It's not a competition

Or at least it really shouldn't be...

Well, I seem to have gone from a three-month gap between my first and second post, to writing again within a week. Perhaps a little unusual and definitely against the norms of what I ‘should’ be doing as a new Substack writer. But I suppose that’s kind of linked to something I’ve been mulling over for some time, which prompted me to write this. That tension between self-interest and doing what we feel and know is the right thing to do.

Now that’s a big topic in itself, with lots of interesting ethical dimensions to it that I’m not going to go into right now. Maybe another time.

What got me thinking today though was how, as lawyers, we’re trained to think that everything is a competition and self-interest plays a big role in that.

A little background.

So, some of you will know that just over a year ago, I decided to leave private practice law to start up on my own. I was a Legal Director at a great law firm (really, a very good firm). I was in a great team, had huge amounts of respect for the people I worked with (still do), and loved the work I was doing. But I had also reached that point when I wanted to do more work in academia, focus on my research, and an opportunity had just come up to design and lead a new module teaching psychology to law students at King’s College London law school – a dream come true and I couldn’t say no.

I have absolutely no regrets on that. I knew it was the best decision for me. But you could say I left with a very heavy heart, which it was quite literally for a good few months after. And when I left, a couple of people advised me to just take some time out, relax, have some space to think, or as one friend put it… ‘space to extract yourself from the corporate world, just for a few weeks’.

And so, I did the exact opposite and went straight into starting up a consultancy practice (I say consultancy practice but it really isn’t as grand as it sounds - essentially I do some bits of consulting on my own). The consulting work, I thought, would make up a teeny bit for the salary hit I was about to experience. I spent HOURS creating my website, I reached out to people to broaden my connections, I honestly went into full throttle Lucinda Soon business development mode, without stopping at all.

It actually didn’t feel like much of an effort at the time as business development was something I quite enjoyed in private practice, sometimes more than the work itself. Creating my website was really quite fun, time-consuming, but fun. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I immediately imagined I was in some sort of fight among people doing the same work I was trying to get into. I needed to get my ‘brand’ (again sounds much grander than it is) out there.

It’s only recently that I’ve calmed down a bit. Not because I’ve ‘succeeded’ in building up a client base and have no need to do more - far from it, I’ve realised I’m a terrible business person who often forgets to send their invoices. More to the point, I think I’ve realised something more fundamental, which probably would have dawned on me a lot earlier, had I listened to the people around me and just taken a break for a while.

When I left private practice, I carried that streak of competitiveness with me.

It’s me(us) against them.

I don’t remember ever being competitive when I was younger. I wasn’t any good at sports so that was never an arena that could have nurtured a competitive spirit in me. In fact, I was always that person left standing awkwardly when captains selected their teams. That’s fine, I would have chosen me last too. But things changed I think when I was in law school. Suddenly, being last in anything was the end of the world.

Everything was a competition, the grades, the vacation schemes you managed to get, and most of all, the training contracts. Being the last to get a training contract was particularly devastating. “Never regret”, my dad used to say. Well, twenty years later, I look back and I do regret the anxiety I went through when I left university without a training contract. Heaven forbid, what on earth was to become of me.

Actually, I think I turned out pretty well, but that’s my point. The competition in law school, to be the best at everything, while completely misplaced in hindsight, was extraordinary. And so it began and continued.

When I got a training contract and entered the world of legal practice, I perceived everything as more of a competition. Keeping your job after your training contract, who could be the best on their time recording, who could be that person in the next team meeting who comes up with the most enlightening thing that has ever been said, who could leave the office the latest, who could get to the office the earliest.

Then, I worked my way up the ladder and when I became more senior, the competition was then about who gets to make partner, who can do the most billing while also being the best at marketing and business development, who can be the best at bringing in work. Interestingly, for me, the competition transcended from ‘me against them’, to us (the firm) against them (our competitors).

And pause.

It’s a very strange feeling meeting so many brilliant people trying to do the same thing you are doing, passionate about making a difference while trying to make a decent living to pay the bills and go on holidays we once enjoyed without having to worry too much about the cost. Since I started out on my own, I’ve met dozens of these people in my area of work, some I’m blessed to now call friends. So, when your competitors are now your friends, who you want to help grow and succeed as you would want for any friend, you find yourself in an interesting juxtaposition which leads you to really question what your values are, who you are, and who you want to be. Or at least, that’s been my experience.

