 This episode of the podcast is supported by Bentley Lewis, an award-winning executive search firm. Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. We are proud to be official media partners of Diving Festival this year, which is really cool. And we're doing a series of podcasts for the festival. And if you don't know, Diving Festival is a global movement in the insurance sector, which is supporting the development of inclusive workplace cultures. It's a really, really cool work. They're in about 33 countries now. So they do these really cool events, panel discussions all over the world, really helping to promote diversity and inclusion, which is very cool. I hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy. Awesome. And we're live. Folks, thank you very much for joining me on the videocast. And today it's great to be joined by Sandra Wallace, who is the Joint Managing Director for Europe at DL Piper. Sandra, thank you very much for joining me. Good to see you. Hello. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you. Nice sunny day. Always helps. It's beautiful. This weekend. Yeah, this weekend was awesome. I know this will be shown a little bit later. But yeah, this weekend's been been great. And it was it was good to talk to you last week as well. We had a good, good chat. So how we were talking about the other day, but how how have you found your the lockdown experience, the last kind of four months or so? At the beginning, it felt sort of quite nice to be at home with the kids, to just be chilling, doing the work, getting used to a new norm. And then it starts to get sort of right. And how long is this actually going to go on for? And how long can I sit in these four walls in this same room, you know, do the same thing? So you do have to find things to break up the day. Otherwise, you do start to go a bit stir crazy. But it's been good. It's been good of reflections and things like that, a bit more time to ponder the norm. Have you always, have you always, so have you done, do you usually do five days in the office or have you? Well, I'm normally travelling quite a lot because I run in DLA about 15 or so jurisdictions. I'm travelling, I'm on the road a lot. I spend a lot of time at my homes in Birmingham, but I live, I've got a flat in London as well. So I'm in London a lot and then I'm in the air a lot. So it's really been felt like I've been grounded for how many months. Yeah, I wonder if you're ever going to get back to. Do you think you'll ever go back to how it was? I'm not sure it will. I don't think so. I'm not sure people will travel as much as they did. I don't think so. I think people are quite enjoying. It's nice to have a mix, you know, because it takes time to hop on a plane, go to Germany, have your one meeting and fly back. And it can get quite tiring and quite grinding, I think as well. Yeah, I think you can't be being together. So it's never going to be the case at home working or whatever. It's the only thing people do. But I don't think they'll go back to the manic lifestyles for the time, you know, for the time being, which might not be great for some of the the industries that rely on us to be moving around all the time. But I think that would be a new normal, wouldn't it? Yeah, they will. But I still think face to face. I mean, you just can't make friends with someone unless you spend time with them. Totally agree. You know, it's so good. So and also I did a poll actually on I did a poll on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, just on just do you want to work from home five days a week? Come into the office five days a week or a combination? And, you know, 80 percent of people were like, I want a combination or office five days a week. So, like, I think we are still going to be like quarter to life. It's still very sociable. And if you think about it, you know, people's living environments might not be the case that they can be at home comfortably, if they share a house or child care commitments or just the environment is quite contained, then it's, you know, it's nice to get out and meet and see other people during the day. And that's how you bounce ideas of people and new network and you come up with new, you know, new ways of working at work. You know, so I do think you need both. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, we'll get that. There's definitely going to be less, less need for so much office space. Yeah, that's something as a firm will be thinking about. Yeah, you know, every venture we're going to now will have that thought. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that'd be interesting. How did you how did you become the European Managing Director? What's the what was the story? Oh, so my story. How long have you got now? I so my background is quite is not legal at all. So I came from a family of six. My my parents did. My mom was a cleaner. My dad was a patron decorator. So no sort of idea of going into law, but really wanting to do to to progress in a way that meant we had more money because essentially we didn't have any. You know, we lived in a rented accommodation. It was very, you know, small. And so you just think, right, I want a better life. And so for me, I started out thinking I would do something like I was big into cooking and I like even now and I thought I'd go and get some A levels to go to the College of Food and Domestic Arts. It sounds very grand, doesn't it? But it turns out that I needed two A levels for that. So I went to my F.E. college and got three A levels. And when I was there, I was thinking, well, actually, if I tried, tried for a career that was going to be, you know, something more long term or something that might give me the means, you know, to earn more or whatever it might be. And my parents are sort of you go to work, you go to college that will allow that, but we're not really into this university thing. You know, that's three years when you're not working, you're not earning, you're not bringing money to the house. And so I was like, OK, I'm going to have to do a degree that makes them think I