16 minute read
What does it take to, literally, be a Master?
What does it take to, literally, be a Master?
Until recently Sarah de Gay was Master of the City of London Solicitors’ Company, and President of the City of London Law Society. Charity Mafuba caught up with her to find out more about what the role involved, how she got there and what she’s planning to do next.
Charity: You grew up in Grimsby and are very proud of your roots (as you should be). What was it like growing up there?
Sarah: You have done some impressive detective work, Charity!
Although I was born and bred (some might say “made”) in Grimsby, it’s not something I have talked about that much. And, sadly, the reason for that is probably obvious to many. You’d think that coming from one of England’s poorest and least socially mobile towns, and being educated in non-selective state schools in the area, would give you a “leg up” when it came to seeking work in the City of London. But when I was trying to find articles (the then equivalent of a training contract), the very opposite was true. So, I learnt pretty quickly not to mention it unless I had to. I managed to secure lots of interviews for articles at City law firms in the 1980s because my academics were good, but I didn’t get a single offer. I ended up (very happily as it turned out) training and qualifying in the West End and moved to the City later (and accidentally) when my firm merged with a larger City law firm. And from there I went bigger still by moving to Slaughter and May, the firm where I practised (and consider to be my legal home) for about 28 years.
More recently, I have begun to talk about Grimsby more. First and foremost because I was “discovered”, a couple of years ago, by a lawyer called John Bowers KC who, among other things, happens to be the Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. He is a fellow “Grimbarian”, openly proud of the fact and does a great deal to promote the town and its people. He encouraged me to come “out of the closet” and through him I have met some incredible people from Grimsby living and working both in the town and in what John calls “the Diaspora”. We regularly meet to discuss the town’s fortunes, and what we might do to help. There’s certainly a new energy about the place, with new-ish employers like Orsted investing there (helping to make Grimsby a key player on the so-called “Energy Estuary”) and with Jason Stockwood and Andrew Pettit (both successful businessmen/philanthropists from the town), along with others, taking control of Grimsby Town Football Club, turning its fortunes around and in doing so reinvigorating the town’s pride.
Charity: As someone who has carved out a successful career, you are the epitome of “one’s background not being a deterrent to their success”. In the interests of advancing social mobility in the legal field, how important is it for law firms to consider people outside the confines of the “City” who are deemed to be in “cold spots”?
Sarah: Despite all the exciting things happening in Grimsby in recent years, there remain some legacy challenges. I was dismayed to read this headline in The Times, in July of this year – “Grimmest place to be a girl? Grimsby”. A recent study has apparently established that girls are worst affected by lack of progress on gender equality in North East Lincolnshire. Because Grimsby is built on male-dominated industries like fishing, this can, the article said, lead to girls being held back by out-dated stereotypes. This certainly resonated with me, from my own upbringing, but I had assumed it would all have changed for the better long ago. Possibly not the case. So now I am talking about Grimsby a little louder and encouraging large law firms and other prospective employers in the City to visit it, and other neglected coastal towns, to search for young people (not just girls) to both inspire and support.
I think there’s a tendency for some London-centric organisations to visit other vibrant, successful and easy-to-get-to cities like Manchester to “tick” the Northern/diversity box. Our coastal towns are much harder to get to and need the benefit of visits and other initiatives too, and arguably more.
Charity: You have a very close relationship with your sister, how has she influenced your career journey?
Sarah: Every woman needs positive role models in their life, and my sister was definitely one of mine. She’s considerably older than me, 16 years in fact, but we couldn’t be closer. She’s my favourite person to spend time with (apart from my husband, sons and their partners of course) because she has boundless energy and makes everything fun. Her career story is hugely impressive too. Having left school at 16, she experimented with a number of jobs before becoming a nursery nurse at a local school. She was good at it and soon realised (with the support of a self-found mentor) that she couldn’t progress without qualifying as a teacher, so went back to college and then re-entered the world of work. It wasn’t long before she was the head teacher of a state-run nursery school, something she both enjoyed and excelled at. She has a deep-rooted sense of public service without being at all worthy. She’s both resilient and focused. We have this “Grimsby grit” in common, and I am pretty sure I get mine from her.
Charity: What made you decide to go into law?
Sarah: It was a hard decision because as a young child/teenager I was a talented artist and would really have liked to do a Foundation Year and gone onto to do a Fine Art degree. But I wasn’t brave enough to pursue that path. I couldn’t envisage how I would ever be able to support myself and I knew that as soon as I left home, at 18, I would need to be financially independent. So, I decided to study something which more obviously promised a job at the end of it. I’d never met a lawyer (in fact no one in my family worked in an office) but I had watched Crown Court on the television and that influenced my choice. Not only did the lawyers on the screen seem to be in constant demand, they also appeared to “save” the underdog and that appealed to me too. This persuaded me to study law and luckily I enjoyed it.
