Profile: Tricia Chatterton

Learning to succeed

Regional director at the UK legal education and training provider the College of Law, Tricia Chatterton tells Women Legal about the skills needed to advance in the law firm environment and the drivers for success on entering the profession.

What attracted you to the legal profession?
Typically, I think for someone working in the legal sphere, I wanted to be someone who made a difference. I had also analysed what it was like to be a lawyer and I thought it required a skill set that I had or had the capacity to develop. So after a short stint working as a graphic designer, I took myself off to the College of Law to retrain as a lawyer in 1985. After completing my training contract at a regional UK law firm, Eggertons & Co, I went on to work in the corporate department of the regional UK firm Halliwells and finally a general practice in Cheshire called SAS Daniels – thereby gaining a really well-rounded experience as a practising lawyer.

What prompted you to make the move from practising law to teaching law at the College of Law?
It was a lucky break largely motivated by my having children. I had taken a career break when my two children were first born. And in 2000, just as my youngest started school, I was offered the chance to start as a tutor at the College of Law. Having children helped me realise just how much I enjoyed developing people – after all, as a mother you are essentially developing little people – and prompted me to recall, from my time in practice, that what I had actually enjoyed most about being in practice was developing junior fee-earners and trainees. My calling, I realised, lay in teaching law as opposed to practising it, and as a result the opportunity presented to me by the College of Law was something I relished from the outset.

So, why the move from teaching to regional director of the College?
By 2002, I had been promoted to managing the College’s teaching staff, and so when the regional director job came up it seemed, to me, the next obvious move. As regional director, I am responsible for developing business for the College in the UK’s North West region. This involves my regularly talking to clients and generating new customers and clients, finding out what the market wants and ensuring that we are delivering it. So, it is a challenging yet hugely rewarding role that, given my skill set, seemed a natural career progression for me.

In your experience, what are the greatest obstacles facing women working in the legal profession today?
I would say that the greatest hurdle women in law face is the lack of a good work/life balance as a result of the long hours culture. This culture is still very prevalent in the legal sphere in this country and, indeed, throughout the world.
To counter this, we try to ensure all our students, regardless of gender, are aware of what the legal profession is really like, and the skills that they will need to develop to succeed in such an environment. Indeed, our training programme includes structured and continuous instruction in key life skills such as networking, negotiating and presenting with confidence – all areas in which many women feel vulnerable. The feedback we have received from those that have undergone this training has been overwhelmingly positive, with former students reporting that it had equipped them with a level of confidence enabling them to make themselves known very quickly to the firm, often resulting in being marked as one of their leading trainees.
It surprises me, therefore, that this is training that not all entrants to the legal sphere are receiving. Certainly, as female entrants to the profession now significantly out-number male, it is an education that the female workforce entering the law can greatly benefit from. For, as is widely documented, although female lawyers are entering the profession in greater numbers than their male counterparts, many entrants are still not reaching partnership. Developing personal skills, such as negotitation and presentation, could help them get there.

What advice would you give to women entering the profession?
I entered the legal profession in the late 1980s and I think life – in general and in business – was substantially different then than it is now. It was much more of a man’s world. I was, I remember, surprised by the strength of the old boy’s network. And although I was lucky enough to work for firms who took me on my own merit and, leaving the profession early as I did, never had to experience a battle for partnership, I was aware that women were greatly underrepresented among law firm partners and senior managing partners. And yet, even today, I do not think that women in the legal sphere have won all the battles that need to be won or made all the advancements that they need in order to be treated equally in every situation. My top tips for those entering the profession would include:

1. Invest in ‘soft skills’.
Simply knowing the law is never enough for anybody, you need brush up on soft skills, such as your social networking skills. Many women have innately good social skills that can almost certainly be used to their advantage in the business context;

2. Remember you are working for a business.
You can’t approach the business and demand your right for the business. You have to first think: ‘what can I do for this business?’ If you make yourself invaluable to the business, then the business starts to value you. It is a question of approach and making a business case for yourself, marketing yourself to the powers-that-be. It can make quite a difference to how you come across to people;

3. Keep things in perspective.
I have spent so many hours, days and particularly nights worrying about things which the next day or the following week turned out to be nothing to fret about. As a young person entering the profession, I think you can feel very exposed. It is with experience that you learn to worry less and trust that problems will be resolved. That is not to say you don’t do everything you can to avoid difficult situations, but if you are faced with an issue, with experience you know that you will come out the other end and it will be okay.

4. Take time out for you.
It is easy to take on too much when faced with the challenge of a new job, marking time out in your diary for yourself is very important. And ensure you stick to it – it’s as if you have made an appointment with yourself.

Who would you say is a good role model, for women in the legal profession?
There are lots of people around the world and in history that I admire, but if I had to pick one role model I think it would be the British monarch Elizabeth I. Throughout her reign, she had to be both brave and strong, clever and daring, and all the while surrounded by men plotting against her. People like that make great role models for women in the legal profession, and indeed professional woman in general. Indeed, the skills Elizabeth I needed to develop to succeed are expertise many women in law, and beyond, must also build on to thrive.

What’s next?
Professionally speaking, the College will be launching a new centre in Manchester and also expanding our centre in Birmingham. But aside from those developments, I think it’s a case of ‘watch this space’. We are always looking for new developments in the market, and positioning ourselves to make sure we can respond to the market as it inevitably changes and evolves. Personally speaking, my immediate plans are to take a holiday with my family!

Tricia Chatterton is regional director at the UK’s legal education and training provider, the College of Law. She can be contacted at tricia.chatterton@lawcol.co.uk