can do something and I will earn money eventually. So I chose law for that very reason. So I wasn't watching some great TV program that inspired me. Unfortunately, I just literally thought, what can I do to convince my mom that this is an OK thing to do and and went off and studied law and that really found I enjoyed employment law and started at the law firm that I'm at now, long story short, doing employment law and building my practice really and having a diversity and inclusion and emphasis to my practice as well. Did a lot of discrimination type cases, did my own advocacy because I enjoyed that at court. And then I ended up leading the employment group across the UK. And it was that that got me sort of noticed, I suppose, from the management level and they asked me to run the UK business about two and a half years later, which is the whole of the seven offices across the UK. And then two or three years after that, my CEO asked me to join his executive to become the managing director for Europe, running several countries and not just one. So it's a long way of saying from from a girl from Brummie girl from Birmingham, whose parents didn't want her to go to universities now running a half of an international law firm. So it's quite it's quite there's another option down in between. But yeah, it was that's awesome. Where did your where did your motivation come from? Because you often see, you know, it's often talked about, you know, young people in in lower socioeconomic backgrounds, you know, whether they don't have like the people to look up to who have done the thing they might want to do or what, you know, to be a lawyer, right? You have to do the right GCSEs to do the right A levels to go to the university. If your parents were almost sounds like discouraging you from from taking that path, what gave you that like that motivation to be like actually made? You know what? I want to do that. Lewis, can I be honest and say it was being poor? I mean, literally having my parents didn't drive, who had no means of transport, you know, so it was buses only. So standing at cold bus stops waiting for buses that never arrive, you know, having had me down, you know, I'm one of six. I was number five. So can you imagine the clothes that had been through how many people had been through before they got to me? You know, I had two sisters above, you know, older than me, two brothers. And I had, you know, we in fact, we were eligible for free school meals. But my my that my time in life, but you had to someone came to the house to assess whether you could have free school meals and someone had come to the house to ask my mom. I think they got to question number five and she basically threw them out because you just thought it was so invasive. And so we had so we had we didn't have free school. So we had to go home and have whatever was left over from the night before. And it was just literally a life of I just can't this can't be my life. You know, I I need to we need to be to get try and improve. And one brother had left and one had stayed at home actually, but was on a YTS. Another was had got an engineering job, which was quite low paid. One of my sisters worked in a fish and chip shop, and it was just like we couldn't break the cycle of just having no money. So that's why everybody stayed at home because she bought money into the house to help, you know, to help my parents. And so it was a big deal to leave to go to university and take that step. And for three years, not be contributing to the house, you know. So it was it but but I just felt that this couldn't be my life. You know, I just wanted to be to have a better life, really. To make a change. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Did you did you stay at home while you were studying at university? No, so I like that's the other story. So I didn't go very far because the idea well, there was a couple of things I didn't go very far because not many black people, quite frankly, were at universities. So I went I went to Warwick and I went to Birmingham and you go to these places to do law and you just see a sea of white faces. And that was just not my world. And so I ended up going to Wolverhampton Polytechnic, which again, everybody told me you'll never get. You'll never become a lawyer going to a polytechnic. But I literally moved out. It was only 11 miles up the road, but I moved out because then I had my own room. Because if you think about it, I was a three bedroom house. We were in and so I had to share with somebody said to go into Wolverhampton, even though it was only down the road, literally 11 miles away or something like that. I moved in, I moved out. What did your parents say? I, you know, it's so funny. So my mother was watching. I think she was watching Emmerdale or Coronation Street or something. And I actually told her that I was going to move out. And my dad was there as well. My dad was much more chilled, but he wanted me to be a nurse, which is never going to happen because I hate blood. But anyway, so my mother was like watching this program. And she said, I've looked at me as if to say, are you for real? And then just carried on watching it. And I thought, oh, my God. So I actually want to bid I did skip because I thought this is just not going to go down. Well, is I well, I took a job. I took a year out between my finishing my levels and going to university and worked for a local authority for a year to show them that I could actually get a job. It wasn't that I couldn't get a job. I just thought that I could get a better job if I had a degree and so on. So I worked for a year at Soley Hall Council, which was great, actually, because that ended up being quite a lifeline to getting my training contract because I had referees from council saying she's great, et cetera, et cetera. So so actually my mother's reaction to me saying I wanted to go and me thinking I can't go, I'm going to have to work for a bit. Actually worked in the long run. But yeah, she didn't actually say anything, which with my mother said a lot. It's it's yeah, it's interesting because, you