When you’re building a legal career, gaining a diverse range of experiences will be highly beneficial. On Episode 17 of The UNCOVER Pod, Claire Larbey, the General Counsel of Trowers and Hamlins, joined me to explain how you can do just that in the Legal Risk & Compliance space. Read on for her insights. 

“The risk and compliance space is a really exciting space to be in. When I first started out, it felt like more of a secondary career. It didn’t seem like a dedicated career space. Now, you have to be really good at what you are doing, have a good knowledge of contract law, or have a great background in professional negligence, litigation, data, anti-money-laundering or financial crime. There are so many career elements to this. 

Risk & Compliance is so wide and varied and one of the challenges is narrowing down and figuring out what you want to specialise in. Is it conflicts? Is it anti-money laundering and white-collar crime? Is it insurance? There’s definitely a good career scope in the risk & compliance field. It’s not a secondary career, and you don’t have to be a solicitor either. 

There are really good career paths for you if you haven’t qualified but have a grounding in those legal areas. Even if you just get certain compliance within the team, you can move over into in-house work or into other law firms. Regulations will continue to challenge firms, so compliance will continue to be a growth area. It’s incredibly interesting as a profession because you can go across a number of areas.

It’s also rewarding because we are working together seamlessly with the legal teams. Partners are coming to us for help and support, and we feel like we are all pulling in the same direction. The key thing for me is we’re not seen as a team that says ‘No’, we’re seen as a team that listens. We try to reach a resolution and have empathy with the partners and what they’re looking to achieve. We communicate effectively if something can’t happen and explain to the partner why in a way that they completely understand. That shouldn’t be underestimated. We are a service team to those partners and the other employees. It’s critical that they feel like they have the right support in place. 

To hear more from Claire, tune into Episode 17 of The UNCOVER Pod here.