Hannah Blom-Cooper: 0:00

The titular leader, irrelevant who they are, gets grabbed from behind by the leader. The person who is going to say, we're doing a conga, everybody get on board. This is what is happening at this party. So

Andrew: 0:14

only a Conga. Once the person behind us decided it's a Conga.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 0:17

actually, it's only a conga when the third person joins

Mark: 0:27

Today, we're lucky to be joined by Hannah Blom Cooper, who is a civil fraud lawyer and a partner of law firm Greenberg Traurig, having previously spent her professional career at Mishcon de Reya, where she reached the level of partner. Hannah is a highly experienced commercial litigator representing both individuals and corporations, focusing on disputes arising from business failure and formal insolvency processes. Hannah is often the first person contacted by clients who have been made aware of an action against them. The cases that Hannah works will often involve huge reputational risk, which justifies mounting a defense. And today we're going to hear about what it's like being in a team in a law firm.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 1:07

Well, first of all, at my level of, experience in terms of the type of work I do and the level that I work at, we generally don't get to stand up in court at all. Solicitors. hand their cases over at. points in the process to the, to the barristers. So, um, we are, some people say back office, some people say the, the brain's behind the machine or whatever, but solicitors generally are office based building cases, liaising with clients, working the financial side of all the cases that we work on and the advocacy, which is the standing in front of the judge and arguing the Rumpole of the old Bailey or Suits for some is, is usually done by, um, barristers who are specialists in that area. And the, the weirdness of why we've got a split profession is, goes back to, you know, the courts of the king when, you know, there, there was a very different environment in which lawyers operated and who could touch the king and who could talk on behalf of the king. Um, so we have, so we have that funny split profession. So the, so. My life does end up in court in terms of work for client quite often. but it's very rare. Something bad has gone wrong. If I have to speak to a judge in an open court,

Mark: 2:18

So in in court, a barrister is part of your team, but that's not the job that

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 2:23

No. So a, a barrister is separate, as I said, is a completely separate profession and is a much more lonely, as my experience of it, is a much more lonely existence. They are generally, um, uh, self-employed. They may work in, they may operate rather than work in, operate within chambers, which is like a, a kind of a collective for a WeWork, for, for the, for the, for the legal profession. But they are self-employed and it's extremely important that they have complete independence and autonomy because when they stand up in court, they are literally the mouthpiece of an individual client. So they could be standing up against the person who shares the room next to them, but they will have had no contact whatsoever. There's nothing about their financial, you know, um, reward that has any bearing on the person who's standing next to me, even if they share the same work environment. So that's, that's very important. And having that kind of independence when you've. Come to the level of, you know, the cases we are on and, um, and presenting cases to judges where, you know, there's a lot riding on it For our clients, it's very important to be having that specialist advocate who has that independence of mind. But yeah, we do form teams with them as with pretty much everybody around us in our, in our space as well.

Andrew: 3:38

So Hannah, I think you've given us a really good view of that. You know, the stereotypical thing we all see in the, in the movies, the courtroom dramas and things, and that's the, that's where the, the advocacy happens on behalf of your clients, but you're an insolvency lawyer. it would be really helpful to understand if I'm a, I'm in business and I, I'm, I'm about to go insolvent or something catastrophic has happened and uh, you know, unfortunately I have to get in touch with someone like you. What happens, what's the process the process that you're involved in, what does that look like?

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 4:18

the, the kind of legal area of insolvency covers both what is my area of work, which is the litigation, the contentious work where there's a dispute arising out of an insolvency, which is very common. And there's a whole nother side to insolvency, which is maybe where, you know, in terms of the media, we get a bit more of it if we're talking about a massive corporate failure, like a Carilion, if you remember that, where, you know, the bottom has dropped out of a business for one reason or another. But actually what happens is that then, you know, the lawyers swarm in, or the financiers swarm in and they pick off the business and they restructure it in a way that gives the best outcome for the, for. Usually for the creditors of that company, that is an entirely different beast to what I do. They, they kind of, they like Venn diagram at certain points, um, which I'll, I'll give you an example of, but actually that is so insolvency as a term is a bit dangerous in terms of saying that's what I do. So I won't get called from, in terms of my side of the work. I won't get called by a business which is a teetering on insolvency. Um, usually that will be somebody else in my firm that would get say, you know, we are, we are having a financial problem. We look, you know, our banks are breathing down our neck. We need to do something about this. And then they'll have a, you know, a different kind of legal journey to go on. But where it does come into my domain, and I can give you an example of a case I've, I've working on at the moment, is what happened was there was an insolvency in the past and they then had, liquidators were appointed over the company. The assets were all, you know, sold off basically. And the liquidators were then left with a massive shortfall in terms of what was available for the creditors of the company. Then, you know, then you get the call and that's when the, that's when all the, the, the fun starts in terms of the, you know, the building, the client team, building the case, working out the direction of travel for, you know, the, the client. Most important in the early stages, but then also working out the economies of it for the, for the firm and for the, in this case we also have an insurer who is, is assisting with our fees. So we have to work out the economies with the insurer as well.

