Reigniting Legal Careers

Reigniting Legal Careers

Lisa Unwin is co-founder and CEO of Reignite Academy whose mission is to help female lawyers have fulfilling, long term careers. On a day to day basis, Lisa is actively involved in all recruitment and coaching activities. She leads training for lawyers on how to ‘future proof’ their careers and regularly speaks at events on how to navigate a non-linear career.

Lisa was named as one of LinkedIn Top Voices for her writing on women in the workplace and diversity in general. I spoke to Lisa about the Reignite venture.

I'd like to begin by asking you about a recent platform you held at Sidley Austin that I attended, and that was very successful I thought! It was an anniversary celebration of Reignite Academy four years on. So just tell us a little bit about that, and what it meant for you.

Well, what it meant was, that we were able to reflect on what we've learned over the last four years. We set up four years ago with the hunch that there were many experienced female lawyers who had dropped out of private practice and who wanted to return. We've proven that to be the case, and I think it's only after this period of four years, that we have been able to confirm the success of this venture.

A significant event then!

Yes. We also held an event in Sidley Austin in March 2020, where we were celebrating two years of being in business, but shortly afterwards, we all went into lockdown and thought we would not survive. In effect, we have done more than survive, as Covid has helped people realize that you can work from home. It's made everybody accept a lot more flexibility.

And you got some really good feedback at the event, one point beautifully made by Fatema Orjela of Sidley Austin was that: as women become more senior their female peergroups shrink. What about that?

That's an important point to make because in the law, women are definitely 50/50 with men at the junior level, but still their law firms are losing women as they get more senior. It’s an issue not just for the women who leave, but for the bonds that are left behind. Fatema was saying that the younger generation suffer because they don't have any role models, but the older generation suffer because they have no friends. So there are more dimensions to this problem than just getting somebody a job, as it impacts on the wider ecosphere.

Fatema Orjela: 'as women become more senior their female peer-groups shrink'

I see. There was a young woman who came in boldly with the assertion 'there's no skills gap', what did she mean as that was received with warm laughter?

So that was Charlotte, she was a restructuring lawyer who had been at Freshfields law firm before leaving to join her family. She loved being a lawyer however, and wanted to return to it after a five year gap – potentially a five year ‘skill gap’ – but her point is, one of the things we know about lawyers is that they are good at learning law. So even if there were some legal changes in that five year period, all she had to do and indeed did, was get up to speed with the law. And she brought her five years of experience outside of private practice with her – that is; of being on the board of a limited company, of being responsible for governance issues, and of being responsible for managing a workforce. So she returned as it were, with further skills gained by doing a different role. She was framing the point that in effect there can be huge skills gain as against gap.

What about the sector’s recognition of soft skills that we see increasingly, and how that is often associated with women?

I think women naturally will, through their life experience, gain some skills that you don't necessarily gain in other walks of life such as in a professional job for example. I don’t like the term ‘soft skills’ as often the so called soft skills such as negotiation, and managing conflict – are quite hard to perform. …but because they're not technical, they're deemed ‘soft’.

Towards the end of the platform, I was interested in your own point, that Reignite is not just about private practice, but also in-house law practice. Can you unpack that for us?

When we began as an organization, our members were private practice law firms, but over the years we have placed people into in-house roles too, and we know that a lot of women who come to us might have trained in private practice, but really, they're looking for something different and they're quite attracted by the thought of going in-house. So we're trying to open up more roles for those women. In fact, one of the things I should mention is, we are working with the Centre for Legal Leadership to design and deliver a one-day course for people who are attracted by the idea of pivoting into an in-house commercial role but are not quite sure if it's possible. So we've organised a day's training to give people as much information and knowledge as we can, to give them the confidence to make that move.

One man from the panel raised the matter of the work-life balance in relation to shared care responsibilities, which you followed up with a point about Reignite not being only about women. What do you mean?

I mean, we have men coming to us as candidates and we have given lots of advice to men. We had one man for example recently, who had relocated with his wife to Australia for three or

The Reignite Academy Team: Melinda Wallman, Alicia Roscoe, Lisa Unwin and Tanja Spittal

Audrey Doline associate at Baker Mckenzie, speaking about her return to work after a break

four years and had needed to take time out for that. Another man had gone to do humanitarian work in Moldova and took time out for that. So men are making life choices too, and need to take career breaks. It’s a gender-neutral matter in this sense, though of course, it has been more common for women to experience this issue but no doubt will become more common for men too, in the future. Men want to take paternity leave. Men want to parent their children, so I think there is slow change, but it is changing.

In terms of the industry today, in your conclusion you talked about the ‘contemporary moment’ and you said there's a tendency in the industry to revert to what is known “in times like these” you said, “Reignite has to pursue firms even harder”. What was that about?

Well, there is a felt sense that we are potentially facing recession and law firms are quite conservative. So, this time last year the recruitment market was booming. Firms were all chasing candidates; it was relatively easy to get job. It's completely the opposite now. There are more candidates than there are roles.

Can you tell us any success stories you have had?

A lovely woman who was an energy lawyer at Herbert Smith, in the corporate energy team had then gone to work for Shell. So as an in-house lawyer, she had worked for some big corporate energy firms in legal private practice, and had then taken some time out to have twins, but wanted to return. She wanted to do city quality work, keep a work-life balance and have her expertise in corporate law recognised. Not easy you might think – and yet she has found a place as a corporate senior associate with Bates

Wells B Corp law firm, where she met the new Human Resources director who valued her corporate expertise. That was one of our most more recent placements.

Yes, and I wonder then, what are your plans and thoughts for Reignite over the next four years?

Goodness! Well, we need to place more people, we need to do more in-house recruitment. We want to help women have long term sustainable careers. One of the things we're working on is to put on a developer programme for lawyers, bringing in interesting external speakers to provide information and inspiration. To be delivered to female lawyers of in-house and private practice. To encourage networking.

I see. Lovely. And you, yourself, you write Lisa. Tell us, just a couple of things that you've been writing about in the newsletter or elsewhere?

Just my own thoughts and then occasionally I also post on LinkedIn in a personal capacity case. Where I'm just saying, here's what I wrote. For example it's International Women's Day.

Is there anything you want to add, Lisa?

Just that the significance (of what we are doing at Reignite) doesn’t always come across in a tangible way, but take the meeting tonight, for example, there's 20 other people at the centre, and we're all getting together for a drink, but the joy in seeing those women whom I first met - nervous, freshly divorced, thinking they couldn't do it, now three or four years on… .more confident, maybe still nervous, still having imposter syndrome, but having fun too, you know, I can't tell you how satisfying that is.

Yes…

We're friends with each other and talking about getting people back into this field…. The women see they are not in isolation. I see

It’s the power of networking!

Lisa also does a regular newsletter on LinkedIn as Lisa Unwin https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/that-was-the-weekthat-6733796877738745856/

Molly Bellamy

https://www.linkedin.com/company/reignite-academy/?viewAsMember=true