Welcome back to The Space for the final episode in our
Leadership and Law series.
For this episode, Emma Dennis speaks to Alison Richards, partner
in our Commercial, IT and Outsourcing team, to hear more about her
role at Gowling WLG, taking a non-traditional pathway into law and
her journey to partnership.
Alison also shares her thoughts on the importance of diversity,
representation and allyship.
Listen to the episode
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Transcript
Emma Dennis: Welcome to The Space, where we
break down barriers and perceptions about a career in law by
talking to the talented people of Gowling WLG.
I am Emma Dennis, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing senior
manager at Gowling WLG, so join me as we get to dive under the
surface and understand the diverse experiences and perspectives of
our people; how they have got to where they are and what they wish
they had known.
Today, we are here with Ali Richards, a partner in the
firm’s Commercial, IT and Outsourcing team, to hear more about
her journey into law, what her role at Gowling WLG is really like,
and how important allyship is.
So firstly, hi Ali. Thank you for being here today.
Alison Richards: Hi Emma.
Emma: You joined the firm, and correct me if I
am wrong, I think back in 2018? As a principal associate?
Ali: Sounds about right, yes.
Emma: And you were promoted to Partner in
2022?
Ali: Yes.
Emma: I mentioned, as I just introduced you,
you work in our Commercial, IT and Outsourcing team. I just
wondered if you could tell us a lit tle bit more about the type of
work that you do?
Ali: Yeah, sure. So, CITO, short for the
Commercial, IT, which I will not keep going on about. So, we do a
huge range of commercial work and within that department, we deal
with a lot of public sector work. My specialism is dealing with
work for the Government sector, but also other public and other
bodies that are ruled by public sector law.
So that might include, for example, housing associations, the
Birmingham 2022 Games and other bodies that have to behave like
they are public sector bodies.
Emma: I bet it was interesting working on
things for the Games?
Ali: Yeah, it was a really interesting time. We
had quite a number of the team seconded out to actually work
directly with the legal team at the Games, so they were in lots of
the day-to-day running. And then I stayed in the office, but we
were asked to support ad hoc contracts and various procurement
activity just as resilience work, because as you can imagine, it
was so busy and the sheer volume of work that had to be delivered
in a relatively small space of time.
Emma: Did you manage to take advantage of going
to see any of the sports?
Ali: Yeah, as typical as it was, I was away for
most of it, but I did manage to go to the closing ceremony, which
was just awesome and what a great event for Birmingham, for the
firm. The legacy continues doesn’t it?
Emma: Jealous, I am jealous you got to see
Ozzy, Ozzy Osbourne.
Ali: Yeah, Ozzy Osborne, the problem is, a lot
of people do not actually know who that is these days, but yeah he
was great.
Emma: Looking back now, so as I mentioned you
were promoted to partner in 2022. How has your day-to-day work
changed since then?
Ali: A huge amount. More than I probably
expected. There is probably less time to do the fee earning side of
things. Much more emphasis on making sure our clients are happy,
going out winning work, providing training which, of course, I have
always done, but the focus, the responsibility is quite different.
The buck stops with me and with the partners in the team as well to
make sure that we are working together, my focus is on the public
sector, much of the private sector is of interest to my
clients.
So, making sure that we are sharing learning. There is quite a
lot of change going on in Government at the moment, we were heavily
involved in COVID, thankfully that is rippling away, although going
to new phases of lessons learned from that.
We have got the new procurement rules, so we are constantly
having to track that and keep clients up to date as to what is
going on. So, there is constant change and that bridge between the
public and the private sector is really important, for consistency
and so that both markets are aware of what is going on.
Emma: And before you became a Partner, I am
just interested whether you had any preconceptions about what that
would be like? That have either been confirmed, or even debunked.
Were there any things that you thought it would be like that
actually the reality is either very different or the same?
Ali: That is a really difficult question. I
think the big surprise to me came from not realising how difficult
it was going to be to maintain the level of fee earning as well as
all of the managerial, the business planning, responsibilities,
that is a bit of a naive misconception that I would be able to
continue doing the same level, that is not possible. So, I tend to
be more on the supervisory side than actually rolling my sleeves up
and being involved with the day-to-day transactions, if that makes
sense.
Emma: Yeah, it does. And what do you enjoy most
about your role now?