know, you kind of, you know, people around you influence you so much, don't they? And they say you end up earning the average of your social circle and stuff like that. And you're growing up in an environment and you're looking at what people are doing and what they've done before. It's super hard to to take a different path. You know, and yeah, it is, it is your limits. It's completely right what you're saying. It's there are so many times when I could have given up because it just wasn't what people expected. I got a lot of people saying I thought I was why because I was because I was trying to go on and go to university. And there was a lot of people saying, you know, what what you're doing, you know, do you think you are sort of thing? And then there was people that were there were people that were encouraging. But then you almost don't believe them. So you end up in this state where you you're sort of listening to the negative more than you listening to the positive and thinking, well, if I can just get through this, maybe I'll do this. And and you're always and I've never went very far from home because whilst I talk about my mom and a reaction and everything, we were very tight family and that that was quite important to us. You know, we were close. We look out for each other. You know, if they were fun, it was fun having living with that many people. And it was always entertainment and jokes. And so from that perspective, it was great. But if you didn't have if you don't have that and you have negativity, I just don't know how people do it. And I do need those role models to to to try and drive to get to somewhere else. Yeah, it's interesting that early on and it'd be interesting to hear your experiences later on that the biggest challenges came from within your community, you know, your family and people saying, and then they don't do that. It's interesting. Yeah, because I think it was so different. What I was trying to do was so different. The school I went to wasn't a bad school in terms of bad people. People were good. People were fun. But there was just no expectation of going and doing anything other than pretty much what your parents were doing or everyone else was doing. And I remember going to the careers and I saying I wanted to go and do these A levels at the time to be to do something with catering. And they were like, you know, you know, just literally stay what you're talking about, just stay at the station or whatever, because A levels. I did two, a lot of I did of O levels. It shows how old I am. It's pre-GCC. Yeah, exactly. And two of them I had to teach myself because everybody else was doing the lower level, not what CSC was. And so I had to teach myself to them because there was no teachers doing any of that. And so it's just a matter of just you've just got to keep. I've just got to keep and just believe that it's this is part of my life can be different. Definitely. Yeah, that's it's amazing because you hear a lot and you told me this last time you spoke, you know, moving out to move up. Yes. Yeah. And which which you have to you have to do to get to where you've got to. But then on the other side, you know, the community loses people like you with, you know, who can he can show you that, look, you know, these are the different paths. It's yeah, it's a point that I feel quite strongly about. A lot of people assume they have to go to the southeast in London, typically to to to progress or to get access to the different jobs, especially if it's not the mainstream type of job, if they want to do the arts or, you know, fashion or things like that. But if so, you can you can understand that. But some of the some of the basic things, you know, some of the careers people feel they have to go to London or feel that's where they they they will they will find their place or find their fit. And like you say, people get left behind and then that community never grows and then investment doesn't go in. And you need that. You need the investment. You need the infrastructure. You need businesses like mine, not to just be in London, to be in Birmingham, to be in Liverpool, to be in, you know, and all the other not the mainstream places, the Bradfords and so on. And now Covid, what is Covid that showed us that you don't have to have the office just in London. You can have people working for you in, I don't know, Wolverhampton and and and they can stay in Wolverhampton and grow and invest and spend their money there. And yet working and have access to good careers. And I think I hope that's something that we start to to really push on. I hope so. Yeah, because I mean, it's also it's brilliant because for companies, the talent pool is so much wider. You know, exactly. It's amazing. I'm already seeing clients of ours who are open to hiring people from all from all locations, even even different countries. I mean, you know, if you're hiring a lawyer and they're, you know, they're not client facing or whatever. I mean, it doesn't matter where they're based at all. Exactly. Exactly. And even if they're client based, they're facing the transport links for their troops. Some of them have to improve to those more disadvantaged areas. The transport links are not always great or a rural area, particularly. They might not be the same transport links. But I think ultimately if we could get that right, then we can see. You know, it's sort of a small spread of wealth, more spread of, you know, sort of the North South divide that people talk about. We could try and work to eradicate that sort of thing. No, definitely. Because at the moment, it's it's like if you're in that environment, given your your story and experience, you're going to have to you always have to withdraw yourself and and go in, you know, go in and follow the degree or, you know, et cetera. But hopefully as companies start to hire people wherever you'll start to infiltrate more into into all levels of society. I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right. And in your world, you know, you'll start to see, like you say, people open up, opening up