Charity: You have such an illustrious career. Can you tell us about your various interests and passions and how you manage them all whilst still adding value?
Sarah: I have been lucky to have had such a rich and varied legal career and the opportunity to re-invent myself a number of times – starting out as a Corporate/M&A lawyer, then establishing Slaughter and May’s Compliance Department before becoming the firm’s first General Counsel (GC). After stepping down as Slaughter’s GC at the beginning of 2021, I established a non-executive portfolio of roles, each connected with values, standards and ethics.
“Every woman needs positive role models in their life”
Sarah: I have been lucky to have had such a rich and varied legal career and the opportunity to re-invent myself a number of times – starting out as a Corporate/M&A lawyer, then establishing Slaughter and May’s Compliance Department before becoming the firm’s first General Counsel (GC). After stepping down as Slaughter’s GC at the beginning of 2021, I established a non-executive portfolio of roles, each connected with values, standards and ethics.
Currently my roles include being: an independent member of ACOBA (the Cabinet office Committee which advises the Prime Minister on applications made by former ministers/senior civil servants to take up roles in the private sector when leaving public office); a Trustee/Director of The King’s Foundation (the charity founded by HM King Charles III, when Prince of Wales, to put his philosophy of “harmony” into practice) ; an independent lay member of the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee (which sets the standards for UK papers and magazines regulated by IPSO to comply with); a Visiting Professor of University College London’s (UCL’s) Faculty of Laws (where I devise/deliver lectures on ethics-related topics, with a very practical emphasis, and support academics with research projects).
I also support various ad hoc projects from time to time (e.g. I am a Member of the Institute of Business Ethics’ Taskforce on Business Ethics and the Legal Profession, which is currently examining where the boundaries should lie when it comes to acting for kleptocrats) and do some commercial work on a consultancy basis (e.g. hearing workplace grievances, helping
organisations to divine and define their purpose/values, conducting corporate governance-related reviews).
I am highly selective about what I take on, and my personal slide rule is that I only want to be “a member of a winning team on a worthwhile mission”.
I am also finding time, now that I am working more flexibly, to revisit the unfinished business of my artistic past. I have taken up portrait sculpture, and model large heads out of clay. This summer, I stretched my creative ambitions a little further by attending a residential sculpture course, working for the first time with chisels and stone.
Charity: You served as Master Solicitor at The City of London Solicitors’ Company in 2023-2024. What did that role entail?
Sarah: I did and was proud to be the Company’s fourth woman Master in its circa 100 year history. I was preceded by three incredible women in role (Karen Richardson, Alexandra Marks CBE and Dame Fiona Woolf DBE), but a woman had not been Master for some years. I am delighted that the Company now has a number of impressive women on its Court (its equivalent of a Board of Directors) and so there will be many more female Masters in years to come.
The role is (broadly speaking) equivalent to being the Chair of a Board of Directors, but it’s also very ambassadorial – championing everything not just the Company does and has to offer, but City solicitors more generally regardless of their area of practice or size of firm. It’s not just about Corporate lawyers and the biggest firms. I am proud that the Company’s membership increasingly represents the full diversity of those practising in the City.
Charity: On reflection, how important was it to represent women in that capacity?
Sarah: It was certainly important to me personally to remind City solicitors that a woman could do the job. But what I hadn’t realised, until I took office, was just how under-represented women are in the livery movement as a whole. There aren’t that many women Masters across all 111 livery companies. It’s hard to be precise about numbers, as livery companies operate to different calendars and appoint their Masters at different times of the year, but at a guess it seemed to be around 10 to 20 per cent at any one time. I found this quite perplexing and even disorienting at first, but, thankfully, I met a few woman Masters early on and we formed an unofficial support group fairly swiftly. They are amazing individuals, and I am certain we will be friends for life.
Charity: You have previously mentioned that what you enjoyed the most during your tenure as Master was meeting and supporting aspiring /younger solicitors with regards to their career journey. What are some of the ways in which you achieved this?
Sarah: One of ways I did this was by supporting an initiative called City Century, a collaboration of 50 or so City law firms which, under the energetic leadership of Patrick McCann and Jo Hughes, is inspiring talented individuals to explore City solicitor degree apprenticeships as an alternative to the traditional route of going to university first.
Early on in my year as Master, I did a keynote speech for Patrick and Jo at an event for Solicitor Apprentices held at Allen & Overy. I was bowled over by the quality and qualities of the Apprentices I met (who seemed to me to be potential law firm leaders of the future), and have been a champion of City Century ever since. I was even persuaded to speak to over 1,000 year 13 students, in a panel discussion about apprenticeships, at an event held at the Queen Elizabeth II centre - a daunting experience but incredibly uplifting.
