Career Experiences

Vicki Lister is the Secretarial, Catering and Reception Services Manager for Reed Smith, a global law firm based in London.

Vicki has worked her way up to her current management position after initially starting her career as a nanny. She then made the change to law and took on a secretarial role at a Magic Circle firm and has since progressed through promotion to her current role.

Vicki joins us to share her experience and what a typical day is like for her…

How I start my day… I start my day at 6.30 a.m. and get into the office around 8.45. I check my emails on my train journey to ensure any urgent absences can be dealt with early and so that when I get into the office I can get straight on with other work or urgent emails or attend any meetings. I have breakfast and a strong coffee at my desk, much needed!

If you’d have told me 20 years ago that I would now be working as a Legal Secretary, I would have laughed.

I always wanted to be a Medical Secretary, as I had always been interested in that sort of environment. So after college, my dream came true and I started to work at my local hospital as a relief Medical Secretary. I loved my job and looked forward to every working day.

When I met my future husband, I left the hospital and moved 250 miles south. I was offered a post as a Legal Secretary in the personal injury department of a local Solicitor’s office, and suffice to say, I wasn’t overly enthusiastic.

How wrong I was. My knowledge of medical terminology stood me in good stead; however, I must have annoyed my colleagues with endless questions regarding legal jargon and the whys and wherefores of legal practice! 

I started working in the legal profession in 1975 when I left school.  I have worked for the same firm all my working life and thoroughly enjoy my job. 

I have decided to write this account of my own struggle of getting a job in the legal sector despite having a Diploma from the Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs and also to question whether transphobia exists in the legal profession.

First of all, a bit about myself: I am a 42-year-old transwoman (that is, a pre-op male-to-female transsexual), and I live in North Kent. I currently attend the Gender Identity Clinic in London about once every four months as part of the treatment. The condition is officially known as gender dysphoria, and those undergoing gender reassignment are protected under the Equality Act 2010. I am also an ex-serviceman, having served with the Regimental Band 2nd Royal Tank Regiment in the late ’80s and early ’90s. 

This is the final part of the series and I thought that I would end it with the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me in my legal career.  Before I do this, however, I just want to mention two incidents that are highlighted in my memory.

For a period in my career, when I and my family had moved down from London to Devon, in the West Country, I ran my own conveyancing practice, which became very successful – so successful that I incorporated into it a high street estate agency so that I could provide the two services under one roof: negotiate the sale and/or purchase of clients’ properties and do the conveyancing for them, all for one composite fee.

A question a lawyer is often asked is, “How can you defend a client when you know he or she is guilty?” The answer to that, of course, is that you can only know if a client is guilty if he admits it, and if he does admit it, then, of course, you cannot run a ‘not guilty’ plea – you can plead in mitigation, bringing to the attention of the court any circumstances that you think will help the court in determining the sentence to pass, but you cannot put forward a defence to the charge, because such a defence would be spurious. However, what about a situation where your client’s instructions show that an offence has, or may have, been committed, but it is not the offence that he has been charged with?

One of my hobbies is going to folk clubs. I do comic songs, and once I made up some doggerel about things which can go awry in a legal office – for instance, an inexperienced casual receptionist telling a client point-blank that the legal eagle is too busy to talk to him or her, rather than ‘talking round the subject’, explaining the fee-earner is presently occupied and taking a message. I do not want to alarm any budding young Legal Secretaries by mentioning solely things that can go amiss, however.

Last month, I promised to tell you about my ‘run-in’ with His Honour Judge Claude Duveen of Slough County Court. This happened in the mid-1970s whilst I was with Campbell Hooper & Austin Wright at their Sunningdale/Ascot branch office – a very upmarket firm with some famous clients, such as Diana Dors, England’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. In fact, Ms. Dors was the English equivalent of all the blonde bombshells of Hollywood. She described herself as “the only sex symbol Britain has produced since Lady Godiva”!

Many people think that lawyers are dull fellows (or Fellows) and picture them wading through dusty tomes in dusty offices with quill pens in hand and sour expressions on their sour faces. Not a bit of it! (Although, I must admit, I can think of one firm of Solicitors in a smallish town in Devon, not a million miles away from Exeter, that does not seem to have been able to dig itself out of the Dickensian past – but they are an exception.)

The Legal Secretaries Diploma is studied by a wide range of students of varying ages and different backgrounds. Whether you are young and just starting out in your career or you are an experienced professional and want solid career direction, our course is suited to you. One of our students, Annabel Hammond, proves the latter. We were very pleased to see that she achieved a distinction for our course with a result of 99%. This is an extremely high achievement and shows that Annabel has great attention to detail and an excellent understanding of law and legal procedures.