to saying, OK, we do want to see that person in the office two days a week, but we don't care if they're three days a week and they're from somewhere else. You've got you, you know, it's easy for you to find talent and the talent fields actually I can go for this and I don't have to confine myself to what's in my vicinity, which might be lower paid or et cetera. Yeah, definitely. I'm also I'm going to speak to a lot of young people and it's always, you know, I can't do it or I can't see people like me doing it. And, you know, the world's not fair, you know, I can't, I can't, I can't. I just love to see, you know, people, you can do it, right? And it's a bit of it. It's tough, but it's your mindset, you know, and you've you've you've proven it, right? You get the right have the right mindset. The world definitely isn't fair. It might never be. But don't. Yeah, we can only control what we can control. And I think if you if you I find my way, I teach resilience in schools because people write themselves off very early and and people write people off very early. So if we could teach resilience in schools so you don't take the first knock or somebody telling you you're not as clever or you're not as, you know, you're not sociable or you're too quiet or you're too loud. You know, if we if we could just be a bit more diverse in our thinking and and people taught resilience so you don't lose yourself on the way. You know, you do lose yourself sometimes to fit and and and people want to ultimately get the best of someone and you'll know this when they can bring their whole self to work. And if you're hiding a bit of yourself or you don't, you know, I was told at six years old, I shouldn't speak the way I spoke. I spoke password at home. And so I spoke password when I went to school. And then I got told why you can't talk like that. What's that sort of speaking? So you change your voice and now I speak like this and when I go home, my mom's like, why are you speaking like that? But you do, you change, you know, as you go around, you change a bit of yourself to fit. And that's fine. Sometimes it's circumstances demand it. And it's good that we were able to adapt. So I'm not saying you don't change at all, but. People need to be more accepting of the diversity of characters that they will come across their desk at school and work. Definitely, definitely. Because there's always a thing of like, you've got to you got to get on before you get along. Yes, yes. You know, and you always think, again, if you're looking at, let's say, law as a good example, I mean, it's like the caricature lawyer is like suit, tie, you know, very like super professional and stuff like that. And I don't know. I mean, do you think as a young person, you have to behave in a certain way to get in? To be a lawyer. Yeah. But we're trying to, lawyers are working very hard to try and stop that. I mean, I think in clients are getting there as well. You know, I think we are, I mean, we're a funny breed, but ultimately we are getting better at showing our real selves and recruiting from a wider pool. And when we do that, then we will change the natural perception of a lawyer, what they should look like, what they should sound like, that will happen over time. But we are making much more strides than that when we've ever made. And a lot of law firms have schemes and mentoring very early. So if young people are going to be watching this, or you're going to be talking to them, that, you know, you've got to get them to think about it early and not to write it off and try and take, you know, find out about schemes that have been run by firms to sort of introduce them to law because, you know, if you're not careful, you will write it off as a profession because you will assume it's not for me or I can never be. And I used to think that, you know, I saw, I wouldn't ever, maybe if I'd just got into a law firm and it was small and, you know, now I'm at one of the world's largest law firms, it's ridiculous. But, you know, in my head, I'm just thinking, if I could just qualify and I kind of just do this little bit of, you know, and just take one step at a time and you, who knows where it'll end up. Yeah, no one knows what school you've gone to. No one knows how much money your parents have. Yeah, nobody cares about that now. No one cares. No one cares. There's so many schools in the UK. I read it, you know, went to St. John's or whatever, right, millions of John's schools in the UK. No one cares, you know, but people care, you know, like if you've, I know, if you think it's not good or it was a tough environment and all of those things, it stops you, often you as an individual, like going for your dreams, as you said, actually. Yeah. And if you speak to most clients and you ask them to assess, you know, what would you like about Sandra or Joe Blogg's or whatever, rarely do they get, oh, God, she's so intelligent. Oh, my God. I think she's so intelligent. They go, oh, she's really, I really relate to her. She gets our firm. She gets our business. She understands, she tells things in a practical way. What makes a lawyer good is not the mega brain. Obviously, you have to be bright. Obviously, you have to be able to get on, understand your subject. But what makes you successful are some of the basic interpersonal skills that everybody can learn and, you know, and develop. Definitely. I'd like to see people hire for potential versus experience. I mean, because I remember, I remember when was running graduate recruitment from the large law firms and she was like, yeah, if they don't have four A's available and if they don't speak two or three languages, they don't even get, they're not even getting through the door. Right. And they had like thousands and thousands of applications, but you're not necessarily getting, you know, the best people. No, and you're getting people that have all probably been with the same mindset, been taught in the same way. And so what diversity will they bring to the client experience, to what the client needs, to the business is, if they're all the same, went to the