Andrew: 6:33

So the red phone has rung and there's an urgent situation that this individual has found themself in. How, what do you do you, you said you've got to. Put the team together. So you now, you're now assembling a team that has to attend to this specific urgent problem. And presumably you're on the clock.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 6:55

So, well, first of all, I mean this is, this is really dull, but the actual first

Andrew: 7:00

If you think it's dull, we probably think it's interesting, so go for it.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 7:03

Okay. Okay. Well, well, I'm gonna say a word which is gonna make you think it is dull, which is regulation. We are highly, highly regulated business. Every single step, and particularly the first interactions with a new client are. I haven't worked in another regulated business, so I can't speak, but I believe we are must be one of the highly regulated, we're only the only profession I believe that has an actual act named after there's a solicitor's act. So there's, but apart from that, there's all, you know, lots of regulation in terms of our, um, uh, onboarding clients is what obviously what people have to do, all sorts of business. So there's, there's a process of working out whether there's any potential conflict across the business. So is there any part of the insolvent business that we had previously touched that means that we are forbidden from taking on this client? Um, and that's actually quite a difficulty in itself, and that involves, you know, reaching into the teams in the back office of our firm, and then there's a whole load of, you know, money laundering regulations and then, you know, terms and whatever. And with the insurer as well, all of that. So before you get to. Feeling out your, your team and you're doing that. At the same time though, these two things are running along and uh, yes, you're expending a lot of time on it, but it's pretty much all contingent. You are not on the clock, you are not raking it in on day one. You are trying to work out whether you can actually act. Um, and that's actually quite a complex process.

Andrew: 8:31

So that's interesting in itself that you're working in a kind of contingent fashion that, right, I need to assemble a team for a con, a provisional client who I might have a conflict of interest with, therefore can't represent. And so that's got a lot of uncertainty attached to it. And you. You, you, if the checks and balances come out with a green light, you're there. It is. Go, isn't it? It's right. We, we need to start sprinting.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 9:01

and in the instance that I was describing to you we did have time. We had time in order to do that, but on many other cases, we, are, subject to what's called a freezing order, which is our client is immediately, um, uh, unable to touch any of their assets immediately, unable to, um, uh, even probably access bank accounts, has to disclose all of their assets in a very short period of time and return to court immediately. So all of that has to be then all of the description I was giving you about the onboarding has to be truncated and, um, done in very short, short order. Building the team has to be done literally overnight because you need people to, uh, be covering off several different aspects of what's going to be required in the coming days. Um, uh, and one of the biggest issues in the very early stages of a freezing order is that probably the client has received upwards of, you know, 4,000 pages of documents in order to obtain the freezing order. And they all have to be kind of absorbed by the team to work out where it's going.

Mark: 10:12

you, you have this, this urgent matter that's been raised. You have a team that potentially has already started work to understand whether you can act on, on behalf of a client and maybe moving forward to that point where you have decided that you can act. You now have to put a team together. I'm really interested in how you go about that, because I assume those people are potentially working on other cases. You have to figure out who is the right person at the right, maybe at the right stage of their career with the right skills, the right experience to work on this. And there are different roles to fill. could you walk us through how you go about finding the talent, what the size of the team is? How do you understand whether they're going to be a good fit for the team?

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 10:55

Within that process, I have a rule of thumb, which is that if you are a person who likes to, and you know, you don't necessarily get to establish this on day one or in a process of recruitment, but if you're a person who likes to have a to-do list at the beginning of your day and at the end of the day have more or less ticked off that to-do list, and it more or less looked like what you were expecting when you started, then this type of litigation is definitely not for you because. Most of my to-do lists the shape of them change every day and some days quite dramatically. And I get huge amounts of energy from that. And if people, whether they're introvert or extrovert, get energy from the change that happens because your day has been interrupted by somebody coming into literally standing in the doorway and saying, this has happened. I need you to drop what you're doing and do this. Can you do that? You know, and now you know, you know, also trying to build teams when some people might physically not actually be in the office, which is a bit of a, um, obstacle and sometimes to, to being able to access that kind of conversation. Um. If you, if you can see what happens, I, I walk into someone's doorway when I've got that sort of situation and I say, this has happened. Have you got the capacity? And if their face lights up, they are a litigator. And if their face drops, they are probably an, you know, excellent at other things. But they're not intrinsically, what I would say it's very crude, but intrinsically a litigator'cause you have to enjoy the fact that something's gonna happen left field and someone's gonna want you to drop what you're doing and ask you to balance everything else in your life.

Mark: 12:30

How, how do you know which doors to knock on? Is there a pool of people? How do you find talent inside the organization?

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 12:37

uh, we are in, we're in an office in London of 145. Persons. Um, about 40 of those are operating within litigation. Our litigation team, and I'm talking 40 lawyers, there are support staff as well. And within that 40 lawyers, there are some specialisms whose background and expertise will just not be able to be transferable into the cases that we've been talking about. So they are excluded basically automatically because of that, that lack of expertise. So we have a white collar crime team. Crime is a, as a, as a, an area of litigation is completely specialist. I wouldn't be able to, in fact, I've tried and I've been massively found out, so I wouldn't be able to do, I wouldn't be able to do it. And likewise, colleagues in the, in the who are operating in that space wouldn't be able to do the civil work necessarily. Some people can cross over, but it's very rare in our, at our level. So there are some people who self-select and they're not available for the type of. Tasks that we're talking about, then there is within the rest of it. You know, there are, obviously I have people who I've worked with who have tried and tested who, um, you know, if we're talking about, uh, crisis team building who are going to be my first port of call and fortunately for me that list is quite long'cause most people are much better than I am at my job. And so I can, I can go to, you know, probably seven or eight people who I am confident that I can rely on and can trust, which is huge part of that, you know, day one stuff. And then there'll be another list who, I dunno, have as much familiarity with who I would really like to work with, but I don't know so well that in certain situations, which are not crisis point, you can, you can call on them and have that experience and build that relationship. But they are definitely in a, in a second tier if you like. And sometimes you have to dip into the second tier.'cause the first tier. Caught up in other things. So it is a little bit of a, well each, each situation is different, but basically it's about, you know, the relationships that you've formed with the people, because most of what we need is to be able to work well with people. I think for all of the people in my team, they've all got the capacity to work on the cases that I, that I am doing and to do it very well. So it's not about skillset as much as their, you know, their softer skills probably.

