Women in Tech: Season 2, Episode 5

Denae:

Hello and welcome to Ashurst's Women in Tech podcast series. We're very excited to be back for a second season. In this series, we share the stories of inspiring women working at the intersection of innovation, law, and technology. If you haven't listened to our first season, you can find us under Ashurst's Legal Outlook podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Denae, I'm a Senior Associate in Ashurst's Digital Economy team. The Ashurst Digital Economy team supports clients' digital strategies and identifies how they can leverage new technologies from a legal perspective, and I'm super excited to share some examples of that with you today while chatting to our guest.

In today's episode, we have a conversation with Rebecca Cope, a partner in Ashurst's Digital Economy team in Sydney. In our discussion, Rebecca will reflect on her unique and successful career, the importance of being flexible, of being open to and making the most of opportunities, and finding the courage to pivot. Here's our conversation.

Denae:

So Rebecca, thanks for joining us today on the Ashurst Women in Tech podcast series. It's really great to speak to you.

Rebecca:

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Denae:

So let's start with the journey that's led you to where you find yourself in your career today as a partner in our Sydney Digital Economy practice. Did you always know you wanted to work in tech?

Rebecca:

Short answer, no. I think it's been a series of happy accidents, some of them by design, but no, I think I've had several career ambitions along the way. I think at university I did international relations as my second degree, and I was a 100% going to be a human rights lawyer and taking down international criminals in the Hague and all that sort of thing. And then quickly learned that I needed to make some money to pay rent and so pivoted to lift all of those ideals by the side of the road and pivoted into wanting to be an insolvency and restructuring lawyer and so, I did all of my clerkships in that area.

When I give chats to junior lawyers, I always tell them, "Don't necessarily have just one thing in mind," because I think you're going to try a few things along the way instead of be open to doing rotations in teams where you think you might not have an interest, because the reality of practicing law is often very different to university or television. Sounds a bit trite to say that, but yeah, so that's where I started. Did clerkships in insolvency and restructuring, then moved into a property rotation and then did a rotation in a Brisbane office, so it was a lot of different practice areas that was smushed together into one practice area just because of the size of the market. So I did some TMT, some IP as well as some competition.

And then I moved into competition law and did eight years as a competition lawyer, and then took a job at Australia's National Broadband Network, which was a startup at the time that I moved in there. And that was how I ended up doing tech, was moving into telco and then moving my way into a tech team here at Ashurst who'd been doing some work with NBN. And yeah, I fell in love with it basically. I think maybe I was always meant to be a tech lawyer, but I just took the long way around to get there.

Denae:

I think what I really like about what you've just said is this concept of happy accidents because I think I've had a similar experience in my career. I started off in disputes and happily found my way into tech. Happily tech found me, whatever it is. I really like that.

So I want to talk a bit more about your transition from being a competition lawyer to moving into tech. And when you said you moved from a firm into a telco startup, was that a move straight from a competition role or from a competition role straight into a tech role? Or was there a transition between your role as a competition lawyer into a tech role?

Rebecca:

So the role that I moved into was I guess a commercial contracting kind of role. So it was very different to being a competition lawyer. In fact, I remember the general counsel asked me in my, I think, third round interview for the job, "Why shouldn't we hire you?" And I basically said, "Because I don't think I'm qualified." But he gave me some words of wisdom, which I've carried forward into now being on the other side and hiring people. He's like, "I look for people who are smart and willing to learn and interested, and if they don't have the particular technical skills, that's something we can teach them, but we can't teach them how to be interested in an area and we can't really teach them how to fit in well with the team. So as long as you're ticking all of those boxes, we can give you the additional technical skills to get you up the curve." So I was really glad he took that approach because I did move into doing something very different to what I had before.

Denae:

That's really great advice, I think particularly for women and young lawyers looking to make a change or actually just starting off in their career. Just on this pivot point, so to speak, in your career, I think it must have been, whether it be scary or intimidating, to have been faced with this change and to make this big change, let's talk a bit about where you found the courage or what was the reason behind the big change and how you ended up working through that?

