CILEx Vice-President

Caroline Jepson:
‘There is much to look forward to’

The career of CILEx Vice-President Caroline Jepson shows what happens when you follow your interests. She spoke to Neil Rose as CILEx prepares to shake up its offer to members.

Caroline Jepson: CILEx Vice-PresidentIt is always fascinating to see how chance can direct people’s lives. When Caroline Jepson left school in Rotherham with no idea of what she wanted to do, she sent her CV to lots of local businesses; it was a tiny law firm, Arthur Jackson & Co, which replied.

Her time as an office junior earning £50 a week set her off on a career that now sees her take over as Vice-President of CILEx this year and, of course, as President next.

Caught the bug

Caroline explains how falling into law suited her perfectly. ‘I saw what the lawyers were doing and thought it was very exciting. From that, I just got the bug and started researching law firms in the South Yorkshire area which were likely to open up more career choices.’

This led her, in 1998, to Irwin Mitchell, and she got her foot in the door by taking a typing job in the personal injury (PI) department. ‘I knew that if I got in there, the structure meant there would be opportunities to progress.’

And so it proved – the national law firm is well known for its commitment to staff training, and this is where Caroline heard about what was then ILEX. Irwin Mitchell sponsored her through the course, and such was the number of students the firm supported that it even had a lecturer come into the office twice a week.

She confesses that the course was a lot more difficult than she expected. ‘I failed the first exam I sat [at Level 3] because I was complacent. That gave me the kick up the backside I needed. From that point, it was a case of getting my head down and powering through the rest of it.’

Caroline stayed in PI, moving into catastrophic injury work. ‘It was very me because it’s very people-focused,’ she explains.

But after 15 years at Irwin Mitchell, she started to look for a new challenge. The culture of Irwin Mitchell changed as it mushroomed into the massive organisation it is today: ‘This is not a criticism of Irwin Mitchell, just an observation,’ she stresses and did not fit her quite as well.

She also suspected she was becoming ‘fed up with the hamster wheel’ of target-driven private practice. ‘I thought there might be something else out there.’

She tried a couple of other firms over the following two years – Simpson Millar and Minster Law – which only served to confirm that this was right. It was time to follow a new path.

Dreams come true

‘What I love most about serious injury work was improving people’s lives and their family’s lives,’ Caroline says. ‘I’ve always been heavily involved in rehabilitation, and I could often feel myself getting too drawn into the case management side of the work.’ In particular, she is a big believer in the role of fitness in rehabilitation and getting people moving and active again after a serious injury. This goes hand in hand with a wider interest that saw her qualify as a personal trainer in her spare time.

‘I never thought I’d make a big career out of personal training because it doesn’t pay the mortgage,’ she says, although she has a small business, Fitness Therapy Solutions, working directly with insurers, solicitors, case managers and therapists to provide personal training and nutrition programmes for people following injury.

But all this led to her next job, as a brain injury case manager in Manchester at JS Parker, a specialist brain and spinal injury case manager and rehabilitation company. She recalls how the owner, Jackie Parker, said that not all lawyers would make good case managers, but those who showed deep empathy to their clients would. Caroline fell into that category and was ‘much happier’ doing case management; however, ‘there was still something missing’.

Then, once more, chance intervened. She recounts being in Sheffield to meet a physiotherapist, Lesley Lappin, about a client. While waiting for the client, they got chatting and it transpired that Lesley and her husband, Neal Edwards, a consultant in pain management both strongly believed in the importance of fitness and activity in rehabilitation and also coowned both Rehab Direct, a rehabilitation company, and a small chain of gyms. ‘Lesley said: ‘You need to come to work for us’,’ Caroline says, ‘and it just went from there.’

For nearly four years, she worked as Rehab Direct’s governance manager, ensuring that governing legal requirements and compliant practices were adhered to across the business. But assisting the gyms with operational support was ‘always going on in the background’.

When Caroline returned from maternity leave, in October 2017, she needed a more flexible role to fit around childcare, and so is now operations director of Firehouse Fitness and B-FitUK, which are sister gyms in Sheffield. ‘The fact that I am working within the fitness industry, but applying my skills as a lawyer, is all my dreams come true from a professional perspective.’

Making the cut

Caroline joined what was then the CILEx Council, in 2014, as a constituency member for the North. ‘Without CILEx, there’s no way I’d have had the career path I’ve had, so I wanted to pay back to acknowledge how much CILEx has done for me,’ she explains.

Like all the other council members, she had to apply for a role on the Professional Board during the governance reforms and she made the cut. ‘I supported the changes,’ she says. ‘As much as I loved the role on council, everyone could see it needed to change. The structure wasn’t right – the council was too big, it had too many voices, and it was difficult to get decisions made. As a paying member, I needed to be sure that the organisation that I support financially was governed in the right way.’

The new structure has delivered, Caroline continues, with the addition of lay members, and their different views and experiences, proving of huge value. ‘We didn’t realise what we were missing.’

It has also brought about an even stronger member focus, and a planned restructuring of the member offer. ‘We want to develop a wider range of membership benefits for all members, from most junior to most senior, that map through their careers.’

It is still in the early stages, with various parts of the offer under construction, and comes under four headings: business/ professional development, personal development, lifestyle, and representation.

So, what does the new offer look like?

Employment and career progression advice will be central. ‘There are members who have been doing the same job for a long time and might be feeling a bit fatigued,’ Caroline says, harking back to her own experience. ‘What else is out there? What transferrable skills do I have? What other skills do I need?’

CILEx will provide help with this, highlighting role models and creating a formal mentoring programme. She says: ‘I’m a big fan of mentoring. I see Chris Bones [CILEx Group chair] and Stephen Lee [CILEx Law School chair] as informal mentors. I watch, listen, and take on board what they do. It’s been really valuable.’

There will be tailored myCareer content on the website rather than simply a long list of courses, and it will align content with members’ interests.

CILEx is going to ramp up its networks. In addition to the existing specialist reference groups, there will be key policy forums and member networks in specific areas of law: ‘Our members are experts in their field. We need to make their voices heard.’

Then there will be commercial discounts, advisory services, insurance cover and other benefits for members, helping in their professional and personal lives where possible. It is what a modern professional body is all about.

Caroline says: ‘CILEx is making great strides. It’s about us being fit for purpose in the legal market. I just want to see us go from strength to strength, supporting social mobility – especially in the current climate. We are very well placed to be the leaders on that.’

Indeed, the diversity that CILEx brings to the legal market makes it particularly valuable at the moment. Caroline predicts that it will help ‘open more doors’, for example, on extending the range of judicial appointments open to Chartered Legal Executives. She herself has ambitions in that direction.

But she recognises that this is against a backdrop where some others in the profession still feel a degree of snobbery towards CILEx. ‘I’ve felt like a second-class citizen sometimes. It’s often unconscious bias by older lawyers who went through the traditional solicitor route.’

This attitude continues to change, and with the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) set to make non-traditional routes into the law even more prevalent, one that will surely, if slowly, die out.

Caroline views the SQE as in competition with, rather than a threat to, CILEx. ‘We’ve already got a good foothold in the market because we’ve been here for a long time, and we’re streets ahead in terms of diversity.’

She acknowledges that there are still hills to climb for both CILEx and its members. ‘I want to build a culture like a rubber ball – flexible, vibrant, robust and resilient. We should be able to take a pounding and still bounce back.

‘We have to keep priorities in perspective and to let things slide when circumstances merit. But there is much to look forward to.’