I am delighted to announce that I am holding a Winter Event for the Female Counsel group so please save the date – 6pm on 30th November 2023.

I wanted to get the date to you asap as I know the end of the year always gets jam packed with events. Eversheds Sutherland have very kindly offered to host us at their London office so huge thanks to them.

Please put the date in your diaries and in the meantime, have a wonderful summer!

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9.30am on 31st October. My guest speakers are Michelle Elstein, a Leadership and Team Performance Coach at Courageous Co and Emily Bernstein, a Private Banker to Lawyers at Investec.

Join us for an energising and empowering workshop where we'll share practical strategies and habits to navigate the opportunities and challenges that arise in our careers. Being equipped to face up to the things we need to do or the things we find difficult is how we will all get where we want to be. Embracing challenge and discomfort is an inevitable part of our career adventures. By the end of this session, you will have specific ideas to take away and put into action to elevate your career trajectory and achieve your desired milestones.

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9.30am on 14 September. My guest speaker is Kathleen Harris, London Managing Partner of Arnold & Porter.

Our topic this month will focus on the importance of Allyship. Allies have the power, the visibility and the voice to help individuals. They raise awareness, start conversations, drive change. They can disrupt the cycle of inequity. Kathleen will discuss not only why it is important to have one but also the importance of being one. This is a topic that has flowed through many of our Female Counsel sessions over the past year and I’m delighted that Kathleen will lead this discussion through her own personal experiences.

It’s been a great year for Female Counsel. We’ve had some wonderful speakers who have led some thought-provoking discussions, all with the common theme of elevating female talent. Zoom is great but nothing beats a good old get together. And so, I’m delighted that Charles Russell Speechlys have offered to host some drinks for this ever-growing group.

As always with Female Counsel, if you are aware of anyone who you feel would like to join the group, please spread the word.

I look forward to seeing lots of you on 5th July.

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9.30am on 23rd May and we’ll be chatting about how to create a stand out personal brand and optimise this on LinkedIn.

This looks set to be a lively discussion with plenty of valuable information. Whether you are reaching influencer levels on LinkedIn or you have yet to step out into the online world, we hope there will be lots for you to take away.

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9.30am on 27th April. My guest speaker is Emma Wainer, Vocal Empowerment coach for Women and founder of Speaking at Work.

Our topic this month will focus on the Power of Voice. Our voices and communication styles have the ability to elevate how our potential is viewed and ultimately our career trajectory. We will discuss how you can use your voice to raise both your visibility and your credibility every time you speak - without losing your personality in the process!

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9.30am on 22 March. My guest speak is Claire Morel de Westgaver, a respected and well-known arbitration partner in London.

Our topic this month is going to centre around dual career couples – can you both have it all? Claire will share her thoughts on the challenges that still face professional couples when both are striving to forge ahead with their careers. This often includes inadequate working environments, conflicting expectations and biases, money, health and wellbeing-related issues. She will also discuss possible tools to succeed ‘together’ at work and at home.

Female Counsel is back for 2023! I am delighted to announce that the first virtual event will take place at 9am on 1st February.

My guest speaker will be Nicola Green, a respected expert on all matters related to the menopause. At the age of 32, Nicola first started to experience menopausal symptoms and as a result of her experience, she set up her own business providing menopausal support and education to individuals and companies.

The menopause is something that will affect us all at some point in our lives and Nicola works hard to remove the taboo surrounding it.

BlueSky are a coaching organisation which provide parental coaching for law firms. Set up by 2 former lawyers, Sarah Lyons and Hannah Bradshaw, they provide targeted and career focussed parental coaching for women in law. I was recently asked to collaborate with them and host a lunch with an incredible group of professionals in the legal sector. Here are some of the items we discussed.

I’m pleased to post this hugely important piece of work from The Pipeline on my website. A message from them which is close to my heart…’recruit, retain and promote women by any means necessary. If you want to prosper, take a hammer to the glass ceiling in your firm. Don’t just talk about it, do something.’

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9:30am on 30th November 2022. I am delighted to be joined by Ania Farren and Kelly Burley to discuss “Dispelling the ‘Superwoman’ myth – why vulnerability and authenticity make us better leaders”.

On 18th October Aija Lejiece was my guest speaker for a very special Female Counsel event. One in support of breast cancer awareness. Aija spoke to us all from the heart and shared her own very personal experience. She has written a blog which I am so happy to share here with my network. Please do read and spread the word.

In recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness month, I am honoured to announce a very special Female Counsel event. On 18 October I will be joined by Aija Lejniece, a respected lawyer, arbitrator and a woman who has experienced first-hand the reality of breast cancer. Aija will share her journey with us: the effect the diagnosis has had on her life, career and the lessons she’s learned along the way about taking care of and advocating for oneself.

The next Female Counsel event will take place at 9am on 29th September. I am delighted to be joined by a panel of female lawyers who have in recent times all been promoted to partner. They will lead our discussion on their different paths to partnership, what they have learnt along the way and the reality of achieving that coveted title! My huge thanks to Alanna, Alison and Fran for agreeing to take part in this.

This will be a fabulous IN PERSON event bringing together our incredible network of female lawyers from a host of disciplines and firms. This is a great opportunity to meet with other female lawyers, make new connections, share stories and most importantly, support and elevate one another!

The next Female Counsel event will take place on 26th May at 9am. At our last session a really important question was asked: ‘How do we female lawyers set boundaries to enable us to be happy, successful and fulfilled both at work and outside the office?’ This is such a huge topic and one that demands proper discussion time. How do we assert ourselves to gain some sort of work/life balance? Is it even possible?

As part of my new business, I want to provide women with a forum in which to discuss issues that really matter in the modern legal world. And so I am pleased to launch ‘Female Counsel’. Every quarter I will be joined by an inspiring woman and I am delighted to announce that Vivien Davies, senior litigation partner at Fieldfisher will be my first guest speaker. Vivien is passionate about nurturing and #elevatingfemaletalent and she is going to discuss how the workplace needs to be redesigned to ensure it is fit for purpose.

Recently, I had the pleasure of presenting to an incredible audience – Mute off Thursdays - a group of female arbitration lawyers, across the globe, who meet virtually every week for a topical discussion.

Most of us would recognise performance and image as being key elements to success – and they are essential of course. But here we come to the nub of the issue around career progression, because the unsettling aspect of Coleman’s research lies in the relative importance of these three factors.

Life is busy and all too often planning for our careers takes a back seat. Quite frankly, we don’t have time to think about the long term. In reality, for a lot of us, we only think about our careers if something negative happens. Maybe, we don’t get the promotion to partnership we know we really deserve; a lateral comes on board who isn’t quite right. Or we react to an approach from another law firm. Without a plan we end up with a knee jerk reaction…