Denise Nurse
CEO & Founder
Halebury Ventures Ltd
London, UK
Interview Transcript
PAMELA: Hi, my name is Pamela DeNeuve and welcome to Lawyer of the Week. This week we are so pleased and honored to have Denise Nurse as our Lawyer of the Week. And let me tell you a little bit about Denise. Denise is a New Law pioneer and has been spearheading operational, structural and cultural change within the legal services industry since starting Halebury in 2007. Her aim: to create an entirely original business model to serve the needs of clients of lawyers at the senior end of the market. 10 years, and congratulations on your 10 year anniversary. 10 years on Halebury is a leading provider of flexible sourcing solutions and strategic management support for in-house legal teams and SME businesses. With a legal team of over 35 senior in-house lawyers and a client base including Sky, Royal Mail, BT and Virgin Media, it is highly ranked for legal advice within the Telecoms, Media and Technology sectors.
Denise is a game changer in more ways than one. She has successfully and uniquely combined her legal and television career launching and managing Halebury whilst presenting for Sky News and BBC, ‘One’s Escape to the Country’ and she continues with her media career as she strongly believes that experiences outside the legal industry can enhance your legal outlook and lead to innovation.
Welcome, Denise!
DENISE: Thank you, Pamela. Thank you. That was a very nice introduction – [laughter] – I am like um, who did that stuff? – [Laughter] – Really, thank you for having me as Lawyer of the Week. It is a real honor to be added to the roll call.
PAMELA: Thank you – thank you. Well, I would like to begin by asking you the Lawyer of the Week questions. So what and when did you decide to become a solicitor?
DENISE: That is an interesting question because I can actually answer that quite specifically. Not everyone can. I remember being 14 years old and really loving watching a program called LA Law – [laughter] – that is an unusual answer. I used to love that program. It was the first time that I thought about law as a career. And in the UK education system, when you are aged 13, 14 that is when they have a – a moment in time they call your options. So you have to start narrowing down the subjects that you are interested in. So I was going through that period of having to decide what I wanted to do and I very much liked History, English – the Arts type of subjects. I was very involved with public speaking and did some performance as well.
I was already having an idea of going to university. I was going to be the first person in our family. So we are first generation immigrants into the UK. My parents are Caribbean. So I was going to be the first one to go to the university. So I very much wanted a career and at that point many years ago the options tended to be Law, Accountancy, Doctor – [laughter] – or teaching honors. I’m not very good at science – [laughter] – quite ambitious. Well, that was maybe the more flippant reason. Also underlying that, I very much liked problem-solving and I often would end up being the person representing people. So all of those factors made law a very interesting prospect when I was 14.
PAMELA: That is very, very interesting. Now tell us – you know – so when you were 14 because it is a little different here in the US –– how does that work that you – you sort of decide which way you wanted to go? Is it like you were ready to go to high school or?
DENISE: Ya, at that stage, I guess you’re in what you would call High School already. But, as I said you are narrowing down your subject choices. So at that point, you are starting what we call GCSE which are a range of the first kind of accredited examinations that the whole nation takes. They used to be called ‘O’ levels. So there were between 9 and 10 subjects that you will take. Mass examinations – you know languages are set and then you have options. So at that point, if you want to do medicine, for example, you may choose physics, chemistry, biology, maths, and head that way. And if you want to do art, you might choose art, design and something else.
So you still have enough of a range but you start to narrow it down. Then you finish that and when you are 16 you choose Advanced Level options. So I think in the US your system just spans the whole period whereas we break it down. So 16-18 I then had to choose ‘A’ levels and again I stuck with the same subjects: History, English, and French.
With the UK legal system, you also have to decide quite early on how you want to qualify as a solicitor because it takes so long. So also I was quite keen to qualify to be able to earn and to become independent. So the quickest way to do that was to do a Law degree which would be three years, a year’s legal practice course which is mandatory and then two years training with your firm. So it is a six-year process. So deciding very early on is what I wanted to do meant that I could head very directly for that very straight line path that I wanted to go on – [laughter] – so that I could be qualified by the time that I was 21. By the time that I was 21, I was qualified. Done.
