When Loughborough University General Counsel, Sam McGinty, first stepped into his earlier role as Head of Contracts, he had been seeking to take a step away from law. As it turned out, the law wasn’t quite done with him. Fast forward to today, and Sam has established himself as the university’s first General Counsel, leading an in-house legal team at one of the UK’s top institutions. In this interview, he offers a refreshingly honest take on building an in-house legal function from the ground up, the evolving role of university lawyers in challenging times, and why sometimes the most valuable career moves are the ones that look a bit ‘wibbly-wobbly’…
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For those who aren’t alumni, please introduce us to Loughborough University.
Loughborough University is a top ten university based in the market town of Loughborough in north Leicestershire. Its history is rooted in engineering and is now world renowned for its expertise in the research of and prowess in the performing of sport. We are the largest single campus university in the UK and are proud of our Green Flag awards celebrating the enormous hard work our estate teams put into maintaining the open spaces for our community of more than 22,000 staff and students.
What made you choose to work there?
I had fallen out of love with the law and was looking for something different, where I could use the skills I’d picked up, but which wasn’t as a lawyer and that was a bit geographically closer to home. A friend pointed out the new Head of Contracts role in the university’s enterprise directorate and so I applied and was successful. I’d worked in the public sector since qualification and so thought I would find the transition easier, which was partly true.
Little did I know the law was not done with me yet! On the advice of another friend, I had kept my practising certificate and in 2019 my role changed to Head of ‘the first in-house’ Legal Services team at the university.
Why is it a good place to work?
There’s lots of reasons why I stay at Loughborough. I feel lucky (and I know it’s not really luck!) to have been supported, mentored and given freedom to operate to develop my role from the Head of Contracts in a discrete part of the university, to building the first Legal Services team for the university and establishing the role of GC in 2023.
Higher Education is a collaborative sector in the nature of its work – there’s a lot that’s ‘unseen’ and misunderstood around what universities are and do. They’re big, complex and culturally varied and that keeps the work equally varied and stimulating. I have agency in my role to identify where the team can help the university improve and I’m pleased when someone in the university we don’t normally engage with picks up the phone and asks for help.
The thing that will be familiar to most who have studied at a university is the sense of community and that there’s ‘lots going on’ on campus – we get to experience that as staff too. Whether that’s watching the first BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sports) rugby match of the year or having a tour of the ancient woodland with our university arborist.
How has the organisation helped you develop in your current role?
The key element has been trust, I think. I have been given freedom to operate/agency/trust to do the right thing in the development of my service. I have received constructive challenge and push back throughout and while things may not have always moved at the pace I would have wanted, today the value the team offers is not in question. We do what we say we’re going to do, when we say we’ll do it and that’s established our credibility and respect.
What growth opportunities have come your way?
We are lucky to have access to a host of training opportunities and specialist expertise for non-legal areas – one of my team has just completed her certificate in Carbon Literacy, I’ve attended leadership workshops with titans of industry, and we’ve supported team members through the QLTS. Learning and development is a given here and having the flexibility to pursue what I feel I need is brilliant.
What have you enjoyed working on most?
Alongside the satisfaction of being involved in impactful projects across research, development, teaching and sports, there’s two pivotal moments which stick out for me.
Firstly, being able to establish the first in-house team for the university. I am immensely proud of the work we do and how we do it, but the individual members of the team make the magic happen. We’ve received a couple of nods in legal awards, which have been a great way to reinforce the message internally that we’re a great bunch.
Secondly, I genuinely think we looked after our students better than anyone else in the sector during the pandemic. We reduced our team’s capacity significantly during that period, so we could help man the support to students isolating in their flats. We were a small part of a huge campus wide endeavour to ensure our students were fed, had clean clothes, medicines, books from the library and more. It was humbling to be part of such a team effort, but it was also great to work with colleagues from areas I would not normally interact. It wasn’t until then that I realised just how big and complicated universities are.
What are the key issues facing higher education and how do they impact you and your team as in-house lawyers?
The financial situation of higher education in the UK is quite precarious at the moment and while the press doesn’t want to talk about anything other than student fees, the picture is a lot more complicated and nuanced. We’re having to look at how we collaborate with other institutions and businesses to generate opportunities and meet our charitable purposes, but we are also competing against one another for students and funding. This hits our desks through the range of transactional and contentious case work we get, but as a team we’re not immune to the financial pressures and so are having to look at our budgets and where we can make savings for the university, while ensuring we’re delivering the most value possible.
How is the role of the in-house lawyer changing and what are the biggest challenges?
There seems to be more in house lawyers now than ever before – when I was training in private practice, in-house was somewhere people ‘escaped’ to. Now, in-house lawyers are critical parts of executive teams and necessary infrastructure for businesses of all sizes. However, I feel like we’re having an identity crisis – perhaps on the back of the Post Office scandal and the SRA’s look at in-house teams. I think the biggest, if existential challenge in the medium term, that cuts across all in-house lawyers is reorientating our role in terms of ESG and the ethics of our organisations and the legal system.