same schools, got the same grades, never failed at anything, you know, it's you're just not getting the best of what's out there. And I didn't get the best grades. You know, I once I did my A level maths and got that over with, I never thought about maths again, you know. And I my A levels are not the top. I didn't get all A's in my A levels. But I'm sat there with those people that did holding my own, building a practice, leading a firm in the same way as they are, you know, or they're not actually. And what's the difference now? So so really, you can miss a lot of good people by making those assumptions. And I think the firm start trying to move away from that. They are. It's it's it takes some some bravery in a certain in an environment like this, you know, it's always safer, perceived safer to hire people with, you know, A's and you know, that's a great, you know. Yeah. Yeah. But if you go a little bit deeper, you know, hire kind people, imagine the company for the people, be great. Exactly. And people that and the loyalty that comes from people that actually feel like, do you know what? They took a chance on me. The loyalty that comes from those sorts of people is immense, you know. We see it all the time. They stay longer. They'll go the extra mile that always be willing to to to to to drive the business on your behalf because they felt, you know, what that person took that firm took a chance on me and I'm going to pay that tenfold and much more than than people that didn't didn't have really as work as much. And I'm not saying people with four A's didn't work or whatever, but just see the potential in all the people that apply, I suppose. Just like a bit more thought about what criteria you used to hire. Yes, yes, people at all levels. Yes. Sure, we'll go we'll go a long way. Yeah, and a few and don't assume, I mean, you know, that people know your world, you know, when I got to my law firm, you know, I didn't know about any skiing places or, you know, golfing ranges or, you know, I'm a big football fan, but that was the end of it. You know, so these conversations would go on and you'd be like, I've never been skiing. I've never been, you know, travelled half of these places. I mean, the first time on a plane I was 24 years old, I'd say, you know, it's like so I, you know, realise and appreciate and make sure you're inclusive at work because you can alienate people. They can make that step. They can get all that way there and they can get in the finally get into your business and then feel completely out of their depths and completely. Yes. So it's really important that we create an inclusive environment when people get there because otherwise you can people think, oh, this isn't for me and give up early or don't stay. Definitely. But also that's a wonderful thing of a diverse companies. You have people from all different backgrounds, different life stories, experiences, perspectives. Yeah, it's great. You know, if you round it round a dinner table and everyone's got a different life experience, yeah, that's that's interesting. Yeah, if you keep the conversation open, what do you do as opposed to assuming everybody does things or watch what floats your boat or whatever, then you're going to hear loads of stories and funny things. And I think that's what Zoom has maybe done. It's really funny and all the sort of different face to face like this. People are getting a little peek into other people's worlds and it's starting new conversations. I think that's quite good thing. I think that's quite good. I think it's really good because everyone's a little bit like it's a bit disarming, isn't it? Yeah, you're in the background, someone's living room. Yeah. Yeah, it's just I don't know the facade's gone a little bit, you know, it's just a bit more human and bit more natural and you're getting to know people a bit better. Yeah, so long, long way that continue, I hope, even though I don't really want the coronavirus to continue. But yeah, yeah. I think the new hopefully the new kind of the pace pandemic here will be a nice mix of, you know, face to face. This video obviously is going to continue. I mean, I can't see that slipping away. But yeah, it's exciting. You know, I think that's an exciting moment. Just kind of to last point, and you touched on resilience at schools and and kind of like, you know, schools wanting their kids to fit in a little bit. And I completely agree. I'd love to see, you know, certainly, as companies do open offices around the country. I love to see them kind of reach down if you like into like into schools and provide people to do mentoring and advice and things like that. And it's a super way of making people have given people access to different ideas and careers. It's a super way of doing it. And don't just do it at the 16. Do it at six, people thinking about it really early. You know, obviously, they might not understand all the careers that are out there, but just talk about some of the things people do. And yeah, I think that's that would be great. I think schools will really welcome and I think schools will benefit from bringing business into into the into the classroom. Definitely. And I'd like to see like stuff like resilience, mindset, communication. I mean, OK, maybe it's taught some places, but I'm it's not widespread. It's not widespread. No way. No, and it might mean that you don't get those calls as often. You don't, you know, that X isn't behaving or responding in the same way because people will appreciate the different characters that are in the classroom that they have to try and cater for. And business can help with that because they can talk about the different personalities and how people develop differently in their workplaces. And, you know, so so that's something that we could we could teach each other. Definitely. Yeah, I'd love to see that happen. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been awesome to speak to you. And it's been my pleasure to keep up well all the great work you're doing. And yeah, thank you so much. No, my pleasure. Thanks for this. Take care. Bye. Bye.