Mark: 15:07

So there, there, there's an internal Rolodex. Um, and there there's obviously this really interesting thing that you, you have probably a much wider, long lived teams, long, long-lived team, which is the firm that you're working in. And you have probably worked with those people on this project. So it'll be a, a case, but there is something with the beginning and an end and establish some familiarity with them and a working relationship with them. And then they need to be made available to come and work. In this team that, that you're working on, do people work multiple cases at once or is this team are, are these people members of multiple teams all at once. So they'll be working with you on a case and working someone else

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 15:45

And then you're, you, you are, you're going straight to the most fractious part of it, what it is like to work in a litigation team, which is that we, you know, they, I like to think that I'm in a. Very flat organization. That's not true. It's quite hierarchical. And because we have, because of the regulated aspect of it, everything has to go through it. It's like this very, very thin funnel at the very top of it because it has to go through the partner and out. So any product that goes out of this firm goes out with my name on it. In terms of my cases, so obviously there are lots of funnels'cause there are, uh, well in my bit of the business there are five partners. Um, doing so creating all of those tunnels. So lots of teams feeding in lots of different cases, going out through one person and, um. In order to be able to maintain the level that we want, the business size of the business and attract the work and whatever, we have to run lots of different cases into those funnels. And so therefore, if you think about the more the, the team below the partner, they are going to be working on more than one case, for different partners. And this is where the, you know, the, the friction lies because, you know, it's very hard at any point in time to say, my cause is more important than your cause. But sometimes we have to do that. And, um, I would say this, wouldn't I, but I am, within my partnership team, I've got the most incredible relationships with the five for, for a very specific reason. And, um, and that conversation for me with any of those is, is, is. Probably to our clients is the most valuable.'cause I can say, no, really, do you need this person today? Can I have their time for this? Or whatever like that. And those, they're quickly in and out conversations and they don't create friction, but they are areas of friction in businesses like ours. And we're very present in my previous firm just because, you know, there, there was more people actually doing the kind of work that I was doing. So probably more, um, instances where it could be friction. But yeah, it is, it's a very, it's very strange. So there are like. We are in competition with each other for the resource that we have available to us. And there's always a tension between recruiting and the possibility that we have, which is present for all lawyers who work on the solicitor's side, which is clients have no obligation to instruct us. They can go to a another firm at any point in time. So you can be suddenly, you know, the clients for whatever reason the case settles, excellent, client gets fed up with fees, not so great. Client gets, you know, um, fed up with their, their lawyers or the case or whatever, and disappears and suddenly, you know, you're over resourced. So there's always that balance. But having that relationship at partner level is, uh, as I say, probably the most valuable thing I offer to clients, even though they have no idea.

Andrew: 18:41

So there's a. An internal market almost around about time and attention on, on caseloads. Uh, and, and there's obviously an important team dynamic among the partners that, that sets the, sets the rhythms for the, for, for the activity of the firm as a whole.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 19:03

You, you described it much better than I was describing it. It's a marketplace and it's a rhythm. It's just Exactly. And I mean in very, you know, in terms of tools that we use, we have a capacity tool. You know, we, you know, and, and the, the, the resource that we have in the team don't like saying the word resource'cause they're all individuals, but our solicitors are inputting into that what to their, what their capacity is. But as I say, like the litigation 1 0 1 rule is that it changes as you, you know. Nine o'clock does not look the same as three o'clock. So your capacity changes and the ability to update that is not, it's not a sufficiently um, uh, up-to-date tool that it has any real use, apart from a guide as to who's got availability and what cases they're working on. The best one is, you know, conversations as soon as the, the moment arises.

Andrew: 19:58

you've got this marketplace, you've got different clients with, uh, and you're assembling different teams, but presumably you also have to think, what, how do I. I'm gonna use the word price. I don't literally mean price, but how do I price up that particular case in a way that means that we'll actually do a good job and that, you know, that person or that group of people are not so overstretched, just so you can service the, the client do.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 20:27

it is literally price as well, Andrew, because we charge as litigators. We charging by the hour and each. fee-earner has a, you know, a rate at which they are working on these cases. So there is a price element to it. So you're not, not only are you doing the, have you got the capacity, um, and have you genuinely got the capacity in terms of other things that might be going on, but also what level are you at in terms of your pricing and is that the right level of experience for the case? And do we need two of you and do, and that's, you know, the pricing aspect is absolutely key. So I might like to think that there's my, my go-to, you know, 12 year qualified lawyer, um, for a case that is quite tight on budget. I, I have not got access to them. I, I

Andrew: 21:16

they're too expensive.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 21:17

too expensive and we can't justify it for the client.

