The In-House Lawyer - Michael Phillips on being creative with law, psychology and ADHD

In this episode, Michael Phillips, head of legal at Lloyds Wealth, takes us on a whirlwind tour of his varied career, from academia to politics, law, and psychology. Along with host Annmarie Carvalho, Michael discusses ways to juggle the demands of a high-flying career with ADHD, and gives some hot tips on how to improve your workplace and get your work-life balance right.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hello, I'm Amory Carvalho, the lawyer's therapist and CEO of TCC, the Legal Therapy Coaching and Training Agency. Welcome to Stay Insane in Law, the show where every episode I'm in conversation with a member of the legal profession talking about the gritty realities of life in the law. And today we're joined by Michael Phillips. It's great to have you with us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hi Maria, it's a delight to be here. It's wonderful to join you on your new endeavour. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes and thank you for inviting me to participate.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

So, Michael, you are the head of legal at Lloyd's Wealth. And previously you were a private practice lawyer in Australia before moving to England and working in-house. And as if that wasn't enough, you also have an MSc in organisational psychology from Birkbet University. So you're not only a top lawyer, but you're also psychoanalysing the hell out of everyone you work with.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

I think Michael's Michael's just showing off now, isn't he? I mean, normally one of those would be enough for a career. I'm here in the producer's booth having a massive case of CV shame now. Uh help me.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Um I don't think you I don't think you should have any CV shame because most of it is a is a trial is a tale of um of failure course correction and um scrambling up a hill to try and get out of a hole. So I the reason there's so many things on on that CV is because I've had so many right turns and wrong turns and then roundabouts and then all all kinds of changes of directions. And I also can't psychoanalyze people because um I'm just a works work psychology graduate. So I don't I don't I don't have those tools and I'd hate to think that my colleagues thought I was doing that. I don't think they'd trust me if I if I tried to do that. But um it's a nice thought.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Okay, I feel a lot better now. Thank you. That was very Are you okay, and that was very supportive.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Um on that note, I'm going to pivot to take Michael back to you talked about climbing, I can't remember exactly your terminology, but climbing up hills, failures, and and uh one of the things that really strikes me from having spoken to you previously and and heard you on various things is you're talking about your career not being a straight line. Um now I like people who don't walk straight lines. I like people who have a kind of wiggly wonky kind of career like I have as well. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about how you ended up walking this kind of wiggly wonky line, if I can call it that.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

A wiggly wonky line is a great way to describe it. So um you mentioned I was in private practice before I moved in how to actually before I was in private practice. Um I wanted to be an academic. So um when I finished school, I enrolled in a law degree, but I kind of um wasn't that happy with it and I kept on sort of dropping out and wanting to do things I was really super interested in. So I loved politics and history and all that kind of stuff. So I ended up doing it an extra year on my politics degree. I did an honours year, and then I love that so much. I'm going to do the PhD in political philosophy. So I was kind of on the track to become an academic. I was like going to be a philosopher at one point. Um, and then I kind of got to the end of that and I realized there wasn't a lot of um paid work as a philosopher. Um, so I thought, ooh, I better, I better finish my my kind of law degree and and have a trade. I think my dad advised me, always have a trade, you know, so you can pay your bills. And I kind of started out with my my law thinking it thinking of it in those terms, like not necessarily the thing I always wanted to do, but um as my way to earn a living and you know, pay my way in the world. And so it wasn't sort of the natural fit for it. Um and and I kind of put it off as far as I could. I kind of kept deferring starting law. I did things like um I did an extra year as a judge's associate in the Supreme Court in Sydney, kind of researching and you know, writing papers and bits of judgments and stuff like that. And then I started um in private practices in a litigation role, which I thought I'd love. I thought it'd be really super cool, you know, going to court and arguing all that kind of stuff. Ended up it was about document review. I can't do this the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

