Women in Tech, Episode 1

Tara Waters:
Hello, and welcome to Ashurst Legal Outlook and this special mini-series on Women in Tech. My name is Tara Waters, and I'm a partner and Head of Ashurst Advance Digital. In today's episode, we celebrate International Women's Day with a conversation with Sarah Chambers, Head of Strategy and Engagement for Ashurst Advance Digital. In our discussion, Sarah explains how her legal career has evolved in the digital space. Along the way she reflects on the lessons she's learned and what excites her about legal careers in technology. Here's our conversation.

Tara Waters:
Sarah, thanks so much for joining me today. I'm really excited to be talking to you and sharing some of your story. I've known you for the past three years working together here at Ashurst, and in preparing for this conversation, I thought a little bit about what I've learned, and it seems to me that like any great story, your legal career could be broken down into three acts: one, your time practising as a traditional lawyer; two, the transition you've made into the digital legal product space; and three, your rebirth as a legal creative in the current role that you have.

Tara Waters:
I've personally found that journey incredibly inspiring, and since I have a front row seat to that third act, it's really exciting to watch. I expect there's a lot of listeners out there that will feel the same. Let's start with act one. Tell us a little bit about how you got into law and what that was like for you.

Sarah Chambers:
Sure. I'm happy to share my long and winding journey, Tara. How I got into law, in school, I just decided for some reason that I thought I would like to be a solicitor, and I think that's on the basis that I was fairly academic. I could read very quickly, so I could consume a lot of information quickly. But I also really like the idea of being able to solve problems all day. I'm a pretty pragmatic problem-solving sort of person, so the idea of being able to do that as your job, being able to solve problems for clients within a framework of the law, really appealed to me.

Sarah Chambers:
So I went straight off to university, studied law and business studies at uni, and then went through the usual routine of doing vacation schemes at law firms and then getting a city training contract. I qualified as a financial services regulatory solicitor at the time, and I think you'll see this is a theme that goes throughout my career, at a time when regulation was really just taking off. When I qualified, I think one of the lawyers that I worked for said to me, "Gosh, you might not always be busy. You might have to do a bit of derivatives work." But I never did any derivatives work, which is lucky for me.

Tara Waters:
Lucky you.

Sarah Chambers:
Yeah, definitely lucky me. But it shows just how, if you think about the financial services regulatory market now, it's huge. And maybe I'm giving my age away a bit now, but it was becoming a much bigger thing at that stage. And I was attracted to it, because it was challenging, and this is also definitely a theme of my journey, and also quite a technical area to get my teeth into. But I could also see that there was going to be lots of opportunities for growth, and if at any point I wanted to move outside of private practice, that then there was potentially lots of opportunities and other roles that I could also do in-house.

Sarah Chambers:
It's fair to say I've always been busy. Even practising as a lawyer in financial regulatory, it was busy, busy, busy. I think regulatory is one of those areas where it's constant, constant in terms of volume, but also you're constantly having to think as well, and needing some space sometimes to do that thinking. Obviously, as part and parcel of that, I got involved in just the full spectrum of normal regulatory work. Lived through the Lehman crisis as we went through that phase, which was a really interesting time to be involved in regulatory work as well, and dealing with ramifications and the fallout of that.

Tara Waters:
That's really interesting. And actually, as you know, the fact in the pace of regulatory change was actually one of the things that attracted me to law, but coming probably from more of a tech angle than you did coming into more traditional financial regulatory practice. But quite interestingly, you ended up transitioning a bit into tech. What prompted that change for you?

Sarah Chambers:
A circumstance, if I'm honest. The firm that I was working with at the time took an opportunity that came from a client and turned it on its head and basically started off an online legal product. Then I got involved creating new versions of it to cover different areas of law, because the first iteration of it was so successful. Actually, at that point, I then became pregnant with my first child and I was really sick, like really sick during my first pregnancy, and fee earning would've been really hard to do during that time.

Sarah Chambers:
So actually, I just became increasingly involved in managing and working the content for this digital product, such that then by the time I'd had my first daughter and came back to work after maternity leave, my original thinking was that I would come back to fee earn, but I wanted to work part-time, and I couldn't quite work out how I was going to balance fee earning with working part-time. There wasn't really a precedent for that within the team that I was working in.

Sarah Chambers:
So actually, that's when one of the partners that I was working with asked, "Why don't you just work on the product?" And I just thought, why don't I just work on the product? Initially I was very much working on the content side of it, so effectively being the lawyer in charge of the content that was being pushed out through the digital product. But over time, organically as the product grew, as the team then that I needed to have around me to support it, the demands for new features and elements that clients of the product could use grew and grew and grew, so did the range of responsibilities that I had to take on grew and grew and grew.