Andrew: 21:20

I'm not a football person, but it makes me think of like, you know, you're Premier League footballers. This is what such and such earns a week, and that that adds a, it adds a value. It also, it, whether you like it or not, it imposes a degree of stratification into the team.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 21:37

I think by its very nature, it imposes stratification. Exactly. And so I, as I say, I like to think that, you know, it's quite egalitarian and we, you know, consult when we're doing, you know, when we, when we have team meetings, everybody's voice should be heard because actually no one has the monopoly on what's a good idea or not in this, in our space. If you've come this far in terms of your career, you've definitely got to, to to, to the point at which your, your view is valuable, but. The reality is it's, there is a hierarchy and there's, you know, that, and I said to you this fourth through this funnel, which is that everything has to come through me. So it usually, on the bigger cases, will be drafted by, you know, the document we're talking about, drafted by the most junior, but it'll pass through the hands of somebody else who will input, and then it'll come to me as a fairly finished product,

Andrew: 22:24

Yeah. It, it creates a, it creates its own form of hierarchy through which, uh, the materials that you're working on pass, I'm just thinking if I was a mid-level lawyer, I'd want, I'd really, I'd really want to be able to trust the junior lawyers beneath me to do a really good job so that when it came to me, uh, I wasn't having to pick up the slack.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 22:46

but I think the trust works all the way, the way up and also all the way back down again as well. Um, and the very essence, as I said to you, our clients, you know, are, are any moment, it's not like a contract that they can not, you know, that they have to serve term termination notice on they, they literally, they're, they're here and then they're gone. So more, more importantly, I think sometimes than the actual product that you deliver is that you have, they have a hundred percent confidence in what you're doing. Obviously a hundred percent is maybe unachievable, but that trust element, so when I'm teaching More junior lawyers. I said, you have to command trust. And you do it in the teeniest, teeniest ways with clients. It's not about the, you went to a hearing and you won the day, and so then they now think you are a genius and you've, you've, you're going to be the person who's win the case.'cause nobody can guarantee that. But what you can affect is, you know, that you, that you communicate the tiniest details about what they're going to be charged. And if that changes, you tell them that's gonna change and it might only change by 50 pounds, but you tell them that's gonna change by 50 pounds because it's those micro discussions you have with your client or those micro interactions which you have with your client, which builds the trust. And what I was, the interesting thing for me is that when you do that well with a client that bleeds into the team.

Mark: 24:09

You have a relationship with the, the client, but you, you have a relationship with'em, you have a relationship with the team. To what extent is the client feeling like part of the team that's working on this,

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 24:20

It's a, it's a, it's a really good question. Different clients, different levels of integration with the team. Um, so I do quite a lot of work. So when I was describing to you this, the scenario in which I'm acting for a director who's been, who's facing claims from liquidators, I've also, and also do currently acting for liquidators. Now there are accountants who are, you know, who are licensed to take up appointments As As liquidators or administrators or whatever they are doing, but they are professionals. Their life in terms of the day-to-day of it looks very much like mine in terms of their office-based existence, team building, you know, client facing, all of those sorts of things. And when I'm acting for that kind of client, it's, it's very much like we are sitting side by side in the process. Um, that, you know, the, the kind of level of, you know, telepathy is quite high. You don't need to say certain things. You don't need to communicate, don't need to manage expectations in quite the same way because they understand the whole process. A, they've probably been through it many times with many different lawyers, but also they're just because of their professional, they come from professional service background. So that is a, is a, is a kind of quality of team that is, uh, is that even though it's a client, it's much more like somebody who's inside your own business. Then there'll be, I have, uh, I have a client who's a lawyer. He's not a litigator, but he's, you know, he's somebody who has a, a background similar to mine. And so therefore, you know, his level of, you know, involvement in some of what I'm doing is quite high. But, and then there'll be other clients who are from a completely different world in terms of their background and don't have any of the same experiences of clients at the moment who I've realized that I am not, um, they're not in a team with me. It's very much more like a, yeah, as I say, a more transactional relationship. And I've realized I need to build up levels of communication with this particular client and that they need a lot more from me in terms of filling in what's happening in the background because they just don't get it. It's very foreign to them. So I guess those are the three examples of where, you know, there's different types of team relationships with clients. Um, but yes, you do form a team. And also the other thing is, I think that even though this is generally around business, most of the cases that I'm involved in, whether it is for a claimant who is seeking a recovery or from a defendant who is, you know, potentially lights out in terms of their financial, um. Means they're, they're probably at one of the worst stages of their professional or work business lives. It's not pleasant being involved in litigation. So you get exposed to some bits of emotion and some bits of vulnerability and some bits of quite irrational behavior, um, which is totally understandable because it's, it's, it's, it's fierce. It's not nice. It's very unpleasant sometimes.

