The new director of client care at Serjeants' Inn reveals her legal inspirations
Catherine Calder joined the senior management team at Serjeants’ Inn Chambers recently as director of client care, having previously worked in a similar role at Radcliffe Chambers since 1999. She was one of the first former solicitors to be appointed to a management/marketing role within a set of barristers' chambers. Earlier in her career, Catherine trained and subsequently worked as a solicitor in the company and commercial department of Macfarlanes.
What was your route into law?
I followed a pretty conventional path into law via English at Durham before training and working as a junior solicitor at Macfarlanes. The big change for me was when I was approached to work for a client, one of the Saatchi advertising agencies, as an account exec rather than as a solicitor. An ad agency is a hilarious place to work after a law firm but I learnt so much there, which I still draw on all the time in my role at Serjeants’ Inn.
What has been your biggest career challenge to date?
The usual issues of balancing work and family. I have found the Bar a very flexible work environment but have always wished I could just magically have more time to spend at work and home alike. Really I'd like to be a full time stay-at-home mother AND a round-the-clock workaholic career woman. But my twins are now swiftly turning into scarily sophisticated teenagers and I am looking forward to being able to put more into the second half of my career as a result.
Which person within the legal profession inspires you most?
This is the hardest question: I tend to find colleagues and contacts more inspiring than remote public figures and I have been lucky enough to work with some stellar people—barristers and clerks and clients—at Serjeants’ Inn and Radcliffe Chambers and earlier in my career at Macfarlanes too.
In the interests of expressing an opinion, I’ll say Sir Robert Francis QC. I know it sounds like propaganda because he's at Serjeants’ Inn but his combination of immense authority and utter approachability has made a genuine difference in the context of, for example, the recent Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry and the current Freedom to Speak Up Review. To even it up I’ll add Robert Pearce QC, in particular—but not only—for his work last year on the appeal to secure charitable status for the Human Dignity Trust, which campaigns for the decriminalisation of homosexuality around the world.
There are numerous others I could mention. I hope they know who they are.
If you weren't a lawyer, what would you be?
Assuming I have carte blanche for a flight of fancy on this question, I’d love Kirsty Young’s Desert Island Discs job. I'll take her Scottish accent too.
Who is your favourite fictional lawyer?
The pretentious English graduate part of me wants to say Portia from the Merchant of Venice for her perfect iambic pentameter powers of persuasion, but in truth it is probably Mitchell, the environmental lawyer from Modern Family. I watch it with the kids and it really makes us laugh.
What would you change about the legal profession?
I feel strongly that in these interesting times there is scope for greater solidarity across the Bar. There is more to unite us than divide us and I have really seen the benefits of working collaboratively with counterparts in other sets on the challenges and opportunities facing us all. At Serjeants’ Inn we are also making strides on social mobility issues, and I know other sets are too.
How do you relax?
Long family meals, the company of my female friends—and I absolutely love a lie-in.
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