Ali: There are a few things that I really
enjoy. One is influence. I have always been quite active in our
D&I agenda and having a voice really pleases me. I really,
really enjoy the fact that if I come up with ideas, I know they are
being listened, they have always been listened to, but I feel like
I am in a position to influence in a bit of a stronger way than I
was before. And equally, I am there to police what we are doing in
the team and if I do not feel like something is going quite right,
or we are interviewing, or we are running initiatives for the
EmbRACE network, I can say (a) advertise in our team, I can pull
people up if I think things are not quite being done properly, and
I can encourage people to get involved as well and I hope, I feel
like I have got a voice and I have got a platform to make a
difference in that respect.
Emma: And that encouragement, I think, it
really important. Especially from senior leaders across the firm to
be encouraging people to get involved.
Ali: Yeah, and there has been a couple of
other, I was involved in the Black Intern workshops, I was involved
in making sure that we recruited the right people and it is great
seeing them coming through. We have just had a cohort of trainees,
or perspective trainees coming through, so that was good getting
them involved and I have also had the opportunity now to become a
trainee principal so we have got the new cohort just started this
week and so I will be on one of the trainee’s journeys with
them for the next two years, which is really exciting too.
Emma: Brilliant. I do want to touch a bit more
on that allyship role that you have, but we will come back to that
a little bit later.
I guess now, if we look back in time a little bit to when you
were just trying to decide what you wanted to do with your life,
was a career in law always on the cards?
Ali: No, it could not have been further. No, I
left school young at age, I was 16 when I left school and I went to
art college.
Emma: A bit different.
Ali: I went to do design and textiles and I did
that for a year and there came a point in time where drawing the
same thing everyday really was not going to fulfil me and that it
was going to be very difficult to get a job and I remember my dad
at the time saying “Don’t think you’re leaving college
unless you’ve got a job to go to ” and I applied for a job
in the local court, so a county court job as a court administrator
and got the job and an avid fan of LALaw at the time, that is my
little confession.
Emma: LA Law has come up a lot in this podcast
series.
[laughs]
Ali: Genuinely that is what I thought, I am
having that job, that looks like really what I want to do. Loved it
and I had some fantastic opportunities to work both in the county
court as court clerk and also with the court administrators office
which helped with organising the judges, where they went to sit,
what cases they would try etc and then through that I got to know a
lot of the local solicitors and one of them said to me “Come
and do a training contract for us”. I got a job with the local
authority, a district council and trained with them as a legal
executive. Working full-time and then studying evenings to get my
legal execs.
Emma: God, that must have been a lot doing the
full-time work and how did you fit it all in?
Ali: Yeah, I was young.
Emma: You have got energy.
[laughs]
Ali: Yeah, still had energy in those days. It
was good though and it was a good environment to learn in, again
lots of exposure to projects that really make a difference locally,
you can see buildings going up and I was also with the district
council, as a litigator, so it is a transition from working for the
court to do civil litigation, so lots of debt recovery and
repossessions. That type of work.
Emma: So, you mentioned that you came the legal
executive route to qualification. How did that differ?
Ali: The traditional route is you leave school
with great A Levels, you will go to university, you will study and
you will either do a conversion course, because you have not
studied law as your principal or you will have studied law and then
you go on to do a training contract and you qualify and get to work
straight in the field, assuming everything goes to plan.
With a legal execs, traditionally its taken up, and was, because
again, the legal execs route has modernised some what, but when I
followed the route, it was ideal for people that could not go, for
whatever reason, to college full-time. Very few places offered it
as a full-time course, so it was always a part-time course, and I
was fortunate that there was a college local to where I lived that
ran the course. What that entailed was doing full modules, two
years of broad introduction to law and then for years three and
four you specialised in four subjects. The other thing you then had
to do was, you would work, you did not do a training contract as
such, but you had to continue to work within a legal role to become
a fellow of the Institute of Legal Execs, so all in all, that is
six years before you became a fellow.
Emma: God, so it is a lot. You said you were
working with a local authority, was it with the local authority
that you did the legal exec?
Ali: Yeah, so I continued to work at the local
authority for many years after that and then there came a life
moment where I needed to move up to the Midlands and I knew in the
back of my mind that there was this unspoken prejudice between the
roles of a legal exec versus a solicitor. Again, I am happy to say
that things are changing, it has become way more recognised route,
a genuine route to the law now. It was not then and I knew that if
I was trying to get into a role that was equal to the point I had
got a hugely well established role in Kent where I was based and I
was not convinced I would be able to come on the same salary or the
same level of seniority coming to a completely new area and so that
was the drive to think I am not taking a step back – I have
worked too hard – I will just prove to them I can just do the
same as them and I decided to do my solicitor’s exams as well,
which I also then did part-time and that was worse somehow because
that was weekends, so yes weekend study for a further four years
and working at the same time, so that was fun. I have to say I am
done with studying.
