The Law in Lockdown and Beyond, with Hannah Beko
A series of conversations with those in the legal profession navigating the ups and downs of the law during and after lockdown. How has this changed the profession as we've emerged from the global pandemic?
The Law in Lockdown and Beyond, with Hannah Beko
Friday Conversation with Helen Conway, Coach, Trainer & Supervisor
In this episode of Friday Conversations, I was delighted to be joined by Helen Conway a retired Judge, coach, trainer & supervisor.
Helen speaks passionately about her belief in the importance of supervision for certain areas of the legal profession and you can find out more about Helen and supervision here, www.helenconway.com/supervision there is a free ebook to download with more details of what supervision is and how it works.
We also reference Chris Mill's book in the episode which you can find here:
http://www.chrismills.uk.com/training/the-case-that-really-got-to-me/
About your host, Hannah Beko
Podcast host Hannah Beko is a self-employed lawyer, coach and creator of the Lawyers Business Mastermind™ (the place for self employed lawyers to grow).
Hannah has also created the Build Your Legal Business Podcast which you can find here.
If you are a legal professional, please feel free to join our free Facebook Group for networking, tips and support - Legally Speaking, a group for the legal profession by clicking here.
You can connect with Hannah on LinkedIn or visit www.authenticallyspeaking.co.uk.
Today I'm really excited to be joined by Helen Conway who is a retired judge, coach, supervisor and trainer. So welcome Helen, come and tell everybody a little bit more about you.
SPEAKER_01:Hi Hannah, it's good to be here. Yeah so I retired from the judiciary last July although I had some respectively garden leave before that and yeah so I coach lawyers almost exclusively, lots of career progression, a little bit of retirement coaching, some side projects people are working on, wellness issues, that kind of thing. And I'm also very passionate about supervision as well, which I think is different to coaching. And so I'm very keen to bring that to the profession because I think that would have hugely benefited me. And I've also gone back to where I was before I was in the judiciary doing the training work. So in-house training, I don't do black letter law anymore, made that decision, but I do all the really important skills training for people. which is again that's been interesting in in lockdown but we can talk about that I'm sure
SPEAKER_02:yes well actually that brings me very nicely onto my question um so I tended to ask people back when we started this podcast you know how much did you work from home before lockdown versus now but obviously we've all been doing it for more than a year now but how did how did you find that period when we suddenly went into lockdown last March you know what what changed for you in in relation to work and things like that well that
SPEAKER_01:at that point I I was still officially in the judiciary but not actually at court anymore so I was overall at home although actually when lockdown the first lockdown hit I was in Paris and the intendancy had been to work in a effectively a garret or a very nice garret in Paris by the Bastille doing some writing work for a whole month and I was really enjoying that until we had to flee on the last flight out of Paris so that was highly disruptive and disappointing but yes I'd already gone through a bit of a transition by the time we came to working from home and I was intending to work from home permanently anyway because it's always something I've really found very helpful for me so I've actually quite enjoyed it albeit I'm in a much more privileged position with it and I know many people that I speak to are but yeah for me working from home is a good thing
SPEAKER_02:So you say you've enjoyed it so there's nothing you're sort of itching to get back to or
SPEAKER_01:I think the disadvantage of it for me, I think exercise, I can't say I miss exercise because I'm a couch potato by nature, but I do miss being able to go and get in a swimming pool, really miss that, and a good yoga class. You know, you can do it on your mat at home, but it's not the same as being in that environment. So I'm looking forward to getting back to that. I think the Doing the training work by Zoom is good in that you don't have the commute and you've perhaps got a wider reach, you can do it internationally, whatever. For my style of teaching, when I'm very engaged with the audience, that is harder. I did one last night where I could see everybody on screen and I knew everybody. It was for my faith community. That was so much better than doing it with strangers where some have got cameras on or you've got two screens of people. So for the training, I certainly will keep doing it on Zoom because I think for the reach and the convenience for short webinars particularly, it's great. But I do hope I get the opportunity to do some in-house stuff. And I think the other thing for me that has been difficult is novelty, being able to do new things and having the routine I like, but not being able to break it because nothing's been open or we haven't been able to go anywhere. That's been really hard.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I would completely agree with you. I think that that's what I've shared with a lot of people this year. I, like you, when I first started working from home nine years ago, loved it. It's what I'd wanted. It's what I'd been working towards. But actually, just being at home 100% of the time. got got difficult and I realized it was it was causing me stress just being in that environment all the time so like you say it's that variety it's that variation it's