How do you like external lawyers to work with you?
I am unashamedly borrowing this concept from the local government focussed EM LawShare consortium: I want our external lawyers to be like an extension of the in-house team. They need to be aligned to our behaviours and values, and they need to be close enough to know ‘how we do things here’. They should build relationships with key instructing officers within the business but know that their reporting line is through to Legal Services for any ‘red flag’ issues. A big part of this is on the in-house team to nurture that relationship and share the right information, but it is a shift in approach for many external law firms – to move away from the transactional.
When hiring, what are the key things you look for?
We start with behaviours – we know the legal function we want the person to deliver, we know where the work is coming from and we put all of that in the job description, but we put most of our effort into finding the right person. We have a set of stated behaviours and values that unite the team, and we assess candidates against this using psychometric tests and behaviour based interview questions, as well as a brief technical assessment. We want the right fit for the team and the organisation and the right foundational knowledge – we can teach the rest.
Why might now be a good time to join the company or your department?
There’s never not a good time to join us!
What attracted you to the legal profession in the first place?
I didn’t have a pivotal moment in my development that galvanised me into a career in law, it happened gradually to the extent I can’t tell you when I thought this was what I wanted to do. I came from a working-class background, but was bright at school and encouraged in the direction of going to university and I suspect it was my dad who said ‘what about law?’.
As a teenager, I had a rosy, TV-inspired view of a career in the law in a sleepy regional practice, driving a classic car and taking long lunches. It’s fair to say my bum hit the ground pretty hard when I went into firms for work experience and then latterly my training contract.
What I have learned over the years is that the environment I am in is absolutely critical to how I enjoy my job.
What is the best piece of career advice you’ve been given and who from?
This nugget was shared with me by an old boss and now good friend, Elizabeth Warhurst.
Your career isn’t linear and so you should consider a range of opportunities – don’t ask the question “will this get you where you want to be?”, ask the question “will this stop me getting where I want to be?”. If the answer is no, then it’s worth seriously considering the opportunity. Some of the most respected lawyers I know have had ‘wibbly-wobbly’ career paths.
Have you ever been coached? And how do you feel you benefited from it?
I’ve been lucky enough to have had formal coaching and benefited from informal coaching methods deployed by bosses and mentors. When you’re a junior lawyer, your focus on CPD is all about technical knowledge and skills. As you progress and take on management responsibility you do management and leadership training, but there’s no substitute for experience in shaping what sort of manager and leader you want to be. That experience doesn’t have to be your own – which is where a coach or mentor can add real value. The benefit of coaching over mentoring, in my view, is that it is more about you finding your own solutions – it can feel like therapy (and that’s no bad thing!), but it’s time out to reflect, which I think is what those with leadership and management responsibility need, as typically time-poor professionals.
What practical advice would you give to someone in practice looking to move in-house?
Take time researching the values and culture of the organisation – use what’s in the public domain and speak to people who work there. Ask appropriately challenging questions of the panel at interview and see how they respond. Try to get a gut feel for whether you will have the freedom you need to operate and will feel comfortable doing so.
And get comfortable with no longer being a specialist, niche lawyer!
What valuable lessons have you learned in your career?
I was recently at an event for General Counsel and there was a discussion around “imposter syndrome” and we alighted on the theme that we are trained to be suspicious and to question, which naturally means we end up questioning ourselves. It can be lonely in senior leadership roles and it’s easy to disappear into ‘your own head’ (coaching can be a great way of tackling that!). I have had to really learn to overcome my own imposter syndrome and build a neural pathway and confidence around my own voice and own contributions. Sometimes I have kept too quiet or sat too much on the fence and it has reduced my ability to influence the right outcome for my client. I believe in learning from these experiences and have taken strides to speak out more, albeit not for the sake of it. I am often heard saying that bitter experience is the best teacher, and I firmly believe it is!
What makes a great in-house lawyer, and how would you advise a newly recruited in-house legal counsel to go about their first 100-days in a role?
Communication and relationship building is absolutely critical to success, for lots and lots of reasons. To be effective you must have the trust of your peers – you can build processes that mean the business have to go through you, but where you really add value is where the business wants to come to you. Go out, meet with different parts of the business – in listening mode. You’ll learn no end about the business, you’ll get a sense of the people you’ll be working with and your spidey sense will tell you where you need to focus your efforts in the short term. 100 days seems a lot, but it goes by very quickly – you shouldn’t have ambition to change the world in that time.
At what point in the growth curve should a business hire its first in-house lawyer?
I think this is going to vary widely depending on the nature of the business – those in highly regulated sectors need a lot more advice early on, etc. A lot of companies look at bringing in in-house legal support solely based on what they are spending on legal advice, to try to make savings. I think that’s the wrong metric – an in-house lawyer can provide a lot more value than the saving on an external firm’s bills. We can provide ethical, practical and commercial check and challenge – not just the legal support – which small businesses reacting quickly to opportunity sorely need.