PAMELA: Okay. Okay. So you were 21. So did you go into traditional law at that time?
DENISE: Yes. So I went – I was 21 when I got my training contract. So I was done. I had the last two years but I had a role with a traditional law firm called Charles Russell now called Charles Russell Speechlys. I was one of nine people who were taken into their cohort for trainees and that was amazing partly because I had to apply two years in advance to get that role. So I was second year of my degree when I made the application, I had no clue I did not know if I was going to get it. But I got through the process and they offered me a place. And at that point again I was trying to narrow down on what I wanted to do and I really enjoyed family law academically. Academically it was fascinating. But, I also liked commercial law particularly media and intellectual property. The two are very different disciplines.
So I looked for firms who had a good status, good reputation who could offer me great training in both areas. That is quite unusual. You usually get one specializes in one or the other. So it was a very narrow shortlist and Charles Russell was one of the leading law firms for family law and they had a very strong IP department. So that is where I wanted to go. So I joined a fairly traditional firm but at least it had an interesting range of disciplines and it meant that during my training contract I should have been able to do everything. As it turned out I never did a seat in Family Law – [laughter] –
PAMELA: Oh really?
DENISE: It never happened. I went straight – like the first seat I was given – they give your four seats, six months in each and you have to do some litigation.
PAMELA: Yes.
DENISE: And you have to do some other things. Family Law was my number one choice but I did not get it. I got my zero choice which was commercial property – [laughter] – property law was the thing that I hated most in the world – [laughter] – so to say I was quite disappointed.
PAMELA: Aha.
DENISE: I was disappointed – you know – but I figured, here I am, you will learn and I went straight into the seat. What I discovered was I still did not like property law that much but I loved business. So the commercial aspect, the deal-making, the solutions finding, I was like. Okay, this is good. I like this. So then I had the four seats, they gave me that. And I re-examined Family Law and Family Law at that level it is actually private client work. It is actually a lot of pensions advice, a lot of families in a very distraught position and it felt less about solutions finding at that point and I was much more interested in working proactively to help create solutions and help people when they are on a path to togetherness and not heading the other way. So hence my change of direction.
PAMELA: So that was enough of family law for you?
DENISE: That was enough for family law – yep – [laughter] – there has got to be a better way of helping families. I mean, you need lawyers and if you get to that point you absolutely need them and I highly respect the work that I do. If I was going to help that way I would be much more interested in meeting families before they get to the point where they spend a lot of money on lawyers – [laughter].
PAMELA: Yes, yes, yes, yes. So now tell me a little bit about your biggest wins in your practice and your biggest challenges.
DENISE: Well I suppose I have to tell you about the practice itself because setting up the practice itself was probably the biggest challenge in that we, my co-founder and I were trainees together at Charles Russells. So we met very early on in our careers. What we were seeking to do in setting up Halebury was to create a whole new way of running a law firm. I had left private practice and gone to work for a company in-house BskyB, a media company and I was an in-house lawyer and that exposed me to the world of business in a much more immediate way and I could just see so many ways that law firms could be run efficiently if there were other people other than lawyers kind of, as part of the decision making process and you pool enough skills.
I also thought that the way a lawyer advised a business was very different. If you are much more commercial, you see the effect of your advice, it is so much more immediate. So we were looking to create a firm that could provide lawyers who had those attributes already who could hit the ground running and integrate with businesses and provide very quick practical advice. On the flip side, we also thought for lawyers there were not many options for their career. You could be in a traditional firm, work your way to partner level which as everyone is talking about now for women, it is not always an easy road because of the structures that make it hard to have a family and – you know – find your way to the top of the pile.
And also if you worked for business you are – there was only one top job and there was not so much of a career path. We were looking for a way to meet everyone’s needs. So say you are in traditional law, there is a better way of doing it. You do not have to do hourly rates, you can charge fixed fees. You can price your business better. Saying to lawyers, you do not have to work in that structure. You can work this way and still have a credible career and saying to clients, hey guess what, we are the new kids on the block but we are as credible as all the big names that you know. All of that was a challenge.
PAMELA: Ya.