This is the great lie about litigation, isn't it? Everyone thinks if you do litigation, then it's like being in an episode of suits and you swish around and it's really glamorous.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Yeah, that's what that's actually what I thought it was gonna be. And everyone told me that it wasn't gonna be like that. And I went, nah, surely not. Surely it must actually be really exciting. Um, and so that didn't work out. So I thought I'd give up law altogether and went and worked at Parliament uh as a committee officer for the Parliamentary Committee on Law and Justice, and was project managing parliamentary inquiries, and then that was really interesting, but it didn't quite work out because I had too many political views, and I was in a not political role. So that kind of didn't work out. I thought I'll try law again and um interviewed this firm, and the managing partner said, I don't think you'll ever be any good at litigation, but you might enjoy corporate law. And I it turned out I did. I enjoyed that a lot more. Um he described it as being much more um kind of strategic and adversarial than you'd expect, which is what I thought you'd get in litigation. It turned out it was, you know, you're doing these deals and thinking what party on the other side wants and maybe more of their strengths and weaknesses, how do you work through that? Um and it was exciting and urgent and high stakes, and those are the environments that might come on to ADHD later. I tended to like, but that was pretty good. Um, but still was a bit disenchanted. And I different urges at different times of my career to do things like academia and teach and stuff like that. Um my career looked like a disaster for most of my career. I'd be very honest if you like people would say, What are you doing with yourself? Um, you know, you can't stick at anything, you've had these opportunities not be able to progress, etc. And I didn't understand why until much later. Um but actually in mid to later career, those things sort of turned around and started to become advantages. So the fact that I'd had probably half a dozen specialisms by the time I was 35, 36 meant actually as I moved into more senior-olds, I could put the bits of the jigsaw puzzle together. And so I could see the you know the whole landscape of the problem and where it might head, you know, that time in litigation actually turned out to be quite useful in the end. Because I, you know, when you're doing litigation, you're looking at what went wrong. This is like a really detailed dissection of a car crash. And if you've got that experience, you can extrapolate it forward. So you all of these things, even the stuff that I kind of struggled with and was bored by, ended up being useful. And then you put the package together and you end up being more effective.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

I I love it though, because you know, particularly for our younger listeners, our kind of more junior lawyers, you know, who might be struggling in their earlier careers. And like me, I qualified into general litigation and then changed practice area after a year. You know, you sort of and there were various kind of little turnoffs and stuff. I think turnoffs? That sounds weird. Different turnings, let's say. It can feel like the legal profession is not the place for you, can't it? So actually, I think it's really important that people hear people like you who say, yeah, it was all a bit kind of wonky and wiggly, but nothing is wasted, which is what I kind of took from what you said. It always reminds me of was it Steve Jobs who talks about doing some kind of random calligraphy course at university and he was dropping out and sleeping on someone's floor, and then it turned out to be, you know, the the font that discovering the particular font that you needed to use for Apple? I I love that sort of thing, the idea that nothing is wasted. You you also mentioned ADHD, which I think is again is really important for people to hear about because many of our listeners will have a diagnosis or be thinking about, you know, you know, whether they do have ADHD. And we understand much more than we did 10 years ago, but there's a long way to go. What do you think the legal profession is getting wrong with how it deals with neurodiversity and particularly ADHD, in your view?

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Uh so I think there are some things that are positive that are happening. So I'm I'm I wouldn't want to forget that. I mean, there's a lot more discussion about neurodiversity now than when I was just starting out in my career. Um, and that in itself is massively helpful. Um there's a lot of um effort and goodwill, I think, by employers trying to make um their organizations um more supportive, the colleagues who've got neurodiverse conditions. The thing that I think though that would be really great for everyone is that if we started thinking about the ingredients of a workforce that make it easier for people with ADHD to be successful are actually good for everyone. Or most of them are good for everyone. And so instead of thinking about um people with ADHD as having a special condition that needs reasonable adjustments, I mean that that is a useful thing in the law to have, of course, if you need to rely upon that. But I think it's probably more powerful to think about can we have a workplace that's got flexible working for everyone? Right. So um I am not productive for eight consecutive hours sitting at a desk in front of a screen uh at all. I mean, that is a bad that's a bad model for me. But that's the traditional model of a of going to work. And we've replicated it a lot in homeworking. It's even more intense in homeworking. Um I don't do that anymore. I've learned from experience that actually uh if I am struggling with a problem, a really knotty problem at work, the best place for me to solve that's on a bike. Weirdly enough, about you know, eight, 10Ks into a ride, my brain will kick into problem-solving mode and I'll finish the ride and I'll know what the solution is, and I'll have it written in a PowerPoint in my head. And that's great. That's called flexible working. And I'm lucky to work at a place that's got that. Um, but there's a lot of talk about you know, return to the office and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We've got to get everything back in and back to the old ways of working. And I I do worry that that is a massive backward step.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Are you finding it's a bit of a sort of struggle between that sort of old school of management saying, no, we we can't do this, and oh, we we don't want people working at home because we know they're sitting there in their underpants, you know, playing angry birds.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Speak for yourself, Andrew. Speak for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

I've I've got outdoor clothes on today, though. So how are you finding that? People listening to this this point of view, is it is it getting resonance and traction?

