It’s 12 months since I stopped being a lawyer. Well, I still cling to my practising certificate just in case it’s ever needed as a life jacket, so technically still am a lawyer. I guess what I mean is it’s that long since I stopped lawyering.
And one thing I’ve belatedly developed over those 12 months is an empathy with the sales teams that used to be some of my in-house clients. However hard I tried to ensure that my old legal team supported our sales colleagues, I was motivated to help them for not entirely the right reasons. I knew their work was critical to the business because it brought in revenue. Quite frequently, I would prioritise legal resource based on deal value. And this is why I was motivated to help them, to push the revenue indicator in the right direction. I wasn’t always motivated to help out of a sense of empathy, that a colleague needed some help to push months of their own hard work over the line.