Sarah Chambers:
Actually, I found that I think it just really suited the way that I worked. I liked the idea that I was constantly learning. So it was never really my... At the start of my career, had I ever intended to get involved in digital? No, it was just one of these things that happened organically because of the opportunities, and as I say, the circumstances that presented themselves to me at the time.

Tara Waters:
I think that's probably a common theme amongst all of us that have made some sort of transition from practising into now this new technology and digital space within the legal industry. Certainly from my perspective, I've had a super strange and winding career path. I imagine a lot of the listeners that are thinking about this or maybe have done it themselves don't necessarily see that linear trajectory. What do you think was important for you in terms of making that transition, and do you think the fact that you were a lawyer was a help or a hindrance, because you're working on a legal product?

Sarah Chambers:
The type of product that I was working on and how I got involved in it, I think it was a necessity that I was a lawyer, because as I say, the initial reason I got into it was because I was the person that was responsible for maintaining the legal content of it. And so I think for my particular trajectory, it was crucial, and actually, in a way I've almost had to detach myself a little bit from being a lawyer into becoming something else. That's been quite a psychological mindset shift that I've had to do, because it's actually, if you're a lawyer, you're a lawyer. It's really clear what you are and what you do, and you can explain that to other people.

Sarah Chambers:
But trying to explain what I do now and how I've got there from being a lawyer, it's more than a five second conversation. So yeah, that takes a little bit more explaining. I think that some of the qualities that lawyers have and the way that they're trained actually really make them good digital innovators.

Tara Waters:
Absolutely. And as you know, I feel really strongly that lawyers do make great innovators. But I'm curious to know why you think that's the case.

Sarah Chambers:
I think as a breed, we're quite flexible. We're quite comfortable working in ambiguity and piecing together bits of a jigsaw. We're obviously quite a naturally intelligent and inquisitive bunch as well, which definitely helps. I think some of those qualities lend themselves to moving into different areas and obviously getting involved in innovation as well.

Sarah Chambers:
But I don't think to be involved in legal technology and digital innovation in law firms, you necessarily have to be a lawyer or have come from a legal background. Actually, one of the things I have really enjoyed about what I do is getting to work with a whole range of other disciplines and professionals from different spectrums. I think that when you train as a lawyer and you work in a law firm, you're surrounded by a fairly homogenous group of people that have been through relatively similar experiences and are used to working in a particular way. Now having this fantastic team around us, where we get to pull in lots of these best of breed, other areas of disciplines, and be constantly learning and adding skill sets for our toolbox based on that is incredibly useful.

Sarah Chambers:
It basically allows us to approach the problems that our clients have in a multitude of different ways. So yeah, overall I'd say it's helped. I think there's still elements in me where I've got that perfectionist lawyer tendency as well, and that attention to detail, which sometimes moving when you wanted to sort of deliver things on a lean approach and getting out things that are good enough to put in front of clients just to start a conversation is fighting myself a little bit to say, "No, this is a pilot, this is a proof of concept. We don't have to get this all right from day one. We've got to learn and take the feedback and move from there." So overall, definitely, being a lawyer has helped my trajectory in this space.

Tara Waters:
I think that that concept of the growth mindset and actually really wanting to learn and take on board all these other skill sets is really critical to digital innovation. We both know that from working together in our team now. What are some of the new roles you think that might be appealing to lawyers looking at moving into this space? What have you played around in and found really exciting and interesting?

Sarah Chambers:
Oh my goodness. There's so many things. I wear so many hats on any given day, as do all of us in our team. I think we're constantly learning. But there are days that I'm very much a lawyer still, when we're having to look at, for example, the legal content that we are working with, or for example, dealing with our risk and legal compliance teams about the terms and conditions that we need to put around the frameworks that we work with. But I've also had to be a teacher, a coach. I've got involved in UX research and design, so really understanding how we get into the problems that our clients face so we can design solutions to meet those problems, rather than just the assumptions that we might have about the problems that they have.

Sarah Chambers:
An element of marketing and sales, both internally in terms of being able to sell a concept, but also for the products that then we create, being able to sell those out to clients as well. An element of operations, getting involved in okay, how are we going to deliver this and what does that look like? A little bit of copywriting, wordsmithing, using content and words as a design tool. Increasingly quite a lot of visual design work, being able to present things in a really clear and meaningful way, again, both internally to sell what we're doing, but also externally in terms of how we're presenting complicated legal concepts much more simply in a visual way.

Sarah Chambers:
Strategizing, future gazing. I think sometimes we end up as quasi-therapists sometimes to our clients, when we do our research interviews and you ask them questions about things that they find difficult or the problems, and you get this sort of outpouring of thoughts about what they find difficult in their role. From that you can kind of really pick up on their problems. What else? Gosh, the touch of events planning and a bit of interior design on one day, and then obviously things like this, some podcasting.