SPEAKER_01:very creative but I mean literally creative you know I do art and writing or whatever but you you know the creative aspect of building a business or or being creative as a coach with somebody else that you need input for that as well as the output um and for me it can be very visual stuff uh so not just not having galleries open was a bit of a nightmare. As it happened, last weekend I went to visit my parents who haven't been very well. And I went to the local, there's like an outlet centre in Cumbria called Reged. And I went there with the intention of seeing if we could get a loaf of sourdough bread because we needed bread from the gourmet shop. Realised there was a print exhibition on and came home just completely energised and excited and ordered lots of equipment because I was so inspired. And I realised how long it had been since I'd had that experience. It was quite telling, because you almost forget what you've missed after a while, it's been so long. But yeah, and I remembered in the first lockdown, a barrister texted me and said, there's new graffiti up in Liverpool. And it was the middle of a working day and I just got in the car and drove to Liverpool to have a look at a wall. I needed to see new stuff. But learning what you've missed, I think, is really important because it means you can remember to actively put it in your life as much as you need it in the future.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, I'm really glad you've made that point, because I don't think I thought of that, that, you know, to be more creative, which is what, you know, I know you and myself when I'm writing or whatever, trying to be creative, that you need that input from somewhere, somewhere external. And I hadn't thought of that. So no, I will be, I know you've recommended this, this, this gallery to me so if you get there soon. It's
SPEAKER_01:been a bit of a reggae just off Junction 40 at the M6 on the way to music yeah.
SPEAKER_02:No I will I will see if I can get there because yes I hadn't thought about that so so thank you for that yeah. So what um you know I like to ask people what were their highs and lows of the last well year or so I suppose so what um should we should we go with the low points first because it's good to always end on highs
SPEAKER_00:but what were the
SPEAKER_01:difficult times?
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_01:think I January was a low point. The whole of January was a low point. And I think it was that I couldn't be out in the garden. It had dragged on forever. There was no end in sight. I just got bored and I was desperate to go somewhere. And I think because 2020 was actually a very active time for me. And by the time we locked down, I'd already had a fortnight in Israel and a fortnight in Paris. So in terms of travel, which is a big, you know, input thing for me. I'd actually had more perhaps than most people would have in a year anyway. So I survived for quite a long time and I convinced myself that I was saving up for a big trip and whatever. Then when we got to January and there was just nothing in sight, I was like, oh God, shoot me now. We ended up booking a cottage 90 minutes away from us and coming up for a couple of weeks just so that I had something to look forward to. I think I'm still struggling with that actually. That feeling of being imprisoned in England and Wales is an unusual one for us. And Brexit hasn't helped with that either. So that was a low. And I think my parents at that point were, or just after that point, were beginning to have health issues. And we were looking at regulations thinking, can we be with them, can we not? And having to deal with hospital issues, taking people to hospital that was distant. And that's been the low for me.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I know what you mean. Do you know, you reminded me when you were talking about training because obviously you and I do a bit of training and work together, don't we, through the professional training organisation. And I don't know if you were there on one of the calls when I shared with you one of my, I don't want to say lows, but one of my harder trainings to deliver via Zoom was when nobody put their cameras on. And it was two hours of training to a blank wall. And it was... It took all I had, I think.
SPEAKER_01:You might as well be recording a webinar, except you're not because you know people are there. So it's neither one thing than the other. The very first one I did in lockdown actually training was for Everton Football Club. for their staff. Apparently, they told me it was from the CEO down to the junior staff. I don't know because I never saw anybody. So I remember putting the laptop on a coffee table on top of the ironing board because I decided I wanted to be able to stand up the way I normally did. And I could see the member of staff who'd asked me to do it. She was a little bit on the screen. Otherwise, I could only see myself because I didn't do it on any of the normal platforms. And I'd said, if they have any questions, pop them in the chat and I'll do it as I go along so I could make it nice and interactive not a single question and I was just almost like dying on my feet going is there anybody there and at the end of it I said oh it looks like there aren't any questions and she said oh no I sent a message around telling everybody not to disturb you and so I've got all the questions and I would much rather have had that interaction and you know they were trying to be helpful to me so it was fine But yeah, and I think that's just symptomatic of lockdown as a whole, isn't it? Is we've lost the interaction with people that we were used to. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I totally agree with you though. I think, being able to do it remotely has opened up a whole new world, you know, where there's less travel. So in some ways you can fit more in and you can get more people, you know, you could have people from national or, or all around the world on a training, which is fantastic. But again, you know, I think like you said, there is something, about being in a room. There's something about the energy of being with people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's definitely the energy. There's definitely the ability to be funny, which was a big part of my training, the entertainment aspect of it, you know, the stand-up comedy routine thing that gets people engaged and keeps the energy up after lunch and that kind of thing that is really hard on Zoom. And you can't... Although you can see people and you can get some cues from it, and I think for coaching and supervision, actually... I don't think there's a massive disadvantage because you've got one person on a big screen like you and I are now on Zoom and you really can be present, I think, for individuals. But being present for somebody who is on the second screen that you can't see is impossible and for the postage stamp is very difficult. And so you can't really assess whether people need a little bit more from you or whether... if you've got a choice about which material to do now, what they're responding to and what's, it becomes a little bit more mechanical, which frustrates me because it's not, I presume it's probably not how you train either because you can't give what you want to give and that's frustrating, I think, isn't it? When you feel you're doing as good a job as you want to do because of the circumstances.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:yeah no no that's true yeah i think i think if there's no other option it's a good option and to be able to get more people involved it's a good option but yeah nothing nothing beats the in person definitely so
SPEAKER_01:what would be your hype oh go on sorry i was just gonna say it's really good for short webinars where you didn't want you want to travel to brighton for an hour um yeah
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:I've been known to do that. I've been known to
SPEAKER_00:travel
SPEAKER_01:around the country. I've learned that doing it on Zoom rather than travelling to the other end of the country for an hour and back is, yeah. One of my classic training stories was the day that my husband went to work half an hour away from us and left me in the house. I drove to the airport, flew to Gatwick, did a session at the Gatwick Airport Hotel, flew home, drove home and got home before he got home from work.
UNKNOWN:LAUGHTER
SPEAKER_02:oh yeah those were the days flying down to london that now anymore i don't think that flight doesn't exist it used to be every month i was on that flight down there yeah crazy, crazy times. So what, um, I say highs, but you know, I mean, any positives, you know, what, what has been the positives from, from this year for, for you, for, for your business, anything like that?
SPEAKER_01:So 2020 particularly was actually a very busy, productive year for me. And I managed to, um, I managed to graduate online. So I did my, um, in psychosynthesis and leadership coaching. I managed to get the classes in in person just before lockdown, but the rest of the work we did online and the graduation itself online. And I'd done a lot of post-graduation training online that I wouldn't have had access to. So there's some work with the Strozzi-Heckler Institute, somatic coaching, which is California. There's no way I could have done that, but that made it all possible. So actually the first thing I did was I did a lot of the first part of it I think has been it's been a good incubation period actually because everybody has been at home everybody's been just waiting to before they bloom into new things and and it's been a I felt not alone, I suppose, and I would have taken that time anyway, I think, just to build a business, or build practice is the word I prefer, and to get used to what I was doing and all that creative stuff for me and my way of working. But it's actually been quite positive that everybody's been at home doing that, so I haven't felt the oddball. So, yeah, so there is that. I'm not sure I can think of many other... positive so much as the neutrality of it hasn't been that bad you know it's not been that bad for me um yeah
SPEAKER_02:yeah I loved your um your comment there about you know sort of the incubation period and waiting to bloom because I have to say and I don't know what your experience has been with your coaching practice but I've never had so many individual lawyers coming to me to invest in their own coaching as I've had in the last year because I've well because of their own reasons but it just feels as though there has been this shift to can I prepare myself for the future you know how can I be ready for whatever it is that's to come
SPEAKER_01:I think so I think there's two aspects to that one is it's literally created space so it's broken something and then you have to think about what's going in its place because we're all talking about the new normal whatever people are aware that it's not just a pause it's it's a change or a transition period um and also it's been so stressful that people have have seen a need and i think i've i Initially, people were coming because the first lockdown was so sudden and they were coming with well-being issues, very crisis kind of well-being issues. And I've noticed a shift over the period where I get more coming to me now saying, I know the family law system I work in particularly is broken and I know I need to leave it. And my coaching is because I've made that decision and I want help to do the transition as opposed to I'm struggling and I'm not quite sure where I'm going. And I've still get both, but I would say that there's been a noticeable shift to people having used the lockdown period to gain that realisation that something has got to change for them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, similar, similar. That's what I'm seeing, which I think is a positive. You know, I'm quite glad to see
SPEAKER_01:that. I think it is. And I think particularly for me, you know, in the family law system, it's an opportunity to create something new. You know, we talked for a long time before lockdown about the system being broken, criminal lawyers particularly, and family, you know, also. But if it's broken, then let's either mend it or create something new. with the pieces so it's it's given a bit of a hiatus where I think people have been able to think differently which is always as we know as coaches the starting point to the action
SPEAKER_02:yes absolutely yeah you can't solve the problem with the same thinking that created it I seem to find myself saying very often
