Profile: Ann Alexander

Facing the challenge

As deputy chairman of UK networking organisation, The Legal Alliance, Ann Alexander works to make the legal sector more accessible and promote quality in the legal service delivery. She talks to Women Legal about a career spanning decades and disciplines.

In the past 30 years, Ann Alexander has transformed herself from pioneering clinical negligence specialist and founder of UK-based personal injury firm Alexander Harris to business-development consultant, and most recently to change advocate in the legal sector.
Yet, after graduating with a degree in law from University College London in 1975, Alexander was all too aware that to succeed in the fiercely-competitive, male-dominated legal world, she would have to overcome a number of obstacles. “When I was at school, if a woman wanted to combine family life with a serious career, the only real option was teaching, which afforded at least some flexibility in the workplace regarding hours and the ability to run a home and family,” she says. “If you wanted a career in a profession like law, then frankly you were in for a tough time.”
Yet, as growing numbers of women began enrolling in higher education throughout the 1960s, Alexander made the decision to take up the challenge. “The professions were not yet prepared to accept us as equals back then,” she says. “When I graduated, half the people I graduated with were female. And yet 30 years on considerably more of the men who graduated alongside me have progressed to take up senior roles in law firms than my female peers.”
The problems lay in the choice many women lawyers were faced with once they had children. “The options then were pretty much black and white – either you stopped work altogether or you went back full-time,” Alexander explains. “A return to work part-time was really a non-starter; first, there was no specific legislation for women who wanted to return to work part-time after having a baby aside from the UK’s Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which has developed through case law to give women the right to return to work part-time – but it took well into the 1990s to be truly effective. Second, the culture within law firms then was such that part-time work was not considered an option.
And yet on giving birth to her first child in 1981, Alexander says that her choice was clear. Seeing her legal career as just that; a career – as opposed to just a job – she decided to return to work full-time. “I was determined to succeed,” she says. “A lot of my peers dropped out along the way, either because they chose to or because they simply couldn’t cope. When I then divorced in the late 1980s, I had to pursue a career at the same time as single-handedly managing two growing children. I really don’t know how I coped, but somehow I did.”