This has really played on my mind for some months now. And in a way, it’s jump-started in me something which again might have sparked much sooner had I not gone into full-on business development mode a year and a bit ago.

It’s not a competition, it never was. Because ultimately, if we want to make the world a better place, in whatever small way we hope to be able to do that, it becomes not about me, not about them, but about who we are trying to help. In fact, we are more likely to see the change we are hoping to see by sharing with each other the things we know, and working together on the things we know less about.

As a practising lawyer, yes, your career is important and yes, the reality is that there is a hierarchy and I fully get the urge (and need) to climb that ladder to the lofty castle in the sky. But not if that means that by doing so, it becomes so much of a competition against others that you lose sight of who you are or why you wanted to be a lawyer in the first place, or worse still, you lose sight of your ethical obligations, only thinking about what is best for your client or your firm without thinking of the impact your actions might have on others and wider society.

For me, going into law was always about helping people, which I progressively lost sight of. “Never regret”. Perhaps it’s more realistic to say: “Regret, because there will always be things you regret, but learn and don’t regret the same thing twice”. Not quite as punchy; I’ll need to work on that.

If the world needs it, share it.

I posted something briefly about all of this on LinkedIn earlier today, primarily to try to boost some visibility for one of those friends I mentioned earlier, who is just brilliant. I then felt bad that I haven’t done the same for others who I hold in equally high regard. A handful of these are mentioned in the post script.

“We don't do this nearly enough on here. That old adage, Rome wasn't built in a day, well it wasn't built by one person either.

The mentality can so easily default to 'us against them' in the world of business and law. If you see a company doing great things, you admire them privately but why on earth would you help with their visibility?

But why on earth would you not?

If you genuinely think they have the knowledge and motivation to make the world a better place, why would you keep that to yourself?

When I was in private practice, actively promoting the work of another firm was (is) literally unheard of. It's like the biggest no-no in the BD handbook. I haven't once seen a post here on a company page recommending a competing company. Sounds ridiculous right?

Ok, so hands-up I'm not a great business person, I know that. At one stage, I really wanted to be. As a child, I wanted nothing more than to help people. Years in practice somehow left me being a person who wanted nothing more than to climb the corporate ladder as high as I could, at any cost.

But as I'm finally finding my feet in this world, I'm realising that doing what you feel is right – not for you, not even for them, but for a much bigger group of people – is the person I want to be. It's certainly the person who the 10 year-old me dreamed of being. Life throws you curveballs, but it's also about getting back on the right track.

I don't have a huge following but we do what we can with what we have. Not because you hope it will get you any favours in return. Not because in the churn of the business world, you hope you will gain more influence.

But just because it's the right thing to do, especially for the small independents and start-ups, who you know will do wonderful things for this world.”

As a final note, and linking this more concretely back to the purpose of this Substack, and how psychology can help legal practice, I suppose what I hope to get across is that everything is not a competition. The best students I have are those who I can see are actively working together with other students. The best lawyers I know are those who go out of their way to open doors for others and give them the opportunities to shine. They are the ones who people remember not because of their status up the ladder or how quickly they got there, but because they showed integrity and kindness. It wasn’t a competition to them and they were respected a lot more for that.

Post script.

Here are just a few people who I rate and who I’m privileged to work alongside in our individual but collective efforts to improve wellbeing in the legal profession. Each bring heaps of knowledge and experience working in the legal sector either as current or former lawyers and/or through the research they have done.

I know I’ve missed loads out, not for any other reason than I have just picked the ones which have come most readily to my mind in this moment. If I have missed you out unintentionally, or we’ve not met yet, drop a comment to this post!

Starting with the one which accompanied my LinkedIn post above, because they have just a few days ago activated their LinkedIn company page, but otherwise in no particular order…

Human Ethos - Dr Carly Schrever and Sally Ryan | Website | LinkedIn

Wellbeing Republic - Nick Bloy | Website | LinkedIn

The Libra Partnership - James Pereira KC and Zita Tulyahikayo | Website | LinkedIn

Headspace Consulting - Dr Emma Clarke | Website | LinkedIn

Wealthbrite - Carla Hoppe | Website | LinkedIn (focused on financial wellbeing)

The Carvalho Consultancy - Annmarie Carvalho | Website | LinkedIn

Claiming Space - Joanna Fleck and Rachel Francis | Website (vicarious trauma support)