Rebecca:

In hindsight, it was probably a case of feeling a little burned out at the time and wanting to just try something different because I felt that what I was doing wasn't working for me, but I feel like this is part of the happy accident, which was this opportunity came up. It seemed like a great opportunity in that it was this government-owned startup business that was going to have to scale incredibly quickly because they were building a broadband network for the entirety of Australia and it was a big exciting project, very much build the boat as you're rowing it kind of vibe, which seemed exciting and new and just completely different from what I was doing. So I was very much just rolling the dice on doing something completely different just to see if that would change the way that I felt about going to work and what I was doing.

So yeah, I think I was very lucky that I landed somewhere that was an amazing experience and did actually lead to me to what I really wanted to do. But yeah, in hindsight, maybe I could have taken a holiday and refreshed myself and felt different about remaining in the kind of law that I was. But again, I think looking back on it, I really enjoyed my time as competition lawyer and I worked with some amazing partners and I was still working basically in the same industry, so I was doing work for the media and telco kind of industries. So I did have that kind of background.

I guess my advice, unsolicited, for junior lawyers moving through is to try and find an area of law where the nature of the practice really suits your personality. So I really enjoy negotiating, enjoy being in the room, and I like going through the strategy, having the argument, and I feel like doing that in a commercial setting, you can have a bit more fun with it, I think because negotiating against a regulator is quite fraught and you're trying to go softly, softly. But yeah, great skills to have and build on.

Denae:

That's great, and we certainly welcome your advice throughout the episode, certainly not unsolicited. Okay, let's move on to your decision to move back into practice. We often find that, or we more often see lawyers moving out of practice into an in-house role, but you actually move back into practice. What went through your mind at that time?

Rebecca:

I'm a glutton for punishment? No, no, no! Again, I really enjoyed my time in-house. When I first moved across, I went straight into probably one of the largest transactions ever in Australia. I think the value was in the high billions, and I had a moment of, "This is probably the biggest transaction I'll ever work on." And it was really punishing. It was long hours, there were hundreds of lawyers working on it. It was very fulfilling and I think you got a bit of that deal adrenaline going. It was great to have it all signed and tucked away. I think it took a little while to come off that deal high to come back to everyday life. And I found myself, I guess, wanting to chase that again in that when you're in-house, you may... It totally depends on the company obviously, but in this particular instance, there was only going to be a few of these kind of size deals in the whole life of the company and they just finished that one. I didn't really feel like there was another one coming shortly.

So yeah, I think I missed that. I also missed just having the variety that you get when you're in private practice, just being able to do something different for a different client and getting in to know their business and how does it work and so, guess it's two sides of the same coin. When you're in-house, there's the benefit of knowing one client really, really well and you can do things and you know things that you would never as a private practice lawyer who comes in and does one project and then dips out again. But yeah, I think I was just really chasing the next big deal and was also just really chasing that variety that we get in private practice.

Denae:

It's very interesting to hear you tell this story because I think I've also had a similar experience again, I think. So I left practice as well. I didn't go in-house, but I did find myself after a few years out of practice thinking, "I do miss the challenge. It would be good to get more involved in the really meaty, complex transactions." And I think, I don't know, I'm thinking of a specific transaction that you and I both worked on and I think that certainly very much delivered.

Rebecca:

Scratched that itch for you.

Denae:

Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca:

Yeah, no, actually, that was something else that irked me being in-house is I would finally get something really interesting and I'd have to give it to external counsel to do because it was too complex or too large and I was like, "Oh, but I want to do that."

Denae:

Yeah. So let's, I think move slightly away from your career journey. I've been burning to ask you this question. I've done a bit of research on this and I think it's safe to say that recent statistics continue to show that law firms have higher attrition rates amongst young female lawyers. And I'd actually, as a partner, love to get your thoughts on this and how you think firms can change this pattern?

