Social mobility: our CEO’s story

Posted: 13/06/2024

“My own experience of breaking into the legal profession means that social mobility is a personal passion for me.” - Helen Drayton, CEO, Penningtons Manches Cooper

I know that it can be hard to break into the legal profession if you don’t come from the ‘right’ socio-economic background. 

I don’t come from a traditional professional services background. My father worked in a newsagent’s and my mother was a nurse. I did well at school, academically, but as I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career, I did not appreciate back then that getting work experience and going to the ‘right’ university could have such an impact. 

I enjoyed my law A-level and thought I might do law as a degree because that would be a ‘good’ degree to have.  Then I had to consider what I did with that and whether a career in law was what I wanted to do. And that’s when I ran into my first hurdle. 

I didn’t want to take on the expense of going to law school without the security of knowing I had a training contract to go to afterwards, but without work experience I couldn’t get a training contract. At that point, no-one would give me work experience.  I think that was because there was nothing in particular that really stood out on my CV; lots of people have strong academics together with good examples of things they are involved in outside of that, and the competition was fierce.  It was certainly a depressing vicious cycle of not getting work experience which I could use in my training contract applications. It would have been easy to give up and try to do something else – but I didn’t.

Breaking out of the cycle

My parents both worked full time and were not in a position to really help me with that challenge (other than giving me encouragement and support to keep trying). So I had to go and try and make it happen for myself. In the end, I found a way of breaking out of the cycle by doing a year’s experience as a family law court clerk for Hunt & Coombs Solicitors at the end of my degree at Nottingham Trent University. That gave me the invaluable work experience that enabled me to secure a training contract before going to law school, again in Nottingham. 

With the work experience came offers of a training contract from both Hunt & Coombs and a firm called Hewitsons LLP (now HCR Hewitsons); I chose the latter because it meant I could live at home just outside Cambridge.

The challenges that I and many people from lower socio-economic backgrounds face in getting into law means that social mobility is a personal passion for me. One of the keys to breaking the cycle is to be proactive in giving people opportunities – and they either take them, or they don’t, but hopefully they take them and thrive.

Imposter syndrome

Of course, your background can colour your view of your potential in the world. I was the first person in my immediate family to go to university. I never saw myself in a leadership role, not because my parents didn’t back me, but because I had no role models to normalise aspirations beyond my immediate world. 

Even after years of experience as a corporate lawyer, when I joined Penningtons Manches Cooper I saw myself as someone’s ‘right hand’, or ‘left hand’, supporting them in the lead role, but never as a CEO. It’s classic imposter syndrome. Others from lower socio-economic backgrounds struggle with hurdles in front of them and develop layers of self-doubt as one of the students on our firm’s EMpower programme, explained to me recently.

What my parents gave me in spades was a strong work ethic, and that had a big part in how I’ve ended up where I have. I don’t agree with positive discrimination, or having quotas to achieve targets – almost artificially. For me, it’s giving people the opportunity that makes the difference. That turns a vicious cycle into a virtuous circle: it opens access to law for more people, not only for their own personal benefit, but also for our business, and for the wider economy. The broader the diversity of our people, the more perspectives we bring to solving our clients’ problems, and the more motivation and commitment we promote.

Social mobility programmes

Because of my own background, diversity, equity and inclusion, socio-economic background and giving access and opportunities to people is, as I said, a personal passion. You’ll only be authentic if you really believe in something, and I genuinely want promoting social mobility to be my ‘thing’ as CEO. We have set up a number of programmes at Penningtons Manches Cooper that target people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. I want to be able to look back on my term as CEO and say that we made a difference.” Watch this space.

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