Mark: 27:27

When you were describing the Bringing the team together and the nature of the work, the fact that for people that are high on this conscientiousness scale, they won't get their very disciplined day. Something popped in my head. It's, it's not, not a term that I love using, but is something called VUCA, which is another, another acronym'cause business loves an acronym, which stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. And that sort of, uh, effectively and acknowledgement that in certain situations, and I think maybe it was Stanley McChrystal that really popularized this. He, he had a book called Team of Teams about how the US military and particularly special forces adapted from a situation where warfare was almost play by numbers. You win through superior planning, supply chain operations, logistics, uh, information. Then that completely changed with the War on Terror because they moved into this state where it was incredibly volatile, and so teams had to be put together differently. And it's, it's really interesting how you described that in, in this very specific area of law that you act in. Things change

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 28:35

so one of the challenges of my work is that if you've been a client of a law firm in a, in a, you know, in a happier times you've bought a business or you've bought a property, or you've, um, uh, you know, been involved in a, you know, raising money or something like that, and you've had to use lawyers, that, um, is quite a different experience that you then have if you then have to come across and, uh, instruct a litigator, and you might, in your, in your nice, pleasant, you know, building business, um, relationship with a lawyer, have been able to agree a fixed fee. For your work where you can say, this is the project we're going to be involved in and this is what it's going to cost. And in fact, if we, we'll cap it at that, we'll say it's not gonna go above that because we're confident that we can Litigation is by its very nature the opposite of that in the sense of you have no idea what it's gonna go because you're not just your opponent and there may be more than one opponent. You don't know what they're going to do. And generally they're not going to tell you or flag it to you that they're going to do X, Y, and Z. And also the court is a. Creature in the whole process as well. And they sometimes can throw a massive curve ball at you. And so you are unable to price it on a fixed fee basis. And what you're saying to a client is actually, you're gonna have to pay me what I tell you it's going to take in terms of time. And I'm only gonna really tell you, I'm gonna try and predict how much time it's gonna take me, but I'm really only gonna be able to tell you how much time it's taken me after it's taken me that time and their face will drop. You know? And I say, well, the, well now I'm gonna say that's VUCA, you know, that is, that is the, the, the situation of litigation. And some people choose, are able to choose to litigate and other people's, you know, as I said, you know, receive it on their doorstep unexpectedly sometimes. Um, and it's quite a, it's quite a frightful thing if you think about it.

Andrew: 30:33

I wanted to come back to the point about vulnerability because all of that volatility and uncertainty and complexity, um, is, that's probably really stoking the fire of, of people being at their most vulnerable and, uh, and sensitive. how does that work inside your litigation team? So if we accept the all, all of the complexity and, um, volatility going on around you, do you lean into the vulnerability? Is vulnerability something that you therefore kind of almost your mirroring in the, in your team? Or is it something you'd have to counterbalance? How do you manage that degree of vulnerability and honesty with your solicitors?

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 31:18

Well, I mean, there is a, I mean, there's a stock answer.

Andrew: 31:23

Get, get the stock answer out

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 31:24

okay, I'll get the stock answer, Yeah. The stock answer is that you, you, don't, you try and avoid leaning into it. You maintain your impartiality, you divorce yourself from what is happening to the client, and you deal with the cold, hard facts and the reality, because that's how you're gonna best advise your client because you're gonna come at it without any of that. But the, the reality is that, um, your, you or the litigators that I know and respect, um, live and breathe what happens to their clients. Um, and to the extent that it's, you know, to some extent with some people it's, you know, unhealthy, it's not, it's literally driving them mad. I'm somewhere in between because, um, in, and I, and I try and impress this upon my, my teams in terms of the junior parts of it, is that, um, you can't, you can't, um, you can't do the job properly. If you are, if you are in the trenches with the client, you really have to be ordering them over the top because it's, it's just, it's, it's. If you get involved too much in what the client's saying, you can, you can lose perspective and you can make poor decisions for the client. You can say, we should do this, when actually we should not do that. Um, so it's about, and I think, you know, one of the traits that I have, which is I think helpful to this kind of thing, and I've learned it from others around me, it's not something that I had intrinsically was that, um, clients or relationship between client and lawyer is, um, that the lawyer should be on tap, but never on top. It's got to be the client's issue. It's got to be their fight it's got to be there, and you should be there ready for the, you know, the advice, ready for the, you know, putting the, the case, whatever it is. But you cannot be there to make the decisions. And as soon as you recognize that you've stepped over that, um, um, that's, that's bad. And. One of my supervisors when I was a very junior lawyer, said, and this was the way that I managed to kind of articulate it in my head to myself about how the client should always be on, on top, is that the last communication on your file. And we used to have paper files in those days, so literally the last one and solicitor order is always reverse chronology. So the most recent thing you'd be on the top, um, should be a communication to the client as to what has just happened, whatever it is. So as long as you've got, if you look open the file, the last thing you see is a email to the client which said, we did this. Um, if it, if the last thing on the file was a letter to your opponent saying, you know, we're gonna shoot you down, um, then that there's, something's gone wrong there.'cause that's become your case rather than your clients.