DENISE: We spent a lot of time going around educating the market. So it took talking to people, understanding their challenges saying ‘would this be a solution?’ ‘ Oh, yes, that would be’. But lawyers by their nature are quite cautious. They take a long time sometimes to change. The biggest challenge has been educating the market. And what is so exciting now, 10 years on is that this area of law is no longer something that I have to explain. In the UK they tag it ‘new law’ and we are one of three or four other main players who have been around this long but now there are many law firms which have set up their own what they call agile sections of the business which behaves a little bit like us. There are new entrance to the market and my conversations now with general counsel is much more about options and how they work rather than explaining why this works.
So it is an amazing challenge and it has been wonderful to come and get that up and running and establishing it. We are not mentioned in legal directories. They have sections and awards ceremonies for new law. It is established and that is something that I am really, really proud of.
PAMELA: Wonderful, wonderful. So one of the things that I like to highlight because is peak performance and so what would you say to our audience because you know there is a time I am sure where you just thought this is not going to work. You might have almost given up but one or both of you would cheer the other one on and you were able to keep going on. Tell us about those times and how you were able to continue despite all the obstacles that were in the way.
DENISE: So the – in all honesty the obstacles in the way in any area of my life, I always say it is just an obstacle I am looking into how I get around. I do not often have time when I give something up. My mind-set is always, this is a journey, life is a journey and how long I am here, so this has come up and feels like an obstacle, what is it and why is it an obstacle. My driving force is always my purpose. Do I know what my purpose is and am I moving towards that or away from that? And if I feel like I am moving away from that then I need to realign and then I get going again. So that is kind of the underlying way that I view most of the things. So even in business. So I suppose the difficult times for us if I look back would be we had no funding. So we were – you know – two female lawyers starting up on our own and it was at the start of the crash which happened in 2007/8. We were about to sign Lehman Brothers as a client and we were very excited and then – you know – so it switched on the news and then I saw the whole business collapse – [laughter]
PAMELA: Oh no!
DENISE: People walking out with their boxes so – you know – it was a tricky time – you know – all the funding was closing down and no one wanted to help. So we were constantly battling. We had no funding so we had to grow organically. We have to believe in what we were doing. But it is just something where we set the focus that is what we are going to do, we found a strategy and then we worked on that. So the main challenge is, I would say in anything that you are doing usually your mind. So I work really hard on this peak performance to your question is mind management.
PAMELA: Ya.
DENISE: That is the thing that I have to focus on. So if I am feeling stressed out and overwhelmed and all those things then I need to pay attention to my mind my thoughts or my thinking. What is leading me down this road to feel so overwhelmed? You need to declutter your mind a little bit and then you have the way forward. And that kind of aligns with my point on purpose you know. What is it? Why am I feeling off purpose and what do I need to do? So over the years, I developed various practices. Like many people I pray. I always pray I see that as a version of meditation. Some people they do meditation or other things but that is about quiet time of your mind for me.
Exercise, I like to set myself challenges in different formats. Early on I used to dance a lot which I think is very good. It takes care of your mind. Now I run and I am having to do my first half marathon in a week’s time.
PAMELA: Wow, congratulations!
DENISE: Thank you. So I find things like that keep your body in check and also clear your mind and help your thoughts. And then I do pointed mind thought work whether with a coach or reading appropriate books or yoga or whatever it is. I am very thoughtful about that, paying attention to my mind.
PAMELA: Oh great! You actually answered about the stress levels. So let me tell – I want to ask you two things. One, I want to ask you about what would you say your biggest win has been?
DENISE: Oh I would say my biggest win has been – still I would say our biggest win, there is one win which means a lot because my former employer became a client – Sky – at that point at the very beginning when we were nothing.
PAMELA: Wow!
DENISE: We had no idea, we started up a law firm and I said up to them I set up a law firm would you be my client and they said no – [laughter] – and they said, they said no not because they did not think I could do it but because I was also in television presenting. The GC said I do not see how you can be a lawyer and advise me whilst you are also off filming. You will not have time. I was like, trust me you know a lawyer 24/7 I lock my time and I do the work, I would do it and manage it. And someone gave me a chance within the team and that has been a 10-year relationship.
