Kirstie Penk is a co-owner, CEO and EOS Integrator for The Legal Director. In her role she leads the day-to-day management of the business, integrating key functions such as sales, marketing, people, and finance, to drive results. Her role brings the team together, working closely with Founder, and EOS Visionary, Ed Simpson.
Kirstie is a passionate advocate for women in the law. When she started out in private practice, there were no female role models for her in senior positions. Joining TLD not only afforded her the flexibility she needed when her children were younger, but also allowed her to give other women the opportunity to have an interesting and varied career, utilising their skills and being entrepreneurial whilst also balancing the demands of family life.
Can you tell us a little about your background and your company?
I went to a Yorkshire comprehensive school, Leicester Uni and York College of Law and then did my training contract at Watson Farley and Williams in the city in the early 1990s.
I moved in-house once I was 6 months qualified partly as I saw no female role models in the private practice world I had been exposed to.
I worked as the sole In-House lawyer in EMEA for a NASDAQ listed computer networking business based in High Wycombe and worked there from 1994, becaming General Counsel (GC) in 2001. It was a very exciting time to be in tech as the business expanded rapidly to US$550m revenue and 7.5K staff around the world. The dot com bubble burst in the late 1990s and in 2001 I and 3 of my colleagues bought the business from the Receivers. We ran what was then a US$5m turnover / 50 people wireless networking business for 4 years through various VC funding rounds and then finally wound up that business in 2006 whilst I was on maternity leave.
After taking three years off (by which time I had a one year old and three year old) I decided I wanted to get back to work – but the options were limited. I knew I did not want the kind of role I had before, involving lots of travelling and definitely a full time gig. I was not interested in going back into a private practice solicitors firm and if I wanted to work part time the only roles were really in large in-house teams where I felt I would be doing very dull contract reviews (pushing bits of paper around) and nothing else. It wasn’t for me.
What inspired you to start your business?
In 2009 I met Ed Simpson. His brother was acting as a part time Finance Director at the time and he had the idea of The Legal Director – “it was working for part time FDs, so why not part time legal directors too?”
At the time and to this day, I genuinely believe that an in house lawyer is the best way for the vast majority of businesses to access legal support. As not all businesses have the level of complexity or legal churn to require an experienced in house lawyer full time – a part time legal director is the answer for them. Hence I thought Ed’s idea was brilliant – of course it would work so we decided to give it a go!
How did you create awareness for your brand?
Our business model is very simple. We find great General Counsel and we get them busy. So we have two target audiences. There’s the businesses who buy our services and the lawyers who want to join us. Especially in the early days, both target markets were required to have a leap of faith – as we were doing things that no one had done before by selling legal services in this way and we were in the very early days of platform law firms.
From the start the three owners of our business were also “doing the doing” in terms of legal work and we tried a lot of different ways to get our brand out there but it was really about selling us individually to be their part time in house lawyer and not selling brand TLD.
What strategies helped you secure funding and scale your business?
We have been lucky enough to have a business that we have self-funded from its growth. We have had no external money into the business. With hindsight we would probably have been able to grow more quickly if we had gone out for funding and we might well do that in the future.
What have been your biggest successes so far?
Building a great team of lawyers who share our values and work in a collegiate way. Building a business which has some value over and above the blood, sweat and tears the owners have put in over the years.
What challenges have you faced, and how did you overcome them?
Our first challenge was to move from working in the business to working on it. The three owners were all fee earning lawyers as well as running the business. It took a chairman we appointed (a wonderful man called Jon Holt) to make us realise the only way our business would be anything other than a lifestyle business for us all was to stop fee earning and work for the business full time. That was a pretty daunting task for lawyers who had always valued themselves by how much legal work they got through and it meant a shift in mindset. I “leapt first” and gave my clients to other team members and we were able to afford a modest salary for me by spreading the income billed by the two other owners, between the three of us. Gradually over three or four years we all stopped fee-earning work. That was definitely one of the most scary times. And a real change for us.
What are your plans for the future?
We have built a great central team and the plan is to get to the stage where we can bring more lawyers into the team and benefit from the “hockey stick effect” so that more revenue leads to a comparatively larger increase in profits, as we don’t need to increase costs any further. Pretty much the goal of every SME!
What advice would you give to aspiring female entrepreneurs?
Work with people you like and stick to your values. At the point you are dealing with people who are an energy vampire for you it just makes everything so much harder.
What are your top three tips for entrepreneurial success?
Make sure you are in business with people who share your values and in particular if they are your business partners make sure they want the same things in terms of monthly wages and they have the same timing requirements as you (ideally you should all be at a similar stage in your lives as each other).
Be prepared to take some risks .
Be prepared to work hard but really try to step back occasionally to enjoy the ride and celebrate your successes.
Who are five people who inspire you the most, and why?
Michelle Obama: I recently read her book “Becoming” and was struck by how humble and self aware she is. The fact she only managed to say one vaguely negative comment about Donald Trump as he stumbled into the Whitehouse after them, showed her class in taking “the moral high ground”.
Miss Mills: was my school teacher when I was 10. She was the only teacher at the school who was under 30 years old and she was very sporty and feisty in equal measure. She would joke with the class and let us sit on the grass banking at breaktime which other members of staff would not allow. She was full of life and I wanted to be her.
My Mum (Edwina Maxfield) died of cancer of the bile duct during the pandemic. I don’t think the pandemic played a part in her death it just made seeing her near the end of her life more difficult because of all the restrictions. My mum had worked as a nursery nurse all her working life and although she had left school at 16 with few qualifications she always encouraged me to work hard to have better choices than she did. I always felt I was massively loved, no matter what would transpire in my life. She had amazing resilience and EQ.
My Dad (Alan Hallgate)– my parents split up when I was 8 years old and my dad moved to Devon where he ran his own business in the 80s running adventure holidays for school children. Me, my brother and sister spent all our holidays in Devon with him and his wife and our half brother and sister, water skiing, canoeing and abseiling etc. My dad was a larger than life character who took no prisoners with his quest for messing about and competing at everything. My dad instilled in me a competitive drive and to work hard and play hard.
Baroness Hale: whom I have met a number of times via my connections with Women in Law UK. She often talks of her imposter syndrome which I think is so powerful for someone at the top of her game. At a dinner in 2019 I sat between her and her late husband (Julian Farrand) which was a truly lovely experience. It was clear that they had a special bond and that although he had a very distinguished legal career himself what he really loved was following his wife around the country/world telling stories about their life together. Baroness Hale has a very calm and wise demeanour which makes her very approachable and I think that is a great quality to have.
What are your favourite inspirational or motivational quotes?
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do” — Steve Jobs
“If your dreams don’t scare you, they are too small” — Richard Branson
“Just do the next right thing” – Anna from Frozen 2 😊
Where can our readers connect with you?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstiepenkfractionalgeneralcounsel
