. And why wouldn't you take six months?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Like we work with other firms, you have similar-ish policies. A, the men don't take it, or they take three months. And then we have, in our capacity as Blue Sky, pitched to some firms where they have this equalized policy. And we feel quite passionately that women pay a much higher career penalty when they go on maternity leave. Like as you said, even with the world's best policy, men aren't taking more than six months. Women tend to take 12 months. And then the burden of parenting still disproportionately falls on women once they're back at work. So we'd seen with certain other firms where they have these amazing coaching programs for men and women, it was kind of falling in this key part of people's careers where men were using the coaching to accelerate their careers and women were using it to just not pay the penalty of going on maternity leave. So it was actually exacerbating their problem because they were like giving the men this extra step up. They already had one they didn't need. Um and we've spoken to some firms where they're like, no, we won't, we won't do your program because it's not gender neutral and we're like committed to this gender neutral policy. So yeah, which is really frustrating. Um so I guess we had a bit of negativity towards the gender neutral policies, because we saw it as all part of the package, but actually the way you're describing it in terms of also having that cultural shift at Lewis Silken and men are actually taking it, they're taking six months, and there's this real encouragement for them to do it, and everyone's getting used to that being part of the culture.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

It's just such a challenge. Like ultimately, what we need is a societal shift, right? Everyone needs to expect that men and women will want to take a significant chunk of time out of their careers to raise their children. Everyone wants a level of flexibility around parenting. Maybe it's not even for parenting, it might be for mental health, it might be for caring for parents, like, you know, whatever it is. We should expect everyone to want a similar level of flexibility in their careers, and we should encourage it because otherwise there's always going to be someone who's able to commit more time or whatever. And it's not fair on men as well. You know, I've got a few friends, their husbands have had similar policies, and they've been told, Well, you know, you're gonna screw yourself over if you take four months out or six months out or go down to four days a week or whatever, why would you do that? And that's definitely still seen as a more acceptable thing to say to a man. Women are still suffering quietly. You know, people don't say it to a woman, but it does affect a woman.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

I think those thoughts are still being.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

Yeah. There's still the problem of if you go down to four days a week, if you take a year out, if you require a level of flexibility, you are seen as less ambitious and you're not going to get promoted, you wouldn't say that to a woman anymore. People openly say it to men, and then they feel that added level of guilt, and we're just not used to society, isn't structured in a way where we encourage men to, you know, be the ones to step up and and shift the dial. So it makes, I mean, despite being one of the biggest proponents of equalizing parental leave and uh, you know, men taking time out of their careers for childcare, my husband only had three weeks because he moved jobs like two months before our two-year-old was born. So I found myself in a pretty, you know, unexpected position of I didn't want to stand in the way. He's an in-house lawyer. He's always worked in very small legal teams. Like the ideal role for him came up at exactly the wrong time for us. And I'm not gonna stand in the way of that. It's just such a challenge where we need that societal shift of expecting that men will take the time out. I think the only way that we get there is by introducing these policies, by having people like Joe Farmer um telling people what a difference it makes. I think one of the biggest things for us is seeing that this is reflected in people who um are campaigning for better outcomes for women. So um, I don't know if you know Jolie Brilly, um, who founded Pregnant Then Screwed, uh Elliot Ray, Anna Whitehouse. Jo is now working with all of them, which is amazing. Um, but they're all campaigning for better paternity leave as well and encouraging men to take time out. So I think we feel pretty certain that we're on the right track. But I completely understand the, yeah, the the gender neutral focus can be problematic because ultimately we aren't at equality. Um, you know, we're doing pretty well at LS, our female partnership split. I think we're at about 42% now. Okay. Certainly around 40%. Um but so you know, we're doing pretty well, we're closer than most firms. Um, but I saw the lawyer have a podcast today about um, I think AO have just announced that their board only has one woman on her. Okay, so streets ahead of AO. Yeah. Clearly just introducing gender neutral policies and not providing the additional support for women. Yes. You know, it's not, we're not there yet. We're not at the point where it's fair to give everyone an additional leg up when, you know, we still need a bit of equity. Just to round out on the um equal parental leave policy, I know lots of firms do have similar policies, but we're very clear that we don't want that to be a competitive advantage for Lewis Ilkin, and we're more than happy to share our policy with any other firm that's thinking about it. Our HR team are very happy to speak to other HR teams, um, share information on how we budgeted it, all of that sort of thing. So we do need the cultural shift as well, but we also we want firms, you know, as a profession, we can afford to do this. Um, and we do want other firms to bring in equal parental leave policies. We don't want it to be seen as a competitive edge for us, particularly, you know, we don't want an influx of men applying to Lewis Silkin because of it. Um, as much as I love my male colleagues.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