Sarah Chambers:
So it's a really varied range of things to do, and I think this has been one of the really lovely things about getting into this area of work, that actually, you're not just shoehorned into a particular box. You can do as many things as you feel like you're able to do and expand your skill set. I think it's fair to say that I think we've both ended up doing things that we could probably never imagine that we would've done in our normal old career as just purely lawyers, right?

Tara Waters:
Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say, yeah, I think the concept around lawyers having to always wear multiple hats regardless of their particular role, but I think in particular, when you shift over into the digital space, the number of hats and the multitude and different types of hats really exponentially increases, which is really fun, because you are constantly learning something new. Although I did note that one of the things you didn't mention in terms of some of the roles is some of the more tech-specific roles that someone might be thinking about if you're operating in legal and moving into more of the tech space. Would you consider yourself a techie, or how important do you think those technical skills are for operating in digital?

Sarah Chambers:
I would not consider myself a techie. I'm not a developer. I don't know how to code. I think if I had more time, maybe that would be something that I might learn to do at some point. But is it those sort of skill sets, and I think what people from a peripheral perspective regard as something that you must be able to do to work in technology, I don't think those are fundamental to be able to work in this space. Actually, for me, coming with a pragmatic, a creative mindset, I think the reasons why I wanted to get involved in the legal industry in the first place, so wanting to solve problems, is much more important in the work that I do in terms of developing ideas to turn into digital products than that coding experience. Obviously it helps, I think, to be able to understand an element of this with the language and how you get to turn the concepts that you're working with, or the ideas that you have, into something that can then be developed by developers.

Sarah Chambers:
So to do that, and particularly in the space that we are in, being able to speak the same language as a lawyer who's explaining what it is that they're looking to do and the problem they're looking to solve and what's really important from a conceptual legal perspective in it, whilst also being able to have conversations and being able to explain that concept and what's important and what really matters within that product idea to developers and people that are working on the more technical side.

Sarah Chambers:
I often describe the role as somewhat being a bit of a translator or an interpreter between different disciplines, but I don't regard myself as a techie techie. I regard [myself as] someone that helps people move towards that path to enable their output to become more techie. I don't think thus far my lack of technical background has hindered me in any way. And in fact, I think it just, again, as long as you've got the right multidisciplinary team around you, and you're all challenging each other, and you've got an open and agile working environment to do that, yeah, that's where the magic happens, right?

Tara Waters:
I think so, yeah. We've certainly seen the magic a few times, sparkly eyes, slappy hands, et cetera. Actually, I want to go back to one of the first things we chatted about where you mentioned that actually part of the decision making of transitioning your career was your family life and a desire to actually work part-time. I imagine a lot of people might think, oh, if I could transition into a non-practising role, maybe that's not as important, because I'll have a more standard nine to five day and it'll be a little bit easier to balance things. So I'm curious to know, have you maintained a part-time role, and how are you finding just balancing now this new job, which sounds like you've got about 20 different jobs in one?

Sarah Chambers:
That's a really good question, Tara. I would say I'm still a work in progress on this front. I have worked part-time, and I think for me initially, the trade-off that I was balancing was one, okay, this is the kind of hands-on parent that I want to be. It's really important for me, particularly when my kids are little, to be home for bath time and bedtime and also to be consistent in the week so they know what to expect, to be able to provide that. So for me, particularly when the kids were littler, being able to say, I only work a certain number of hours in the office. I wasn't working there later at night once the kids were in bed, and having that, I guess, compartmentalization between work hours and home hours was actually quite useful to be able to provide that sort of level of consistency.

Sarah Chambers:
But as the girls have grown, I think what I regard as balance has shifted. It's not so much about working certain hours, it's just being able to fit both your work and your home life around each other so that you are delivering on the things that matter at work, but also being able to be there for the moments that matter at home as well. I think my approach has become perhaps a little less rigid over the years, as obviously I've grown as a parent, my kids have grown themselves, you grow in seniority, and the ability to leverage certain situations as well, to make the things that you know you need to work, work.

Sarah Chambers:
But I don't want anyone for any second to think that I've got it right all the time. There's definitely been some moments which I've questioned whether I've got the balance right at all. And I think, obviously for working parents through the pandemic, it's been particularly tricky and challenging. I'll be very glad if I never have to homeschool again. But I think what I have learned is that that question about balance is really personal to everybody, and everyone takes a different call on it based on their own particular setup and structure and support networks that they have around them as well. There isn't a one size fits all.

Tara Waters:
I have to repeat ad nauseum, there is no one way to do anything, and I definitely learned that in the roles that we now occupy. And I think that has to translate across your life. It's not just something that you only apply to one area. And I guess now we can add teacher to your list of many roles that you're capable of fulfilling. I mean, really, I think the world is your oyster, Sarah.

Sarah Chambers:
Yeah. Not sure I would be a very patient teacher, but there we go.