Mark: 34:11

it's really interesting you went to Communication there. Uh, and, and actually that stack of, uh, of the log, the, the detail that you keep throughout, throughout the case, because I wanted to ask a question very specifically about what communication looks like in the team. And, and I know earlier you said that you didn't want to bore us with boring things. This might sound like a boring question, but the, the mechanism by which the, the goal of the team is shared with the team. So you have a team that maybe they're working in complex multi-team systems. They're working for you on your case for that particular client, communicating the point of what they're working on. What What are the mechanisms, the cadences of Communication that you have within the team to keep everybody aligned.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 34:54

So again, it, it is horses for courses, so there's no one for all. It's, um, so I have a, a, the largest team I have on a case at the moment talking in terms of my own office rather than other offices around the, around the firm is a a four four person team. So there's me and three other lawyers working on the case pretty much. Permanently. There are, there are other lawyers that come in and out at periodic points in time and the way we manage it. And it's interesting. It's, uh, well this is interesting to me, and obviously I, I hope it's interesting to you is that we, um, we meet at two o'clock on a Monday every week. And we, and then we meet with the client every week on a Tuesday. And, um, we have, we have a, you know, an action list. It's not a spreadsheet because lawyers don't do spreadsheets. They do Word documents. So it's a Word document and we, we review it and there will be different parts of that team who have responsibilities for different things. But we all contribute to that meeting and everybody has, everybody who comes to that meeting, there's something wrong if they haven't got an action point that comes outta that meeting. That's quite an important thing from the, you know, justification for the team. However, we, uh, we sat down actually yesterday on this team and recognize that we didn't have enough. Of that in our, in our team at the moment, we've got some deadlines coming up and there's a couple of issues. And also there is, um, the, the, the fact that people are going off on longer periods of leave over the Christmas period as they should do. And so we're like, okay, we need to up this. So we've now got a Monday, a Tuesday and a Thursday meeting, and it literally is, we, we are all in the office, but now we're conducting it on teams because we then all have access to our documents or whatever. So it's literally that, and it's half an hour. We call them standups, but we never stand up. And we, um, have that communication that is, um, probably pretty standard. It's not very, it's not very exciting, but it's pretty standard as to how teams bigger, bigger teams work. Other than that, I probably, on most of my other cases I've got, um, two or three. I. Um, lawyers working with me, uh, sorry, two lawyers working with me, and we do that, but we do it more sporadically. It doesn't have the same need to meet regularly, but we do always run, you know, action lists on my cases because otherwise I lose track of what we're doing. And that's what the, the basis of communication with the team is. there are sidebars and what you have to be careful about with the sidebars is that they are genuinely about that person's work stream. Um, because sidebars, when they are team related stuff, um, can become problematic. You know, you have a, you have a one-to-one conversation with somebody and somebody's like, well, am I involved? Am I not involved? And, the whole. Politics of the CC line is enormous in terms of law firms, you know, who's on it, who's dropped off it, because at least in principle, if you receive an email even as a copy to you, that's you receiving an email, reviewing it, and logging time on the system to say, that should be charged to the client. Now is that justified for, you know, all the people who might be on the CC line? So you have to manage that. So yeah, it's, it's a, it's organic and not, I wouldn't say very sophisticated, um, but it is, uh, it is not at all for me done by written communications that the team, the team stuff is mostly done by oral communications.

Andrew: 38:32

So there's quite a separation then naturally because of the nature of the work, that there are certain types of communication that essentially represent work that you're charging for. So that, like you say, the politics of the cc, uh, address bar, and then there's the working on the team rather than working in the team seems to be something that you're doing face-to-face. and I I'm thinking of your reference to the emerging to-do list. It made me think of the ship of Theseus, like you're, you're kind of building your ship while you're at sea, that everything's ever evolving. Is a lot of the work that you do in developing your team, your junior lawyers, is that done on the job or. Will you spend time going, eh, let's talk, let's reflect on how we do this. Do you, do you do periods of that?

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 39:30

So it's funny, we had a, I had a trial in May and um, and I, you know, at my aging stage I get little, I don't get any feedback. No one tells me. Good or bad, what's, you know, what I'm doing? But I was like, okay, we've come to the end of this case on this trial. I want, I want to have proper feedback. Um, and I stupidly thought that, you know, if I just got everybody in a meeting, they would tell me what they thought about me, right? And so I got the team of three into a meeting and said, can I have some feedback? And they literally, they were, they were totally not able to provide it. And I then said, right, I'll get somebody else, go and go and, uh, you know, a third party, go and collect feedback from, from, from, you know, what, what it's like to work with me. And I think from a, that point of view, I think people have said about my style is that it is actually. The offscreen interactions that have really helped in terms of building their confidence as lawyers, stuff that, it's the stuff that's not about the case that we're doing, it's a set of stuff that's not about the politics in the firm. It's about the stuff that's, you know, like I have a, I have a rule, a general rule which I try to employ, which is the first 30 seconds of any teams call particularly, but I'll do it in meetings as well, should not be anything to do with whatever's happening in the meeting. You do not start a meeting with what you're going to talk about at the meeting. You start it with, I mean, I really try and avoid the weather. I try to say something about food generally, or something humorous and just before anything else, and I think that those are the, the interactions which people have identified as being, you know, valuable. The breakouts, the, the, you know, the release of tension, you know, whatever it is that's valuable to working in teams that I'm involved in.

Andrew: 41:23

These are, these are the, the subtle small aspects that you introduced to the way that you work that are directly towards building the team, working on the team, as opposed to, uh, just getting the, getting the tasks completed.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 41:38

Yeah and and I think that I have another rule of thumb, which is, you know, generally, uh, you know, there are obviously deadlines, which you have no choice but to be a hundred percent committed to whatever the deadline is that you need to achieve. But the rest of the time you should be 20: 80. You know, you should be like, there should be, there should be a, a light and shade about it. You shouldn't have a hundred percent of your time is dedicated to whatever the task is.