All change
To Alexander, possessing an ability to accept change is the key to success for female lawyers. “It is only by embracing change more readily than our male counterparts that women have progressed in law as they have,” she says. In fact, Alexander has reinvented herself throughout her career, identifying work streams that interested her and grasping opportunities that came her way.
Her legal career began in 1981 when, as a newly-qualified and recently married solicitor, Alexander began working in a common law practice. She faced a world where the long-hours culture was the unquestioned norm and being a solicitor was almost like being a member of an exclusive gentleman’s club.
It was while at this practice that she became involved in a case that was to have a lasting effect on her legal career. She was approached by a woman who had been conscious throughout a 75-minute caesarean operation: “I was incensed, but I was even more incensed when the client at one point told me she wasn’t going to proceed because she didn’t want to cause a fuss,” says Alexander. “It’s the only time I’ve shouted at a client. I told her she owed it to other women to proceed and, thankfully, she did.”
A national newspaper picked up the story and the firm immediately had several more cases from the same hospital. “The result was that the UK’s Royal College of Anaesthetists changed its methods of training and that’s something I’m immensely proud of,” she says.
Boosted by the case, Alexander went on to become one of the first lawyers to specialise in clinical negligence cases and by 1989 she had formed her personal injury (PI) practice, Alexander Harris, together with joint senior partner David Harris. “David thought I’d be helping him with his case load and I thought he’d be helping me with mine, so we were soon overwhelmed with work and had to hire extra staff.”
In fact, the growth of Alexander Harris has often been referred to as a case study in how to market a law firm with the firm expanding, over a period of 17 years, from a two-partner practice to one employing 170 staff with 80 fee-earners. But Alexander insists that such a viewpoint is incorrect. “It would be easy for us to claim our success was part of a clever marketing plan but that wouldn’t be true,” she says. “Our growth was client-led and our work a key motivator. As we worked hard at what we enjoyed doing, we grew the firm.”
Having the ability to empathise, Alexander says, was critical and an imperative for any solicitor working in the PI and clinical-negligence fields. “To be successful in the field of clinical negligence, PI and family law you have to have more than just a good degree,” she explains. “You need to be able to put yourself in your clients’ position, and understand where they are coming from.”
Managing client expectations is, according to Alexander, absolutely crucial. Having a bond of trust and understanding between client and lawyer is vital, as unpalatable things have to be told to the client at times.
“Most people genuinely want justice, they want to know why what happened to them or their loved one did happen and they want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she says. “I’ve only ever had one person tell me they wanted ‘as much money as possible’, which flies in the face of those who talk of a compensation culture.”
One of Alexander’s defining cases while at the firm was her action against the international healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), for clients who had undergone Myodil myelograms as a diagnosis for back pain. They subsequently suffered an inflammation of the membranes that surround and protect the nerves of the central nervous system, known as arachnoiditis. The group action settled for £7m and treatment of this type of back pain was radically revised.
The firm also represented victims’ families on such high-profile cases as the 1993 action involving Nurse Beverley Allitt, an English nurse who murdered four children and injured five others while working as a state enrolled nurse, on the children’s ward of a Lincolnshire hospital and over 200 alleged victims and relatives of victims in the 2000 action involving Harold Shipman, the former doctor and most prolific known serial killer in history with 218 murders being positively ascribed to him. These cases made people more aware of the possibility of taking legal action. “People are more prepared to challenge previously untouchable figures like doctors and other health care professionals,” says Alexander. “The case involving Harold Shipman certainly helped to change things. Until then, in the UK especially, doctors were seen as god-like figures, so maybe, just maybe, his victims didn’t die in vain if they ultimately helped change a faulty system and made people more aware of their rights in general.”
Fast forward to May 2006 and – never one to resist change – Alexander reacted to several approaches from legal and other professionals looking for business-development advice, by making the decision to merge her firm with Irwin Mitchell, the UK’s fourth-largest law firm, retire from full-time legal service and became a consultant on all aspects of business development and communications.

What’s next?
Retirement from formal legal practice did little to dull Alexander’s interest in how the profession develops. This is a fact demonstrated by her involvement (from February 2009) as deputy chairman of The Legal Alliance (TLA), a newly-launched network of mid-tier UK firms working together to prepare for the introduction of the UK’s Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA) – legislation that seeks to liberalise and regulate the market for legal services in England and Wales. In her capacity as TLA deputy chair, Alexander works to make legal service more accessible and promote quality in legal service delivery. “There are a lot of lawyers who think that the LSA will spell gloom and despondency for UK firms,” she says. “Admittedly we are already seeing a move away from chargeable hours to quoting fixed prices for work which forces lawyers to learn to work smarter and focus on what the clients want in order to compete with the brands who will enter the market.
“Female lawyers have a distinct advantage here,” she continues. “We already work smarter because we have to in order to compete.”
So what advice does Alexander have for women entering the legal profession today? “Choose where you work very carefully,” she says. “Look at the culture of the firm closely to see if it’s one where women are welcomed and recognised for the contribution they make. Second, think about the area of law you want to work in. Some areas of corporate law still entail working very long hours to close a deal. You’d have to have pretty good back-up at home to cope with those scenarios, but then again, if it’s what you really want to do, then go for it.”
For Alexander, the future is varied as she pursues a ‘portfolio’ career. As well as consulting in business development, she works as a media trainer and consultant alongside former BBC newsman Alistair Macdonald. Their firm, Alexander Macdonald, is thriving, and she says it’s good to be able to pass on the benefit of her experience.
She has also fulfilled a lifelong ambition by completing two BBC Radio Four documentaries with others in the pipeline. “I need to work. I enjoy the challenge,” she explains. Clearly, Alexander has a lot more to offer.

Ann Alexander is a qualified lawyer, business consultant and broadcaster. She can be contacted at ann@annalexander.co.uk