Tara Waters:
Maybe then, Sarah, just thinking a little bit back across this kind of crazy path you've taken, which personally, I find super interesting and inspiring, and that's really why I wanted to talk to you today and have you share your story with everyone, is there anything you might have done differently or any particular advice you would've wanted to give yourself along the way?

Sarah Chambers:
What would I have done differently? I would have been a lot easier on myself. You don't have anything to prove to anyone about anything. Just keep doing what you're doing. And I think as I've grown older and wiser and obviously more experienced in my role as a parent, and obviously grown in experience in my slightly divergent legal to legal creative role as well, I think I've realised that success is really personal. Your metrics of how you regard yourself as successful change as you grow.

Sarah Chambers:
I wish I had realised that earlier, and that sounds really crazy, but that there isn't this singular metric of success. Again, this is where I think perhaps when you're in a law firm mentality, you see this particular ladder in front of you, that you have to go up these particular rungs and it's very clear about what you should do. Actually, that, I think, can make success look quite one dimensional. But actually, as I've got older, I've realised that success is actually, it's a really personal thing and it shifts all the time.

Sarah Chambers:
So for example, I've got twins, and when the twins were really little, I came back to work and I said to myself as I started, "Gosh, what is the most important thing this year?" And I was like, "The most important thing this year is that we basically get through it and that we survive at the end of it, and that we're all relatively sane." And that's literally the only bar that I'm setting myself this year, is that we get through it and hope that it's okay because it was quite mad.

Sarah Chambers:
But obviously, as the kids have got bigger and grown, my metric of what success looks like in a given year has shifted alongside with that, to the point that now I can say, "Yes, success for me looks like hitting my goals at work, being the kind of parent that I want to be, learning and being happy and motivated by the things that I'm doing, and actually having the confidence to set that metric of success for myself, as opposed to it being an external thing that someone sets for me." I wish I had known that, and I wish I'd had the confidence to grasp that much earlier on in my career. I think at various points that would've really helped me compare myself to others, and also putting perhaps a lot of pressure on myself as well at the same time.

Tara Waters:
I think that's such an important lesson to learn. I hope the listeners are taking some of that genuinely to heart, because in an industry where KPIs and metrics, not just law but also in tech, it's all about KPIs and metrics and setting OKRs. There's nothing to replace, actually, the qualitative feeling you get from something and the satisfaction you have just in your life, living in the present, as you say, not so strictly compartmentalising aspects of your life, but holistically. Am I happy with what's going on? Am I sparking joy in all aspects of my life, and if not, what can be improved? But giving yourself a break, too, I think is so, so, so important. I think as someone who's, like many of us, blazed their own path to a large extent where there hasn't been that precedent, that person above you for you to follow in their footsteps, it can be really hard to know, what is good? What is success in what we're doing?

Tara Waters:
And I think it's really important that we all remind ourselves that, actually, just the fact that we've in some way created our own careers is an incredible, incredible feat and really exciting and inspirational. I love meeting other people in our area that can share their stories, and hearing a bit more about that.

Sarah Chambers:
Yeah. And there are so many stories, I think, obviously slightly different to mine, but in terms of how people have ended up taking these squiggly careers and getting to where they've got to, I think it's really interesting. I think that's why we should talk about it more. When I was younger, when you first set out, I think you think there is really only one path to tread, and hearing these stories about the multitude of options and routes that are available if you are willing to take them, if you're willing to say yes to the opportunities that excite you, then so many different doors open.

Sarah Chambers:
You might not know where they are all going to take you necessarily, but actually having that ability to be a lot more flexible. But also if something isn't for you, being able to say no, that's something that doesn't really serve me. I'll carry on on the path that perhaps I was on, or perhaps try something else. None of this is fixed or finite. It's up to you. And I think when you realise that, it's an incredibly freeing notion.

Tara Waters:
100%, yeah. And I think on that very uplifting note, I'll say thank you so much. Really looking forward to, I think like everyone else, seeing how this third act evolves with you, and perhaps the next act will be something even more exciting.

Sarah Chambers:
Thanks, Tara.

Tara Waters:
Thank you for listening to our special mini-series on Women in Tech. If you enjoyed this episode and don't want to miss the rest of this mini-series, please subscribe to Ashurst Legal Outlook wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to leave us a rating or review. If you'd like to find out more about Ashurst Advance Digital, please visit www.ashurst.com. In the meantime, thanks very much for listening and goodbye for now.
Tara Waters:

If you enjoy Ashurst Legal Outlook, why not check out our other two podcast series as well. Ashurst Business Agenda tackles the big strategic issues that business leaders face, and ESG Matters at Ashurst reveals how business leaders are rising to mounting environmental, social, and governance challenges. You can listen and subscribe to Business Agenda and ESG Matters wherever you get your podcasts.