Mark: 42:02

it's very clear that you really care about the relationship with the team and at some point in your career you will have decided, as we reflected on at the beginning, there are solicitors and there are barristers. You have chosen a very specific type of law. You've dec decided a very specific type of practice. It seems you've chosen the one that has the highest dependence on, on the team around you.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 42:23

but I'm, I'm a massive team player. I, I'm a much better team player than I am any kind of leader or partner. Um, I have been, you know, and I suppose, you know, there, you know, I, I, I get the science of it a bit that, you know, you can, you can lead by not being, you know, the, the, the number one person you can lead by being the number two or number three. Or you can lead by being, you know, the person who is actually doing all the work, who doesn't get any of the, the, the airtime. Um, and I think my huge value is in being a part of the team and not being a, a leader of it. And that I get the most amount of satisfaction when I realize that my role is You know, dwindling in significance down to signing the bills or the letters out, you know, that is, that is massively, uh, uh, a real, uh, uh, boost to me as somebody who's worked in this area. So, yeah, so I, I couldn't, you can't, you know, if you're a, if you're a lone ranger, as I like to talk about the, the, the barrister side of the profession, if you're a lone ranger like that, you can never be part of a team in the same way. You can be a leader. Like you can be a leader of a team, like you can, you know, there's, you know, examples of it across our business where they're very happy to, you know, be at the, you know, not in the weeds with the, with the case or with the client or whatever. They're just leading the strategy and being the person, you know, who has, you know, consulted on certain things. Um, but you can never, I don't think be a real team player unless you're happy to follow and be not as good as the next person.

Mark: 44:05

I, I, I would say that what you are describing, certainly to me sounds a lot like a phenomena that some people call servant leadership. Which is, you can have the out there, you know, very outgoing, um, potentially egocentric narcissistic leadership, which sometimes is appropriate. But servant servant leadership is really all about empowering the team.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 44:27

I was gonna tell you an anecdote because I am, my, my nickname is anecdotal Hannah. Yeah. So, but the, the anecdote I said, and I told this at, uh. The anecdote is a funny story because I told exactly this description at uh, um, uh, I did a, it was for a junior. They weren't even lawyers. I think they were at school. I can't remember. They were very young, um, people who were interested in the legal profession, either'cause they just started or that they were about to go into it and saying, you know what my career was like. It was a very easy, you know, just talk about yourself situation. And um, and they were, somebody asked me the question, you know, um, are you, you know, the lead, what are you, what, what's your role? Are you the leader of the team? Or something like that. So I'm, I'm definitely not the leader and said, in fact, I'm like the third person in the Conga. And they're like, what? What's that? And my, and I had developed this whole. Thing around the Conga, which is that the, the first person in the Congo is the, the titular leader. Completely irrelevant. They have no idea what's gonna happen. Somebody just grabs'em from behind. Yeah. So you, you do know what I'm talking about, the Conga, right? I'm not gonna have to, okay, so, so you're on the dance floor,

Andrew: 45:37

weren't that we're a

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 45:38

you are there, you're in party, your party situation. And the titular leader, irrelevant who they are, gets grabbed from behind by the leader. The person who is going to say, we're doing a conga, everybody get on board. This is what is happening at this party. So

Andrew: 45:56

only a Conga Once the person behind us decided it's a Conga

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 46:00

actually, it's only a conga when the third person joins because if it's just two, it's just two people dancing and they look stupid.'cause there's one standing behind the other. But when the third person joins, then that's the conga. And then I. Presumably the fourth or fifth or sixth But it was just really, um, because I didn't want anybody to think that you can't be leading from behind, second, third, whatever. You can still be leadership, but you can also not ha sometimes you can also not have a necessarily respect for the leader. That, that might be, they're just, you know, they're fronting the case. They're, you know, they're presenting in the meeting that you're in, but actually you recognize that the leadership behind that particular meeting or that presentation or that pitch to that client or that presentation in court has actually been done by two or three other people, maybe further down the conga. But this with a, there's a funny story is that I got to the end of this anecdote and the group of people said, what's a conga? So,

Track 1: 47:03

I'm glad you checked with us, uh, halfway through the, the

Andrew: 47:06

Um, what, what do you think it was that was stopping people from giving you feedback then, as the, as the person who's, who's the leader, what do you think

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 47:18

Well, I think I,

Andrew: 47:19

lawyers nervous?

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 47:21

Some people say that I'm very, got high eq. Other people say I am a bit like, like I miss things completely. And on this occasion I think I completely missed the fact that no one was going to want however much. I think I'm super accessible and super nice and lovely and everybody thinks I'm great. They were not gonna give me feedback to my face. I. Just reality people. I mean, I have work, I do work with colleagues who, who will give me feedback to my face. But these were quite junior and they just, they just weren't, they just wanted to say nice things about me and how great it had been working on the case. And I was like, well that's great, but that's not gonna, it's not very helpful. Um, yeah, so I think it was just that I was just naive to think that people would say, you know, potentially critical things to me. But yeah, I dunno, I think that I, um, always have a sort of inflated expectation as to what people might be prepared to say to others. I mean, it's one of the features of our business that people generally sidestep difficult conversations anyway.