Rebecca:

So I wish I had a nice answer for you today, but I think look, without wanting to come across as a bit of a politician, I think it is important to recognise that we are in a much better position than what we ever have been in terms of we have more female graduates than male graduates at the moment coming through. That's certainly been the case for law schools for a long time. But I agree that that's not showing itself in senior management numbers. It's not showing itself in female partnership numbers, although they're also on the increase. And so it is something that law firms can't rest on their laurels and say, "Oh, well, we've got a 30%, for example, female partnership. Well done us." It's something that needs to be thought through and invested in.

In terms of what's causing it, I think there's so many different causes of it. First of all, I'd say there is some limitations on the nature of the law firm business. It's still very traditional, I think, although a lot of firms like to try and innovate and be on the cutting edge, I think as an industry we're often coming behind other types of firms, types of corporations, who are moving a bit more agile in how they innovate and reshape how their services are delivered or reshape how their teams are constituted. We're still very much a traditional service provider, a pyramid structure with fewer partners, and we have fewer senior associates than we have lawyers. There's still really only those three/four job titles if you're staying in the legal side of the business.

I think there's some reasons for that are industry-wide. There are things like ultimately we're service providers and if we don't provide a certain level of service to our clients, it's a highly competitive industry, there's lots of other places to go. So that does present challenges for trying to do things like manage workloads, manage deadlines, push back to try and allow teams to have proper flexibility to allow people to work part-time on a fulfilling basis and just generally trying to manage work-life balance. There's certainly more that we could be doing in that space, but yeah, there are definitely constraints presented by the industry itself.

But yeah, I think where all of that was really coming from is that the reality is that when you're talking about a heteronormative couple, it's still a fact that women carry most of the burden of you're running the household, elder care, childcare, all that sort of thing. And so that does mean that things like flexibility and managing work-life balance and things like that are still things that if we do them poorly, they'll disproportionately affect female lawyers in the firm. But again, they're not exclusively female issues, which I think is where my thinking is on this one, which is trying to redress the issues that are leading to greater attrition in female lawyers is just going to benefit everyone in the firm because lots of our male colleagues are taking advantage, for example, of our 26-week parental leave policy, and that's fantastic. And I think things like that take a while to wash through, but they do certainly help to shift the needle, I think.

Yeah, I wish I had a solve. I think part of it as well is just representation. The whole, you can't be what you can't see kind of thing. So I guess getting more female partners through, putting them into more senior positions. Just doing a plug for myself here, but I do think that that genuinely helps because if you see someone in a position that you would like, that you can see yourself in and you think they're doing it in a way that you would also want to do it, I think that that really helps. Part of me is hoping it's a generational shift that's coming through. I find myself in meetings where some older partners are talking about millennials like they're 25 years old, and I have to remind them that I'm a millennial.

Denae:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

We're coming.

Denae:

Me too. Exactly.

Rebecca:

So yeah, if you want to know what the millennials are thinking, we can answer that question.

Denae:

Yeah, let's talk.

Rebecca:

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So yeah, I don't think any of that is... I don't have the answer basically, but I do think it is a real problem and I think it's one that needs to keep being talked about and can't be complacent about.

Denae:

I agree with you. I think we have come a long way as an industry and not to sound like a broken record, we do still have ways to go, and I certainly don't have the answer myself. And what I've recently been mulling over, so to speak, is whether we can think of smarter ways to support young female lawyers through their career journeys in practice, and whether that be through a form of mentoring and coaching. In the series we do speak to guests about mentoring and coaching specifically. I certainly from experience have found that where I have had mentors to work with and to support me, those have been times in my career where I have felt most supported and that I look on certainly in a very positive light, so to speak.

Rebecca:

Yeah, no, I agree. Mentoring can be really valuable, and whether that's having mentors of the same gender or mentors of different genders, it all helps. You can pick up lots of little good things as you go along from lots of different people.