SPEAKER_01 10:49

I don't think I've ever been asked where I physically am uh at any time in my current role, but I read a lot about different firms taking the opposite approach and requiring, you know, four days in the office. And I do I do worry about that for the people who are in those organizations. It is great to be with people. Like I I love going to the office, get a lot of energy out of it, but it is about connecting and collaborating, whereas not all of our jobs and all of our times are about that. And sometimes you've got to get into delivery mode, and your delivery mode might be different for different people. And if you've got um general policies that support flexible working, people with AHD don't need to ask for permission then to find the right uh ingredients for how they can be most productive. It's just taken for granted that everyone should have that um ability within reasonable grounds and business birth, all that kind of stuff. Everyone has the ability to set those uh conditions for success for themselves, and they might be different for different people, um, particularly if you think about all the different uh circumstances that any individual can be in. We've all we've all got those you know challenges and balances and opportunities. So if everyone has that freedom, I think then we all have the best chance of succeeding. So I think when we ask what's what are we missing, I think uh let's make work the best we can for everyone. Where everyone can see succeed, and you don't have particular groups asking for permission and then sort of being tied into us against them type of thinking, which is another kind of headline you get around ADHD, you know, it's it's overdiagnosed, there's special pleading, you know, these people should just ban up and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I think that can happen when you've got, you know, you you've got to put your hand up and ask for a dispensation. Whereas if everyone's got it, you've got the the workplace set up so everyone can see it's just easier, and I think it's better overall for everyone.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

So I well, I don't have have a diagnosis, but I I suspect I know what the answer would be if I did. You're kidding me. I think it's really interesting, and that's why I find it interesting speaking. I was gonna say people like Michael, I don't people like Michael, but you know, people who I think of as lawyers, people within the legal profession who are creative, those are the sorts of people I'm really interested in, and I gravitate towards. Because as Michael said, I had times when I was in a law firm, you're doing the long hours, and I just can't sit there for that amount of time and concentrate. By 3 p.m., I'm just like a puddle of something on the floor. I just can't do it. Whereas now I work odd hours, I work in weird ways, I walk around with a massive piece of paper with like a mind map where I'm planning different things. And and I'd sort of come to that, these ways of working, and I have my fidget toys, and I can't spend eight hours a day on a zoom screen, otherwise I implode. You know, you find you find your way, don't you? And this is the luxury of age, you know. Obviously, us three are all very young and very youthful, but I think we can say we are not in our 20s, and we, you know, you learn who you are, don't you? And you also, you know, I I would like to think that there are law firms and organizations out there who are thinking about things in the way that Michael describes. I I worry and I hear from junior lawyers a lot that when, you know, they are asking for adjustments or they're thinking about ways of working that work for them, a lot of seniors are saying, yes, but you juniors need to learn by osmosis. So you need to be in the office and you need to be sitting with um, you know, your manager, and that that's how we learn. And I get, I do get that to a certain degree. But I think also what, you know, the legal profession can be a little bit slow moving in some areas. And so all the kind of clever things that we can use tech for now, demonstrative learning, learning on screens, you don't have to be sat together for, um, you know, that's all helpful stuff. I guess, yeah, in conclusion, what I would say is I've I have learned to create a work environment which works for me and my weird wonky brain. Um, but not everyone has that luxury at the moment. One of the other things, just to kind of slightly, I don't think this is a tangent, but one of the things I was really interested to talk to you about, Michael, is the fact that you are quite open about having received therapeutic support during your legal career. And I wondered how you think that has changed how you work, as well as your masters, and what you know these days about psychology.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