We have lots of lawyers who work with them. We have a great partnership and that has been an amazing win but they knew me. So I suppose for me the biggest win for me then came five years later when we got onto the panel for BT which is British Telecom, which is the biggest telecommunications provider in the UK. And that was from cold. I did not know anyone there and even Janvi, my co-founder. We spend four years getting to know them, networking, attending meetings, presenting, analyzing – you know – building relationships and to get to a point where we would get onto their panel, we had to help them see that their panel process was excluding innovation.
So their old panel process was very rigid as most businesses have. So these are old traditional law firms and they will ask questions which will only fit them, which meant lots of small and start-ups in different ways could not fit into the mold they were setting. So we helped them to think again about what actually do you want to achieve, what services do you need and you get so much more breadth of choice. So they run a new panel selection of which was for new law and we were lucky to get onto that but they also now work with so many innovative companies. They are leaders in the market for running an innovative legal department and that has been an amazing journey and again we work with them now for six years it has been amazing. So I still feel those but the second one I guess is the biggest win.
PAMELA: Oh that is wonderful. Now what kind of clients do you look for? What kind of businesses and corporations do you seek as clients?
DENISE: So our model supports most businesses. We are lawyers and we provide legal solutions. We are commercial lawyers effectively so we can support most businesses. But the businesses that work best with us are those that are innovative, that are interested in the 3Es that we are interested in. We just have to be more efficient, more effective and more empowered. And when you have leadership like that, or they would be seeking partners who have a similar mind-set, and so we work very well together because we are able to supply their needs and they’re very agile and flexible and creative. I would say that is probably the reason that many of our early clients were in the technology sector.
PAMELA: Yes.
DENISE: Because as a concept, the whole business is about changing, being agile and then also steeped in history and they are very open to collaboration, and open source and all of these ideas permeate the business. The legal team that they work with needs to work that way. What we are finding now is that other industries are catching up to that as you will see in the news. Everyone is now having to innovate and be more efficient and more effective because the economy demands that and therefore we are seeing more clients who are more aligned with our way of thinking.
PAMELA: Okay. Well Denise, what kind of legacy would you like to leave? Well, the second question, I want to go back- is, tell us a little bit about your television work and in the media.
DENISE: So that came about partly by chance, the actual opportunity to become a television presenter happened when I was working as a lawyer at Sky and they were looking for presenting talent from within their staff which we thought was just a gimmick to – for employee engagement – many of us in the legal department entered. I entered. I was one of the top 10 chosen, we were trained and my peers all voted me the winner.
PAMELA: Wow.
DENISE: And I was given an opportunity to present for Sky news to present the weather. So that led to that specific opportunity but before that, I have always had an interest in performance and performing art and so I danced most of my life. It’s only when I started having children when I stopped. I used to run a youth dance organization in my spare time. I used to host events. I used to put on charity events. I always had that interest outside and so when the opportunity to do that professionally came up it kind of made sense. It started off with them offering me six months to present for the weather for Sky News while my legal job was kept open. And I just took the opportunity at that point, why not trying something different and that was what led me to start Halebury.
It made me step away from my career and look at myself differently. And you know for people watching this who are lawyers, my experience for myself and the lawyers that we work with as I described at the beginning, it is a very driven profession with a very linear career path. So you can end up quite easily just becoming quite tunnel-visioned about your career and your path and just driving, driving towards that goal and you do not always step away and look at the bigger picture and see what else you can do.
So I had that amazing opportunity to do that. So stepping away, I then had an agent and she introduced me to BBC and I ended up presenting a property show in the UK called ‘Escape to the Country’ which takes people from the cities if you want to go and live in the country side and you look at beautiful houses – [laughter] – so it is a bit of a fantasy that a lot of English people – British people have and people love the program. It is very gentle and nice. And it was amazing. I loved doing that.
But that whole experience allowed me to have different perspectives of being a lawyer. It allowed me to step away from the badge of being a lawyer. I was very wrapped up in the title I think for a while. It is very easy to become that – you get a certain level of respect just because you say you are a lawyer. I was allowed to step away from that and look at it differently and more holistically. What does it mean, what do I want to do? How do I want to contribute to the profession and the world?
