Month: March 2024

Consultancy is a growing aspect of the Legal Risk & Compliance sector. On Episode 15 of The UNCOVER Pod I spoke with Sarah Mumford, an Expert in Risk Management for Law Firms, to discuss her experiences of establishing a consultancy in the industry. Here are her insights: 

What are the main positives and negatives of taking on a consultancy role?

There is something very liberating about working for yourself, that’s a big positive. It has extended my working life considerably. I work very hard from Tuesday to Thursday. Mondays and Fridays are a bit more flexible, often, I have to do a lot of admin because even a one-person consultancy generates a lot. But I could go to the cinema in the day if I wanted to. 

I think you get to know yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. After a long time, I finally gave in and employed someone to be my IT department because I was getting myself tied up in knots. 

How does joining a firm on a permanent basis compare to a consultancy basis?

When you are an interim person, you deliberately don’t set out to make a permanent fixture. You’re not trying to have as many relationships as you would in a permanent role. You work out who you need to get things done instead. You’re not doing a deep dive, it’s more shallow. One of the great advantages when you arrive as an interim person is that people don’t really know who you are or that you’re there. You’re not invited to meetings, so you can get masses of stuff done. 

One of my mantras as an interim person is to change as little as possible, because, by definition, someone who is coming in after me will have their own ideas. It would be very annoying, and one of my mantras is ‘Don’t be annoying unless you have to’, so I don’t change things that I don’t have to. My job is to keep the ship steady and maintain the morale of the team.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow a consultancy path?

I always buy a new notebook and write down the pros and cons. It may just be a question of looking at ‘Who do I know? What do I know? What will make me happy?’ They’re quite open questions. Then, working out the finances is important because you cannot have financial worry or fear. 

Next, you should start asking around. People have interim jobs all the time, and if you can’t find them through your network, specialist risk and compliance recruiters will know about it. Join one of the many risk groups or form one yourself. There’s a strong sort of self-help in the risk world because we are on our own as a rather odd hybrid because we’re the minority in business services because we’re lawyers, and we’re a minority among the lawyers because they see us in business services. So, we have to make our own tribe. 

It’s a question of making sure that you are as connected as possible and that people know that you’re out there. My advice is always to look at who you admire and figure out why you admire them. Work out if that fits your personality. It’s a question of being self-aware and being clear about what you want to do. But do not be rigid.

To find out more about life as a consultant, listen to Episode 15 of The UNCOVER Pod here.

Navigating a career in the Legal Risk & Compliance industry can be a complex task. To help you get started, I spoke to Charlotte Miner, the Director of Risk and Compliance at Accelalpha, on Episode 14 of The UNCOVER Pod about her experiences of moving through the sector. Read on to hear her insights from the beginning of her Legal Risk & Compliance journey to more senior specialities. 

Is there a piece of advice you wish someone had shared with you early on in your career?

I wish that somebody had told me that it’s okay if you don’t know all the answers. I remember being much more junior in my career and being terrified. It’s more important that you have the confidence to say ‘I don’t know the answer, but I’d like to. I’m going to try and work it out by doing you know, X, Y, and Z.’ What is more important is having those interpersonal skills that enable you to build relationships and work through problems under pressure. That’s much more important than what you know because that can be learned. 

Especially as I moved into managerial roles and began to interview people, I would much rather offer someone a role who was honest about their experience. Tell me about the softer skill sets that you have and how you’ve developed. That will set you apart as a candidate much more than saying ‘I know how to do absolutely everything on this side of business intake’. That’s a really important point to get across for candidates – your soft skills and personality are far more important than your knowledge base. 

Is there anything that you would advise our candidates to do more proactively?

It’s tricky for candidates now, because in my early days, if there were a tricky situation, I would go and sit down with somebody and go through it with them. The likelihood is that they’re not in the office anymore so that physical relationship has been removed. It’s so important to utilise things like Zoom to get that face-to-face contact as much as you can and have those conversations. Firing emails back and forth doesn’t often solve the problem and doesn’t necessarily build the relationship. 

Just calling somebody on Teams helps you find out what’s going on, and then you can ask ‘Can I come along to the departmental meetings? Can I listen to what you guys are up to? Can I introduce myself?’. It’s a combination of building on those individual relationships and then doing more ancillary stuff around the edges that will build your profile within the company and give you exposure. If the senior people in those meetings and briefings see you as available to help them, you’ll move away from that old attitude of risk and compliance being the ‘Business Prevention Unit’ that’s there to make life difficult. You have to take a proactive, two-pronged approach. 

What advice would you give to candidates who are considering a transition, particularly if they’re moving away from a specialist Legal Risk & Compliance role?

I think you have to understand where you’re going and what you are going to be doing. Being honest about what you can and can’t do will help you too. I had a number of interviews where I explained what I had done and what I could do, but I was also very honest about the things that I couldn’t do, the things that I hadn’t had experience with, and where I needed to grow. In the interview, you should try to get an understanding of the support you’re going to have too. So that was a big thing for me because I was willing to throw myself in and get involved in whatever they needed me to do, but who was going to help me build my experience and expertise? During the interview process, I got that feeling straightaway of whether this is a firm that’s going to look after me, invest in me, and give me opportunities to develop my career. Making sure that that all matches up is really important. 

To hear more from Charlotte about her experience of moving through and out of the sector, tune into Episode 14 of The UNCOVER Pod here.