Andrew: 48:28

there's obviously a dominance of the client relationship dynamic in your profession. You mentioned, you even mentioned earlier, I'm a bit like client to some of my junior solicitors. So you see that, you see that relationship in, in areas of your work beyond when there is actually a client there. Um, and does, does that influence just how people behave generally as, as

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 48:54

oh, so you mean sort of the deferential nature of their interactions with as, as we grow up in a law firm, private practice, you are schooled in terms of your, you know, the, the importance of the interactions with your client. And, you know, there's also the regulated side, regulated side of it as well. So that level of, you know, um,'A' making sure that the client is, you know, paramount in everything you do. Um, that, yeah, I suppose that I guess infects everything, you know, the relationships within the team as well. That's just'cause we, the nature of what we, how we learn to, to produce, work and serve our clients,

Andrew: 49:34

A positive side as well though, is it that ability to be deferential surely means you're very good at looking for what other people need, anticipating, coordinating with them. Do you see that as well, like the benefits of

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 49:47

That, that is definitely what the best, the best team players in terms of, if you're talking about now working on a case is exactly that. You'll, you'll treat your more seniors as the client. You will anticipate their every need and you will, uh, communicate clearly and um, and uh, in a cost efficient way. That's it. You've got the, the, that's a secret sauce. If you've got that, then you know, basically the litigation and the, whatever the court might have to say about what you are trying to engage in is, is almost irrelevant.

Andrew: 50:21

Okay. So Hannah, we like to finish our conversations with a few quick fires. Um, so I'd like to start by asking you what your best team memory is.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 50:33

well, it's quite hard to nail it down, but, you know, results for clients when you've done it as part of a team. Are massive in terms of your feeling towards the team, uh, client team, council team and your, your your colleagues. Um, and I can think of recent, you know, moments when, you know, it's a horrible, it's a horrible feeling, but you get the, you get the, the, judgment from the court and you have to open it. You, you generally have to scroll to the bottom of a very long document to find out what the, what the outcome has been. But the moment when you do that and then you're able to share it with your team and share that success, I can think of several instances when that has, that has felt really good and it would, I a hundred percent know if I had been engaged in that process on my own. The feeling of excitement and the feeling of joy and the feeling of achievement would be nothing. It would be, it would be a, a, a speck in comparison to what? It's, to share it with other people. BuT, I have, also, uh, had a very, probably in some ways extreme or unique experience in the recent past because I left a firm that I'd been working at for 20 plus years, um, in December'21. In circumstances when I never thought I would leave that firm. I thought I had been born there and I was going to professionally die there. And, um. They were looking to list as a a, a law firm. And for my bit of the business and for my team of partners, that was something that was not, was, was a bit alien to us. And so we took a decision, to leave the firm as a group of partners. And, um, the, the firm Mishcon's that we were leaving were extremely, um, grown up about it. And, um, said, well, of, of course you should leave if this isn't what you want. This is the direction the firm is traveling, and if you're not with us, then, then you should go. Um, and so they had agreed to release us from some key covenants in relation to, um, our practices. Um, but they did not release us in relation to our people's covenants, which is the life and blood of law firms is your, your restrictive covenants in relation to the, to the, the personnel. And at that time we had a team of, I think 18. Lawyers. So it was 18 plus the five of us. Um, and plus two support staff as well. And we were quite rightly in relation to our covenants prevented from talking to them at all about our decision and about our move where we were intending to, um, move to, but one by one independently of us because I was not allowed to speak to anybody. One of our, one of the partners did ultimately was able to have a release to speak to some of the, the junior members, but one by one they found out where we were going. Approached the F firm Greenberg as it was, and, um, one by one joined us. So we left with a team of 22 people from our previous firm, which I think is pretty unique. But I felt it was, uh, validation of a team that we had spent a long time building. Um, and if we hadn't put the hours into actually recruiting the right people, developing them and making them, um, feel that they were even in the hierarchy as valued as every other member in the team, which is definitely the, the goal, um, they wouldn't have come.

Andrew: 54:14

Going the other side then, do you have any team red flags?

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 54:18

I think there's a, there is, uh, in terms of, you know, the environment in which I work, high pressure, all of that, um, the mood hoovers, I have no time for, you have to Yeah.

Andrew: 54:30

Killers.

Hannah Blom-Cooper: 54:31

Vibe killers. Um, people generally who, um, don't see the funny side. Of whatever it is.'cause there's always a funny side, and humor is undervalued in my view, in terms of business. it's it's a, it's a, it's a glue for me in my life of, you know, it keeps me sane in my, you know, domestic as well as my professional life. And I think that anybody who's not prepared to laugh at themselves or the situation that they find themselves in, or sometimes a situation a client finds themselves in, however serious it is, if you can't find the chink of humor in it, it's quite damaging to the team and to the project you're involved in.

mark_mark__ dec 11, 2023: 55:14

And that's it for today's episode with the wonderful Hannah Blom Cooper. Hannah's Pass It On resources were a recommendation you didn't hear in the episode to check out an interview between Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Grant discussing Adam's book, Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. You can hear that interview on Malcolm's podcast, Revisionist History. As always, you can find links to our guests and the Pass It On resources in the show notes, and we hope you'll join us for the next episode of TeamCraft.

55:45

You