What particular pieces of tech could you not do without?
It’s probably not very exciting to say this in 2024, but I can’t live without a case management system. Data is a powerful tool for in-house lawyers and while I know I haven’t optimised our use of data yet, what I can get out of our system has been incredibly helpful for workload management, investment and providing another source of information to triangulate gut-feelings.
How are you reacting to the rise of generative AI?
AI is pretty pervasive at the moment, and I have to confess to being and remaining very sceptical of its value as it stands – it feels like it’s mainly hype. However, I can’t ignore it and it’s impacting on all aspects of life in higher education – from the risk of students cheating using AI, to the compliance risk of research data being put into a system where it seems people are a bit vague as to where that goes. There are more questions than answers at the moment. What I have found it useful for is helping me translate legal language into layman’s terms – we asked ChatGPT to translate some student rules into ‘language that an 18 year old would engage with’ and it did a pretty good job.
How do you support your own wellbeing and that of your team?
I have had to do a lot of learning recently about what I need to support my own wellbeing – time outside, time with friends and time alone. I’m still calibrating that at the moment.
In terms of the team, I (hope) my team feels I curate a safe space for us to bring our whole selves to work, where we talk about what’s going on in our lives, as well as what’s in our inbox. They are free to challenge me on things I say, and we have a free exchange of ideas and views on matters (legal and otherwise), which are always friendly. The university has sympathetic policies to help individuals manage their lives as well as their work, which really helps.
What’s your approach to hybrid working?
We have a dynamic model of working and my team come in driven by business need (if all their meetings are online, then they may as well be at home), but we all get together once or twice a month for team meetings and 1-2-1s. We have a daily check in and work allocation meeting online. I am in the office more than I am at home, but I value my home working days, which help me to focus and better manage my caring responsibilities.
Did you have any interesting jobs before you became a lawyer?
My favourite pre-law job was working as a student tour guide when on my undergraduate degree. I would don my red jumper and give campus and halls of residence tours to prospective students and their families. I loved it (it was better paid than my holiday job too) and it certainly helped me build my confidence around public speaking.
If you could spend an hour with anyone in the world of business, politics or entertainment, who would it be?
Billy Joel – I’m a big fan of his. When I couldn’t sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ any more times to get my baby daughter to sleep, I would sing (badly) New York State of Mind or Piano Man instead. I think he’s had a fascinating and varied career, and I particularly want to ask him about the people he encountered in staging the first rock and roll gig in the USSR in 1987. If you can find “A Matter of Trust: the bridge to Russia” on a streaming service, I’d recommend it – if you can’t, listen to the song Leningrad which partly tells the story.
What’s the most interesting or enjoyable book you’ve read in the last year?
The Life of Dad – the making of the modern father by Dr Anna Machin. I have a three-year-old girl and I haven’t always found being a parent easy. I need at least a baseline understanding of something to be able to work out how to address issues that arise and it turned out I felt ill equipped with the knowledge I had to be a parent. This book really helped by placing the modern father role in an evolutionary, historic and scientific context. I would recommend it to any prospective parents, especially those who will not be the primary carer of the newborn (not just men!).
Favourite film?
I’m a Star Wars geek – so it’s got to be Empire Strikes Back. I remember seeing them for the first time when the Special Editions were released in the late 1990s, I was hooked and my brother in law gave me his 1977 edition Millenium Falcon toy. I still have it today (don’t tell my wife, it’s hidden in the loft).
Favourite gadget?
We’ve recently bought electric recliner armchairs and while it’s accelerated my transformation into a middle aged dad, I’d never give them back.
Favourite restaurant?
I should probably shout out an independent restaurant, but I’ve never had a bad steak at a Miller and Carter!
Favourite holiday destination so far, and where next?
Before the pandemic, my wife and I had a fortnight travelling around Costa Rica – it’s quite an amazing place from both a nature and biodiversity perspective, as well as socially. We saw sloths, bats, snakes, terrifying spiders, green turtles and more. The people couldn’t have been more friendly. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants a bit of controlled adventure.
Where next, is a week in the sun in Dubai – big breakfast, swim in the morning, big lunch, afternoon of peace (thank you kids club!) by the pool and then another big meal before bed. Rinse and repeat. We’ll resume the adventures when our daughter is a bit bigger.
If money were no object and you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you most like to try or do?
I’d convert an airstream caravan to run a mobile coffee and second hand book shop and drive it round the countryside helping people in isolated parts of the country get together, combat loneliness and help build community. I think the pandemic brought people together in some respects, but it’s also made some communities more disparate. Loneliness kills and it’s more acute the older you get.
Most annoying phrase you’ve heard at work?
Let’s run it up the flag pole and see who salutes.
Just awful.