SPEAKER_00:at
SPEAKER_02:the
SPEAKER_01:moment
SPEAKER_02:yeah what what do you think um i know i didn't i didn't prep you with this question but i suspect you'll have some views what do you think this last year or so has done to the legal profession what what changes do you think it might bring for us
SPEAKER_01:i think he just if you think of it as an elastic band i think it's stretched it to the snapping point and it was fully stretched before um and i think it's brought brought realization. I think it's brought some sampling of possible changes. So yeah, a lot of people saying, I don't want to work from home full time, but I don't want to be in the office full time. I think it's brought some people new possibilities because of that. I know one of my contacts has said, it's made me realize I can expand the business. I can buy another business to bring more solicitors in without having the cost of expanding the office space. So it's given that possibility that she wouldn't have, and she will continue a model of part in the office, part off, you know, sharing the space, which is not something, I mean, they could have done that before, but I don't think it was on anybody's radar. So I think it's brought an enormous amount of, weariness and despair and also some ideas. And I think I would say not necessarily unfortunate to the same people. So the job is to match up those new ideas with the people who were in the despair and feel it's broken and try to get something new in the future so that it becomes even and better rather than that disparate experience.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, I think weariness and despair, I think may resonate with, with a few people who are listening to this. I know exhaustion is something I'm hearing a lot and, and it's been going on for so long, you know, it's such a, it's almost become normal to be exhausted and, you know, in this place of, I suppose, uncertainty. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's about it more because of lockdown as well. I think people were exhausted before, but were maintaining that mistaken view of, well, either you don't talk about it or if you do, you do it with an element of self-blame of, well, I can't hack it and everybody else can. And now everybody is openly exhausted and struggling and sharing that experience, which in itself is powerful and can be healing, but is not itself the solution.
SPEAKER_02:No, no. And I think from my perspective, as you know, as someone who's been talking about mental health and stress and things in the law for years, I think that has been one of the positives that suddenly it is fine to talk about it. It is normal now to talk about it and that is good. But yeah, now we need to see the shift. We need to see the change.
SPEAKER_01:And I think one of the things I'd say from, certainly from, I know you're a conveyance and I don't know much about that world, but certainly in family law, the danger is that we, We only talk about it amongst ourselves, which is great peer support, but it's not the same as processing it with somebody with the experience of taking you through the formal reflective process which for me is supervision or reflective practice and one thing I really do want to see coming in is if supervision has expected good practice in the family profession and there are a few of us around the country who now understand that and have worked in it and had it ourselves and it's starting to happen it's very exciting but it's still very patchy and I think if there's a if there's a buzz topic at the moment in family law, certainly we had, we just had the resolution family conference and I know that it's popping up all over the place there. Um, that it's the supervision is, is the way to
SPEAKER_02:go. I know you mentioned this earlier, actually, I'm glad you reminded me because I wanted to come back to it. What, what does that look like then if you're in, in the, if you're a family lawyer, what, what would supervision look like for them? What does it mean?
SPEAKER_01:It's one of those things that you can define in many different ways where it's hard to sort of put one definition, natty definition on it, but it's effectively a, a reflective conversation about your practice and your clients. So you can literally bring your clients into the room, as we would say, um, and the supervisor will be trained in, there's a number of models, but, um, But to enable you to consider that experience, both from your point of view, in terms of the dynamics of you and your client, you and the supervisor, you and the system that you work in. So it's a very wide ranging conversation that's intended to be what we call normative, formative and restorative. So it can be about. how you grow your career what the ethical difficulties you're facing are your own self-care you know it's all that in a in a package so it draws very much on the the skills of coaching or therapy um in terms of the listening skills and you know the the tools that the supervisor will use but it's a it's a different animal to coaching which is about i'm at place a i want to get to place b this is about your nature of your practice and who you are in that practice and how it's affecting you and how you can do it differently and and all that
SPEAKER_02:kind
SPEAKER_01:of stuff
SPEAKER_02:it's a great process No, it does. I can tell how passionate you are about it. Maybe if there's any family lawyers listening who think, oh, that sounds interesting, perhaps they should drop you a line. I'd be happy to
SPEAKER_01:tell them more. In fact, if they go onto my website, helenconway.com forward slash supervision, on that page, there's a free ebook about it that they can download. And there's also very good books written by a guy called Chris Mills. And I think you can only get it through his website. If you just Google him, he comes up and he's written a longer book that's got fictionalized case studies in it. So you can read what it might be like to have supervision. That's about 15 quid, I think. So yeah, see if you can get hold of that.