One of the things I have shared with aspiring solicitors, drawing on my own career experiences, is the importance of getting to grips with the unwritten rules of your profession/organisation quickly and I have offered some tips on how to go about that.
Charity: Additionally, you also mentioned the insightfully diverse conversations you were privileged to have prompted, developed and joined. Specifically, addressing bullying at work, imposter syndrome and the meaning of “integrity” in the profession. How did you do that?
“There will be many more female Masters in years to come”
Sarah: There’s a (minimum) eight-year trajectory to be Master of the City of London Solicitors’ Company, which gives Court members a real opportunity to contribute to the life of the Company and its offering to members. One of the things I did in my lead-up was to establish a programme of events called “Food for Thought”
“Food for Thought” was designed to tackle, head on, the misconception that our livery company is little more than a private dining club for white men. The series has covered topics as varied as these:
• “Do women make more ethical lawyers?”
• “What does climate-conscious lawyering look like?”
• “The challenges of bullying; what can law firms learn from the Raab Report?” (A favourite of mine as it took the form of a panel discussion led very skilfully by Clare Wilson).
Many City solicitors (and, in my experience, women especially) favour content-rich (as opposed to purely social) events which offer the opportunity to meet other interested/engaged lawyers from different law firms to discuss the pressing topics of the day. It’s not for the Company to have an organisational view on any of these matters (we are not representative body in the same way as e.g. the City of London Law Society); instead, I see us as a key facilitator of important conversations, where all thoughts can be freely and safely expressed (under the Chatham House Rule) and we can learn from each other through hearing varied viewpoints.
As to “integrity”, I (very skilfully!) outsourced that job to Professor Steven Vaughan of UCL’s Faculty of Laws. Each year the Master of the day invites someone to deliver “their” Master’s lecture. Last year, Past Master Tony King asked Dan Neidle to talk to “How loud, and when, should lawyers be shouting about the rule of law?”. I decided to move the conversation on (some might say “back” given that acting with “integrity” is one of just seven SRA Principles) to what acting with integrity requires of solicitors. Steven
spoke to the title “Moral Remainders: What is the Price of Professional Integrity?”, and his academic paper which followed is already proving to be influential. He is one of just a small handful of academics in the UK who researches, as well as teaches, legal professional ethics as a topic, so I was delighted that he agreed to give “my” lecture, complimenting “Amplify!” which was the theme for my year.
Charity: On the 21st of May this year, The City of London Solicitors’ Company held a “Lucky Girls” event at Slaughter and May, which asked women in the earlier stages of their legal careers what support they felt they needed to progress in City law firms (and how the livery company could help them with their journey). You prepared a thematic note following the event, which you shared (via LinkedIn) with the profession. Can you please tell us more about this?
Sarah: I was keen to offer an event during my year focusing on women, and in particular those in the earlier stage of their careers, which is how “Lucky Girls” came about.
The principal goal was to ask women solicitors what they themselves think they need to succeed in City law firms, and to explore how the Company can support them in that endeavour. All available places went within days –although it was free to attend, it was a proverbial “sell out”.
Lucky Girls took the form of a discussion (led by Jane Edwarde) with a panel of outstanding women lawyers at different stages of their careers (Alexandra Marks CBE, Clare Murray and Sophia Bell). They generously shared what has worked for them in terms of career advancement. Attendees then considered these questions on their tables, supported by rapporteurs who reported back to the room on principal themes:
• How far do you plan ahead when it comes to your career?
• Do you think you need a five year/similar plan to succeed?
• What would the key elements of any such plan be, and how might the Company support you in succeeding?
Some really interesting themes emerged (you’ll need to read my note to find out more!) and one strong request was for support on how to network better, and to enjoy it more – in response the Company has planned “Lucky Girls 2”, a masterclass on the science of “working a room” to be led by impact guru Esther Stanhope in October 2024, and very generously hosted by Weil Gotshal & Manges. (This time we are making a small charge of £20 pp with all proceeds going to the Company’s Charitable Fund).
I should stress that none of the attendees at this programme of events is a lucky girl – everyone is there as an already successful professional operating at the top of their game. The title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the TikTok sensation of the same name which suggests that it’s possible to manifest a promotion – the Company is unpicking that notion, naturally!
Charity: What does the future hold for you?
Sarah: I have promised my husband that I will spend more time with him and be free to travel. So, the first priority is to go on holiday! But predictably, I also have a few irons in the fire for when I return – to fill, not in whole but perhaps in part, the livery-sized hole in my life. And, of course, I will continue to support the Company no longer as Master but as an active member of its
“The title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the TikTok sensation of the same name”