So my TV career – you know – it is something that I loved doing. It helps with a certain part of my personality- creativity- and it fed into my legal world as well and for helping now with all the lawyers that joined. I did not ask them to be TV presenters but I asked about their whole life. I want them to be their best selves, bring their best selves to work. We have people on our team who are also journalists so they write regularly for leading publications. We have another lady who runs her own child-care franchise. She is doing very well plus she is a lawyer with us. We have someone who takes part in motorcycle racing at very high level. So rather than these things being things that you do on the side and hide, we want to bring it all to work. So that you have a better quality of life and a better quality of lawyer.
PAMELA: Right, so how does this all play – what you are creating here with Halebury and how you are serving your clients in an all-encompassing way and that you are allowing the lawyers to come holistically to be who they are, all parts of them and to be balanced and to be integrative in all their approach. So you are like – it is like you are having a party here and you are presenting on TV and all of that. What legacy would you like to leave for the world?
DENISE: It is a good question because there are several things that I would like to leave for the world. In this respect in particular, changing the workplace environment so that we value people, the whole person and then we value the results we create rather than value time presentees or whether you take a particular box or so I think those constraints and structures are what have led us – you know – they worked for a while – and you know it has been lots of progress in society but now we see all around us in the UK at the moment there is a lot of focus on gender equality, women’s equal pay, we are having more transparency, it is very clear. Women have been getting paid a hell of a lot less than men for a very long time to do the same job.
And a lot of that I think is not necessarily malicious, it is ignorance and no one has paid attention to it and the structures have not allowed not just women but all sorts of people to raise up the value chain in the current structures. So if I can play a part in changing the emphasis of the work place to focus on are we moving towards the goal, are we getting a solution and I do not really care where you sit when you do that. In fact, I would encourage you to pick up your child from school if you can and spend some time with your children and your husband or your wife as well as get the work done. I think that leads to a better society. It means we are looking after our families. We are spending time with each other plus we are then bringing ourselves to the world of work.
Taking it to another level. I embrace the idea of technology – you know – stepping in. I know there is a lot of fear of technology taking our jobs. The lawyer will not exist anymore because the clever computer will do everything that we can do. I think, bring it on, it would be great if we have computers doing more, then our minds are freer to serve a higher purpose to work with each other, to care for each other. It sounds quite lofty but I feel that what we are doing is part of our journey – helping to open doors and give others opportunities and ultimately I would like the new generation of lawyers that are coming through to have a different experience and a more rounded experience early on and to have better skills training early on so that they are able to contribute in that way much sooner.
PAMELA: Wow that is really great! So it seems like you are really an innovator. You are a person who wants to really encourage change and growth.
DENISE: Absolutely! To encourage change and growth and to encourage everyone to have the confidence to really own who they are and be who they are. So to have the confidence to have that conversation at work, have the confidence to set up their own business if that is what they want to do. For women, in particular, to have the opportunity to say yes I want to be a great mother, wife, daughter whatever it is but I also I do love my career and this is how I would like it to look and then be able to deliver that.
PAMELA: Yes.
DENISE: That is the dream that I try to do at Halebury and all my staff that work to support the lawyers. We work with each of them individually to ensure that they are not- you know, this idea of family. It is just that they have a way of expressing themselves and talking about their whole lives and they do not have to hide anything and that we work together to reach solutions. Helping people to do that. You know it sounds cheesy but to live their dream. That is what I love.
PAMELA: Wow! Well from the 14-year-old who decided from LA Law to become a lawyer to actually being a change agent in the legal community with a new law firm that has just celebrated a 10 year anniversary. It has just been such an honor to have you as a Lawyer of the Week Denise and we really wish you continued success which I think there is no question about that!
DENISE: It has been wonderful to speak to you Pamela and I really applaud the work that you are doing, sharing stories is such a vital part of this and I am a big believer that everybody has a story. Everyone has something to share. So I am delighted you have shared mine today and I look forward to the rest of the series.
PAMELA: Thank you, thank you so much. And to my audience, thank you so much for joining us today for Lawyer of the Week and we hope to see you again next week.
DENISE: Absolutely! Thank you very much.
Denise’s Links:
Halebury.com
Denise’s LinkedIn Profile
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