SPEAKER_02:There you go. I'll put that in the show notes too. So people can, I'll send you the link for it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Well, let's, let's just end on one. If you can think of one that you've not said already, what's one big lesson, big learning, something you've, whether you've learned about yourself or about our profession or something over the last year or so.
SPEAKER_01:That it's, it's, there are many different ways of working and it's, you don't have to work really hard, full tilt, nine to five. And I know that sounds a daft thing to say, but it's been my work really for myself, and again, my supervisor's been hugely helpful with this, is that I was bringing that repeating pattern of the stressful way of working from being in the judiciary. And I said at one point, I felt like I was a shortbread biscuit, you know, where they had the stamp on it with a little thistle, that somebody was going, work hard, work hard, work hard, work hard, and just... stamp stamp stamp and it was like imprinted in me that you have nine o'clock in the morning go um and of course one of the joys of being self-employed particularly with clients who have a need for early evening appointments is i can work as and when i want to and i really struggled with that that letting go of the image that there's only one way to work um and that it has to feel hard to be valid that if you're not struggling and pushed and striving that you're not working well or working at all. And my own supervisor comes from an engineering background. And we had a conversation, he said to me, in engineering, the definition of work is changing things from one state to the other with as little friction as possible. And I did exactly what your face has just done on Zoom. There was that eyes open, mouth open, oh, kind of moment. And I just, I found that life changing actually in terms of my work that, you know, you can do good work and really make an impact with people and give value without it having to feel hard. And I think, you know, I'm a Lancashire as well. So, you know, I come to it with, you know, work is, it's like dark satanic mills and working down pit and, you know, and so because you particularly come from a family of who's had that, not that exact profession, but, you know, manual work, you know, that almost you, because office work in comparison is almost cushy, that there was almost a habit of replacing the hardness of it to prove that you were working. And so learning not to do that, learning to relax and to do the self-care and to take the flexibility and enjoy all that has been a real lesson for me, for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love that, Helen. And I know that I've shared a lot actually the last year that, you know, the things people have struggled with this year, I completely understand because it took me three years or so of working at home to realise that there were all these pitfalls to working at home. You know, like, as you've said, you know, the idea that I used to rush to drop the children off at quarter to eight at school when there was no, it was my own business. It didn't matter if I was at the computer by eight o'clock or nine o'clock or 10 o'clock, but we were so institutionalised, if you like, that that's what you do. And I used to feel guilty if I was in the supermarket in the middle of the day because I should be working and I have to say it took me a long it took a coach asking me do you really need to start work at nine o'clock and me thinking well actually I could start work whatever time I want to as long as I get done what I need to get done yeah for
SPEAKER_01:me I've been able to find your own rhythm of it as well that you know you some things I do better in the morning some things I do better in the evening or you know, it suits me, you know, because as an activity, I quite fancy doing something in the morning. And so I can do that and catch up as it were later on. Catch up's the wrong word, but you know what I mean? I can design the day the way it is. And I think that's what I meant about the creativity of a business is there is a design element to it about what you want work to look like and what it is for you, what the purpose of it is for you. And there isn't just one fits all. Nine to five. Yes. Kind of model.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. That is a fantastic point for people to think about. You know, there is no one size fits all. How does it work for you? How can you make it work for you? And that fantastic quote you had there, you know, that work is transforming one thing into another with as little friction as possible.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:If
SPEAKER_01:you really think about that. One exercise I did that you listeners might want to try actually is I took a little notebook and every activity I did for a while, I just made a note, you know, podcast with Hannah. That's nothing more than that. And I would rate it on a scale of one to five, how much joy it brought me doing it, how much I enjoyed. resented having to do it or really really look forward to doing it beforehand and while i was doing it so i could see whether the expectation of it matched up with what i was doing and then anything that was below a four i was i looked at and thought why am i doing that do i have to do it um and if i do how can i do it differently so that it nudges it up to a four or a five and if i don't have to do it and it's just noise and friction then don't do it yeah
SPEAKER_02:The next time I invite you on, you're going to be looking back at your list and thinking, what number did I give that podcast? It's a five. It's a five all the way
SPEAKER_00:through. Oh, no. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_02:Well, thank you so much for coming to join me, Helen. I really appreciate it. I'm sure our listeners will as well.
SPEAKER_01:I hope so. And I'll give you the stuff for the show notes and hopefully people will have a look at Supervision and see the value of it. It would certainly have changed my life for the better if I'd known about it before the tag end of my career.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I'll make sure everyone can find that as well. But thank you very much. Yes. Take care now.