So I grew up in Australia in the 80s and 90s, uh, which dates me specifically, um, in a time when uh there wasn't a lot of discussion about um emotions and a lot of access to therapy, sort of sort of kind of grow you know, grown men don't cry kind of approach. And Australia, by the way, has changed dramatically. That that is no longer the case in Australia. Much more open now, much more open discussions. But it it sort of meant that for a lot of um particularly men, I I would say, not just men, but particularly men, I would I would say when they hit troubles uh later in life, as you do, as everybody does, um life things throws at you, throws things at you. You sort of didn't know really what you were experiencing. Uh you couldn't even put it put a name to it. So you're very unprepared for things in life that could be dealt with relatively easily. And so I was in that position, and I was um I would say I had uh anxiety at work from late 20s into my 30s, some kind of come and come and go. But I didn't really recognise as anxiety, I thought it was just physical physical things. So, for example, um, if you had a sleep problem, uh you might not connect that to stress at work or to the label of anxiety. You might just think that, you know, I've got to take more magnesium or something like that, that, you know, that kind of thing, or put some scent on your pillow that will make you go to sleep, um, and so on and so forth. Or um the other thing I used to have was kind of you know, heart palpitations would sort of have this kind of you know, be on the on the way to work, and my heart would be pounding, you know, before a meeting. It was a bit strange, but again, sort of not connecting it to anxiety because you think that's a mental issue, or you know, digestion problems, another another classic one, or all kinds of mysterious illnesses. And it wasn't until I kind of did go through some um mental health training at work, and then also my psychology masters, I started to put the pieces together. It was really late in the day, really. And it was at that stage thought, oh, okay, right, I need to talk to a therapist. Uh and the thing I regret about that is I could have done it years and years earlier. And I I always say to people now, like, there really isn't a need to wake. If you if you need professional help, you should you should just go and get it. I mean, this the stigma that I grew up with has largely gone, I would say, in organizations that um I'm familiar with. It's perfectly okay today. And this is an another wonderful thing about how the world's changed and things have moved on. I think it's perfectly okay and acceptable now to talk to your line manager or your colleagues about the need to get help. And then lots of firms do provide that help for free, or or you can go to the NHS or any other provider, etc. Um, and so it had had a dramatic effect on me because I said anxiety is actually in many cases very treatable. Um, it can be treated with uh CBT I had and medication, and you just look and go, oh, why did I wait? It's sort of right, it was a really own goal to have waited so long because it had such an effect. But um so that's one one way in which it's changed, it had a media effect. And the other way in which um therapy helps you is you learn you learn the um signs of stress and you learn how to how to deal with them early, so you can intervene before things become difficult. And so I'm I'm now for me, anxiety was very physical. So I I can now key into the things that are happening in my body really fast to understand where my head's at. Um so when that happens, I might get on the bike again. Do you know what I mean? Or or I might finish early and go to the gym, or I'll organise something fun to do, or you know, I'll call my mum and ask how she's going and get and get some family love happening and all that kind of stuff, or I'll I'll make a nice meal, you know, things that are all great for your uh overall health, and they can just bring the body back down and bring the anxieties back down. And and that is a huge change, but it's also um it's connected to that flexibility point I was talking about again, because uh the ability to do all of that is is kind of contingent on having a degree of flexibility and autonomy about how many you're working. Um and if you don't have that, if it's a three-line whip to get to the office at 8.30 and work through till 630, 7 feet, 8 feet, or later if you're doing a big deal, you you don't have that ability to flex on and off and to take the pressure down when you need to bring it down. You're just running it full running at full tilt forever. And then of course that's what gets you into the the the really difficult problems where you feel you just can't cope and you've got to take time out of work. So it's it's been a real positive for me, and so I encourage people to to get that help and to do it, to do it early, because it really can have a very huge impact on you know, not just dealing with the sort of crisis, but actually making your your life more sustainable and your work a lot more enjoyable.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

It's about being responsible as well, about your your own self, isn't it? You know, like thinking ahead or recognizing the signs, as you said. And that's one of the things I always really notice about working with lawyers in therapy is the physical manifestations of stress and mental health conditions, like you say. It's really apparent, I think, because often we're we're just not in touch with our own bodies and our emotions because there's no time to be. um and so that's often how it kind of you know these things sort of squeeze their way out um and yeah I particularly enjoyed as well when you were talking um about you know one of your anxiety relieving techniques was calling your mother and I was thinking that's for many people I'm lucky to have a good relationship with my mother I don't know that's fantastic that's a real point of point of hope my father as well sorry I always speak to them together they they're both you're very very functional family I I feel intense envy at this point Andrew I don't know how you feel you call your mother and and you don't put the phone down and say no she's right actually I am a failure no I I always laugh a lot when I speak to my parents and and they do too um so yeah maybe I'm just lucky yeah so producer Andrew we will tell you as I've demonstrated again today that I struggle to turn on my own microphone and speakers without assistance for these podcast recordings. AI I just wanted to talk to you briefly about AI and your feelings on it which I presume are much more positive than the average person on the street. So why should I not be freaked out and running down the street screaming at the advance of AI? What's your take on it?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

