Career Experiences

I have decided to write this account of my own struggle of getting a job in the legal sector despite having a Diploma from the Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs and also to question whether transphobia exists in the legal profession.

First of all, a bit about myself: I am a 42-year-old transwoman (that is, a pre-op male-to-female transsexual), and I live in North Kent. I currently attend the Gender Identity Clinic in London about once every four months as part of the treatment. The condition is officially known as gender dysphoria, and those undergoing gender reassignment are protected under the Equality Act 2010. I am also an ex-serviceman, having served with the Regimental Band 2nd Royal Tank Regiment in the late ’80s and early ’90s. 

This is the final part of the series and I thought that I would end it with the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me in my legal career.  Before I do this, however, I just want to mention two incidents that are highlighted in my memory.

For a period in my career, when I and my family had moved down from London to Devon, in the West Country, I ran my own conveyancing practice, which became very successful – so successful that I incorporated into it a high street estate agency so that I could provide the two services under one roof: negotiate the sale and/or purchase of clients’ properties and do the conveyancing for them, all for one composite fee.

A question a lawyer is often asked is, “How can you defend a client when you know he or she is guilty?” The answer to that, of course, is that you can only know if a client is guilty if he admits it, and if he does admit it, then, of course, you cannot run a ‘not guilty’ plea – you can plead in mitigation, bringing to the attention of the court any circumstances that you think will help the court in determining the sentence to pass, but you cannot put forward a defence to the charge, because such a defence would be spurious. However, what about a situation where your client’s instructions show that an offence has, or may have, been committed, but it is not the offence that he has been charged with?

One of my hobbies is going to folk clubs. I do comic songs, and once I made up some doggerel about things which can go awry in a legal office – for instance, an inexperienced casual receptionist telling a client point-blank that the legal eagle is too busy to talk to him or her, rather than ‘talking round the subject’, explaining the fee-earner is presently occupied and taking a message. I do not want to alarm any budding young Legal Secretaries by mentioning solely things that can go amiss, however.

Last month, I promised to tell you about my ‘run-in’ with His Honour Judge Claude Duveen of Slough County Court. This happened in the mid-1970s whilst I was with Campbell Hooper & Austin Wright at their Sunningdale/Ascot branch office – a very upmarket firm with some famous clients, such as Diana Dors, England’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. In fact, Ms. Dors was the English equivalent of all the blonde bombshells of Hollywood. She described herself as “the only sex symbol Britain has produced since Lady Godiva”!

Many people think that lawyers are dull fellows (or Fellows) and picture them wading through dusty tomes in dusty offices with quill pens in hand and sour expressions on their sour faces. Not a bit of it! (Although, I must admit, I can think of one firm of Solicitors in a smallish town in Devon, not a million miles away from Exeter, that does not seem to have been able to dig itself out of the Dickensian past – but they are an exception.)

The Legal Secretaries Diploma is studied by a wide range of students of varying ages and different backgrounds. Whether you are young and just starting out in your career or you are an experienced professional and want solid career direction, our course is suited to you. One of our students, Annabel Hammond, proves the latter. We were very pleased to see that she achieved a distinction for our course with a result of 99%. This is an extremely high achievement and shows that Annabel has great attention to detail and an excellent understanding of law and legal procedures.
 

I started working as an office junior in November 1999, aged 17 years.  I had actually wanted to be a Travel Agent, but upon gaining one day’s work experience with a local firm I decided this career was not for me, mainly because they put me in a back office to file invoices all day.  I really believe that if you are trying to sell a position to someone, they need to experience it properly in order to make an informed decision.

Three weeks later I found myself still unemployed and getting desperate to stand on my own two feet, which is when I came across an advertisement in the jobs section of the local newspaper for an Office Junior in a City Centre Solicitors firm.  At this point I didn’t have any office experience, but as they were advertising for a junior I thought, “How much experience could they want from me?”

The subject of law fascinates me extensively. I am intrigued by developments in the legal system and the way that it adapts to an ever-changing society.

As a child, I had a broad interest in many subjects and always pondered my career for the future. The thought of engaging in law never crossed my mind until I was given the opportunity to work in a legal environment. My current employment has given me valuable insight into work in the legal domain and immediately I knew that a career in the legal environment was one which I would indulge myself in and which would enable me to expand on my interest in law.

I joined the firm Trowers & Hamlins in 1998 to assist a partner in setting up the Bahrain office. We started with two rented desks from Ernst & Young. This was my first time working with lawyers and it was a real eye-opener. I had been working for the management consulting arm of KPMG, so I was used to working on lengthy documents, but not so used to the exacting standards required in a law firm. I now try to assist new secretaries and trainees to come to terms with what, in the non-legal world, would be treated as being particularly pedantic. I appreciate how the insertion of a comma can change the emphasis of a point, or inserting the word “reasonable” will allow a clause to be accepted by all parties to the contract.