Emma: I think you have probably done
enough.
Ali: I feel like I have done enough for
now.
Emma: So, when did you move from working in
local authority? What prompted that change?
Ali: So, I had met my partner and he lived in
the Midlands, I lived down in Kent, so we needed to – after five
years of travelling and long-distance relationships – we had to
become sensible and behave like adults, so I moved to the Midlands.
That was in 2006/2007 and I had not quite finished my studying at
that point. In fact, I qualified as a solicitor and I was still
working in the public sector so I worked in three different local
authorities so I qualified in 2010.
Emma: It seems like there was a lot of hard
work and effort that went into qualifying as a solicitor. Were
there any challenges that you came across along the way –
anything that sticks out that was tough to get through?
Ali: They were life challenges rather than the
academic side because in amongst the move and in amongst the
part-time study, I had my daughter. I think that was probably the
biggest challenge. There was a point in time that I said,
“Right stop, I’ll put off my two last exams until after I
have had my daughter”. That was the biggest challenge and the
biggest like “Oh God I really, really don’t want to break
the momentum”. That was probably the hardest time. Then of
course baby brain, having to pick up your books again and then
finish the course. But I did it and that was all good.
Emma: Brilliant. So, I think that brings us
nicely to a little break. In part two, we will be talking more
about Ali’s journey to partnership and the importance of
allyship.
[music]
Emma: So welcome back to part two. So, Ali, we
are going to kick off with just some fun questions, just quick fire
questions just to get to know you a little bit more. What was your
first job?
Ali: Working in Tesco at a checkout, yes
Saturday job in Tesco.
Emma: Did you get to do all the beep, beep?
Ali: Well no, it was not beep, beep, it was
like a calculator on the tills back then.
Emma: Did you have the card readers?
Ali: Yes, that was the paper in between.
Emma: Yes, that was what it was like with my
first job, it was the paper card things. What is your favourite
season?
Ali: Winter.
Emma: I like Winter – Autumn/Winter.
Ali: Winter. Log fires. Crisp January
mornings.
Emma: Where did you grow up?
Ali: In Ashford, Kent.
Emma: What time do you usually wake up in the
morning?
Ali: 6.30 in the morning.
Emma: This is the big one. Is your bed made
right now?
Ali: Yes.
Emma: Everybody. It’s been my question
throughout the whole series, we had one person who had not made
their bed, which made me feel much better about my shoddy life
skills. Favourite movie?
Ali: Flashdance.
Emma: Ooh, I like that choice. What is your
dream holiday destination?
Ali: Mauritius.
Emma: Nice. What it your hidden talent?
Ali: Probably waterskiing. I have not done it
for a while now but that was my passion for a long time.
Emma: Wow, that is amazing. Right, we have got
some either/or questions now for you. Cats or dogs?
Ali: Cats.
Emma: Would you rather fly or have
superstrength?
Ali: Fly.
Emma: Are you more of an introvert or an
extrovert?
Ali: Introvert.
Emma: Night out or a night in?
Ali: A night out would be nice.
[laughs]
Emma: Just any night! Would you rather travel
to the past or to the future?
Ali: Future.
Emma: One last one. What do you think people
misunderstand about you?
Ali: I think it is a general thing. People do
not know what lies beneath, they do not know that people have got a
life outside of work.
Emma: Yes, and that is very true for lots of
people. You see the work persona of somebody, and you do not know
everything that is going on.
Ali: Yes, you work and attain this, so much are
going on in people’s lives, they have got young kids, elderly
parents, stress, dealing with all sorts of things and people do not
stop and think, it is not just about the job.
Emma: Yes, it is everything else as well.
[music]
Emma: So, I wanted to ask you some more
questions around your career. We have talked about your
qualification route. Once you had qualified, did you always know
that you wanted partnership?
Ali: No, and there were times – even colleagues
I work with today – where I might have wanted it I thought actually
I just do not actually want this at all and I have been through a
few times where I have said “It’s just not for me,
don’t want it” and then there is a little drive. I work in
two-year plans, that has worked for me over all of my career. What
is my plan for the next two years, not the next five years, the
next two years? Get there and then reevaluate and that is what I
have done.
Emma: What was making you think at times no, I
do not want that?
Ali: I think it is that feeling where you
cannot work any harder than you are in that moment. I work on and I
have worked on major projects, I mean huge Government projects,
that require you to just submerse yourself in for months and months
on end, really stressful, very rewarding working on big projects,
but that feeling that actually you cannot give anymore of yourself
because you are working flat out.
Emma: What would you say to anybody that is, at
any stage in their career, but earlier in their career at the
moment, who is looking at partnership and saying, “I don’t
think this is for me”. What would your advice be?
Ali: I always say “Never say never”
first and foremost. I think the two/three-year plan is sensible
– breaking it down into chunks, whether you are a trainee,
whether you are an associate, actually I think you should be
focusing on getting to the next goal more than a goal that might be
ten years away or five years away, wherever you are in your
career.
Emma: I think you are right. I think it makes
it more achievable as well when you are looking at something that
actually I can do x, y and z.
Ali: It does not mean losing sight of the
dream. I think just breaking it down into manageable, achievable so
you can sit back, pat yourself on the back when you get to the
smaller milestones and think well what is going right for me, what
is not going so w ell and working just slowly, steadily…
Emma: … and get there. What do you think
people should be thinking more about earlier on in their careers
that will help them get to that partnership goal eventually?
Ali: Networking is massive, and it is not
networking necessarily with clients, although that is really
important, but actually knowing the people around you especially
the firm, like Gowling, where we have such an amazing diverse
skillset. There is so many different people within our organisation
that you can learn from – our Innovation team. I think
getting to know those people and understanding how the organisation
works will stand you in just such good stead, way better than when
you come in, as somebody more senior, you have got to learn that,
and you are not quite sure where you are going. I think if you are
starting as a junior, as a trainee, get to know people, really
understand how to find information – I think that is my biggest
tip.
Emma: Yes, I do agree. It is really important.
You touched on this a little bit earlier, but you have been really
involved with EmbRACE, our race and ethnicity network, at the firm.
What made you get involved with them?
Ali: I think equal treatment. I have chosen
EmbRACE but all of the D&I groups that we have got at Gowling,
they are all important, but I cannot be everything to everyone. So
why EmbRACE? I think it probably stems from a childhood because I
was born in Zimbabwe. My mum was brought up in what was Rhodesia
back then and grew up being quite conscious of that colonial type
background and being not party to, but being surrounded by
conversations going on that I was really not comfortable with and I
cannot bear racism or people being treated differently and, I
think, that is why EmbRACE is the one that I chose but, I think,
equally I am a woman working in what was traditionally a man’s
environment and that is equally important to me. I think above all
else, if I do not think something is fair, I think we should be
talking about it – even if I am wrong but I will not ever admit
that I am so – but yes, I think it is what really attracted me to
Gowling because I know that it is a really, really strong area. It
is taken very seriously here.
Emma: With the work that you have been doing
with EmbRACE and the support you have been showing as an ally to
that network, why do you think being a proactive ally is so
important?
Ali: An ally is something that anybody in the
firm can do. It means that if somebody wants to talk because they
feel in any shape or form that things are not quite right or they
have been put in a position that makes them uncomfortable, they can
just come and talk to me. They can come and talk to me or talk to
anybody that is an ally and we can either speak up for them or help
them to speak up. Even if an individual has spoken to me, it may be
that I am not saying so and so or I am representing somebody, I am
just bringing an issue to the attention of somebody, that is not
right and I think that is really important that there is somebody
there that says “I don’t mind speaking up” which is
why I am here, that is what keeps me coming to work every day.
Emma: I wanted to ask you to know what you know
now, what advice would you give to your, let us say, 16/18-year-old
self?
Ali: Where do I start? And would my 16-year-old
daughter listen to me! Would I have done anything different? I do
not know that I would have. I certainly did not have the money to
go to university, that was never an option for me, and I had left
school early as well so, I think, I have done pretty well
actually.
Emma: I would second that completely. I have
got one last question for you Ali, what is the best thing that has
happened to you over the last week – it can be work, it can
be personal?
Ali: Over the last week? Well, I have just
returned from Crete which was pretty nice and did not have my
daughter, so seeing my daughter again was really nice as she was
not with us.
Emma: Feels like a good answer.
Ali: It is probably the nicest thing that has
happened.
Emma: Having been away and then got to see your
daughter, that is fantastic.
I just want to say a huge thanks to Ali for joining us today and
for sharing her story and insights.
This brings us to the end of this series in The Space so thank
you all for listening over the last few weeks and we will be back
later this year with a new series.
I hope you all have a wonderful week and remember we all have
the power to make a difference.
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