I'm sure it does drive um interest in your firm, the equalised parental leave. I'm sure people look at Lewis Silken and say, that's the kind of firm I want to work at.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

For both men and women, um, I think, you know, we had pushback when we introduced the policy. We had questions about whether, you know, why would we do something that's ultimately on the face of it better for men? Um, but women could see that it's all about, you know, changing the culture. And um the men at Lewis Ilkin, if they're in heterosexual relationships, then their female partners are so much more supported and so much more able to go back to their own big careers. Um, so it makes a big difference for the women out there outside of our building.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

So if you um were to meet your younger big law self, if you met that person today, what would surprise her most about your life now?

SPEAKER_03 37:03

That I could possibly be a partner in a law firm and have a small child and another one on the way. Um I think there's a um two uh two sort of aspects to that. One is finding the right firm, the right culture, the right work-life balance. Um, and the other is COVID, the shift in how we all work since COVID has allowed, you know, my husband also uh he started out at Freshfields and then moved in-house. We both took very significant salary cuts and you know uh we sort of curtailed what our potential salary um or earnings over our careers could be. Um but the cost of childcare and everything else and mortgages in London, um I don't think that I could be a partner at even a firm like Lewis Ilkin and have two small children and feel, you know, mentally capable, um, if it wasn't for flexible working and the shift in our working culture, um, you know, cost-wise, time in the day, the ability to get some get some sleep. Um, so I think, yeah, starting out as a trainee working insane hours and not being sure if private practice law firms could um sort of allow for living a sensible, well-rounded life. Um I don't think I would have expected to be where I am today. Was that a good answer? Or that was great. Yeah, that's I don't I don't want to be disparaging of of other firms. Um it's personal and um personal choice for you. I'm also conscious that it's so many law firms still are such a, you know, intense place to be. Um but hopefully we can shift the dial. There are so many, I know so many brilliant women and men at so many firms, and I think cultures are shifting. Um and you know, seeing that so many firms are introducing better parental policies, it's definitely a good start.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

Definitely. And when I had my first child, parental coaching didn't exist. So we have moved uh a long way from the last 20 years. And COVID has given women something that they didn't have before, as you said. So it's definitely given that flexibility that has made a difference for women's careers.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Yeah. And I know you're working with, you know, you're not just coaching women, you're working with firms and and shifting the dial and helping people to understand, you know, it's not just having children, it's also navigating fertility and miscarriage and menopause and you know just parenting in general. I mean, just stays intense throughout all the phases. So trying to, you know, help central organisation central management organizations know and understand um a little bit of flexibility might actually help in the long run to maintain um people's careers and ensure that they're giving their full selves. Well, thank you so much, Brian.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

We'll be watching to see the next stage of your career. But first, we've got to have baby number two. And um we wish you lots of luck with that. But thank you so much for um joining us today. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening to If You Ask Me. We hope today's conversation gave you something to reflect on, smile about, and maybe even something to put action in your own career or firm.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

If you enjoyed the episode, we'd love for you to subscribe, share it with a colleague or friend, and join us again for future episodes as we explore more stories and insights at the intersection of law, life, and what's possible.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

Until then, keep the conversation going and we look forward to you joining us again next time.