I think maybe you should be running down the street freaking out um if you're not prepared to engage with it. You know it's it's one of those things. If you ignore it and put your head in the sand um maybe it will come for your job you know depending on what you're doing. But if you decide you're gonna engage with it, you're gonna learn about it, you're gonna work out what it's good at, what it's bad at, how you can deploy it to make your life better actually at work to get some things done that maybe you didn't enjoy doing uh to allow you to do the stuff that you did, I I think you'll you'll be in a much better position um for the for the next way in which lawyers work to get those jobs. I found it really reinvigorating actually working with with AI I I was doing contracts you know the old fashioned way you know human reading through them all you know marking them up in words sending them by email waiting a few days you know all that kind of stuff and um do you know what it's really time consuming uh it's really repetitive most of the time you kind of know where you're gonna end up if you've done a lot of negotiations but you go for you know there's a lot of um you know boredom in that whereas if you think oh right there's a potentially a better way of doing it with AI and you work out you know the right use case for the AI and you do your business partnering right back to you know listening to your stakeholders your internal clients what's the problem we've actually got to solve that it can be really exciting uh the other thing I've learned is it it's it's not a silver bullet right you can't just buy some AI and turn it on and expect winning results like it it it is a you know you've really got to pay attention to it and try and learn about it but I've I've potentially I I've really found it quite exciting and I think a lot of people are feeling the same way. There's a huge amount of interest in AI lots and lots of lawyers now really getting involved in it. It's not quite clear where it's going to end up but you know what I remember starting work and um back in the day when I first started and we still had paper files and we were you know just moving on to word processing and we were running everything on email and paper at the same time and you know what you know people survived you know lawyers survived we got the internet we we all survived and I think that's because people eventually um when it comes down to it when they need legal help they need to know that they can trust the person that they're getting the advice from so you still I believe looking at a a human for that you know automation of process stuff but if you say I've got this problem in my my life or my business or my work you know what should I do I think you need to speak to a human and that and that is where I think that that is going for lawyers to really leaning into your you know back to your listening your you know your um empathy your ability to build trust your ability to communicate your ability to be uh understand context and think things through and all that kind of stuff and then and then to and then to have that relationship that means the person at the end on the other end of the conversation the client believe that that's that you're acting in their best interests I'm not sure you can get that from a machine maybe you can I don't know maybe you can not yet maybe not yet the skills of yeah judgment discernment empathy all those things um I love it I love that we're sort of ending by talking about creative lawyering.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

I love this idea of creative lawyering so thank you I feel much better now I feel like we've all received a dose of therapy in this uh session today um so I just want to say thank you so much Michael for joining us for staying sane in law you can find Michael at the Lloyd's Wealth website also at your LinkedIn page I think you're pretty active on LinkedIn um and you can find me at cavalotherapy.com that's C-A-R-V-A-L-H-O or my LinkedIn page at LinkedIn.com slash in slash amory carvallo. You can also find my legal agony ant column in the Financial Times on Thursdays in their newsletter. And please do check out our podcast episodes at stayingsain in law dot buzzsprout dot com or wherever you get your podcast. So thank you again Michael it's been wonderful to have you with us um and thank you everyone for listening and now I'm gonna hand over to Michael to take us out.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

It's been an absolute pleasure thank you for having me. I really enjoy the discussion and uh I love what you're doing Emery in law I mean you're a you're a culture warrior improving the lives of of everyone that you come into contact with so thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

And remember we're all a bit wonky my parents always used to do that thing where you know when text messaging first came in where every message you get for them was in capitals because they didn't know how to turn capitals off or my dad never even knew how to use spaces so it was just this stream of hi dad hi is dad by my mother's on the phone she's saying why can't I be more like that nice guy Michael and she does get a bit tired of me after a few days she starts mentioning how nice it is to have a quiet tidy house