Denae:

Let's move on to my second last question for you. Back to your career, do you have a moment or a moment or two that stands out to you as one of your biggest career highlights?

Rebecca:

It's always difficult to answer this one because it goes back to like, oh, what makes something a highlight for you? And as you know, so we practice in an area of technology and data and a lot of things that can sometimes be a bit ephemeral. That's what attracts me to doing some of the more digital infrastructure type projects because you can actually see them and you can annoy friends and family by pointing out things on the street and go see that? I wrote the contract that resulted in that being there. So yeah, I think like the project that you alluded to before, doing subsea cable work is incredible because the work that you do has a physical manifestation and it literally impacts the lives of millions of people on an everyday basis.

Denae:

Yes.

Rebecca:

And I think that I find that personally really fulfilling.

Denae:

Yes.

Rebecca:

So working on those kind of mega projects in the digital infrastructure space is amazing. And I think this is why, what I'm going to say is my career highlight is a bit of a small and probably super nerdy one, but when I was working for NBN, I was negotiating contracts in respect of a particular technology called HFC. And when the rollout came to my place, that was the technology that I received. And so yeah, actually having the technician turn up to install my connection was a bit of a moment of, "Oh gosh, this is where hours and hours and hours of my life was dedicated to, and I'm actually getting to experience the thing that has been built and it's actually delivering data directly to my house." So that was pretty cool.

Denae:

That's really cool. I agree. So our last question, this is a question we love asking all our guests. What advice would you give your younger self?

Rebecca:

I'd say a lot, but I might start with a flippant one and then maybe something a little bit more useful. I'd say the first one is, oh my God, if you're going to wear heels, always have a pair of flats in your handbag, even if you're catching a taxi. I absolutely destroyed my feet as a junior lawyer. It's a terrible thing to do.

Denae:

Aw.

Rebecca:

On a more meaningful level, I'd say absolutely keep in mind that it's really important to be flexible, that things are guaranteed not to look the way that you think that they will look or the way that you think that they should look, and being flexible is really important in your career. And also, if you have a flexible mindset, I think it enables you to try and spot opportunities more readily because you're not just looking for a straight line opportunity. You're actually scanning the horizon and potentially seeing opportunities that you would've otherwise missed. So is there an opportunity to move into a different type of law? Is there an opportunity to get an experience that you don't have? Even if maybe initially you're not drawn to that experience, is that still something that maybe would be good for you to do? Or are you feeling uncomfortable about doing something because you haven't done it before and therefore you're avoiding that type of work?

Where in reality, probably the best thing to do is to dive in and just give it a go and you never know, that might actually be the thing that you find most interesting. I'd say try and be flexible. Scan the horizon for opportunities. If an opportunity comes up and it's something that can be win-win for you and the person who you're talking to, then that's always a good one to go for.

Denae:

I think what I really like about what you just said, and certainly my takeaway, is that female lawyers don't have to have everything figured out at the outset.

Rebecca:

Absolutely.

Denae:

It's actually great to leave room for happy accidents to occur and to be... I suppose it's a bit scary, the uncertainty and all that, but just trusting the process and trusting that it is a happy accident and a pivot may seem scary or a big change may seem scary, but finding the courage to just do it because I think as women, we just do it. Right?

Thank you very much for joining us today and for all your... Well, for telling us your story and for the advice that you've woven in so very helpfully. Thank you.

Rebecca:

No, my pleasure. Thank you very much. I love these podcasts, so thank you for doing them, Denae.

Denae:

Well, thank you.

Thank you for listening to season two of Ashurst's Women in Tech podcast series. If you enjoyed this episode and want to listen to the rest of the season or catch up on season one of our Women in Tech podcast, please subscribe to Ashurst's Legal Outlook wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to leave us a rating or review. If you'd like to find out more about Ashurst's Digital Economy team, please visit www.ashurst.com. Thanks very much for listening, and goodbye for now.