Caroline specialises in helping lawyers and their teams understand their own and others’ work styles, mindsets, and behaviours to build braver, more open work cultures.
Drawing on 15 years of coaching experience and a 10+ year career in civil litigation, Caroline helps legal professionals at all levels set measurable goals, overcome obstacles and achieve sustainable change while maintaining wellbeing.
In this interview, Caroline reflects on her transition from law to psychology, the unique leadership challenges faced by in-house lawyers and how high-pressure environments can bring out both strengths and the ‘dark side’ of personality – find out more about the upcoming webinar (Feb 2026).
She also shares insights on sustainable culture change, practical strategies for maintaining wellbeing in demanding roles and emerging trends in legal leadership development, including leveraging AI and collaborative leadership to create high-performing, resilient teams.
You had a substantial career as a Barrister before moving into psychology and leadership development - what inspired that career transition and what did you learn about yourself in the process?
Like a lot of lawyers, I was attracted by the intellectual challenge of the law, the variety, and the opportunities it offered to make a difference to people’s lives and shape the outcome of cases. However, like most people I suspect, I had very little careers support at school so had no idea how to work out whether it would be a good fit for me!
While there were many things I did enjoy about the Bar, the variety and especially the camaraderie, over time, my interests developed more and more towards exploring human nature and psychology. I was looking for greater meaning and purpose in my everyday life, so I started doing some pro bono work and volunteering, which then led to a more structured search for a career I’d find more fulfilling.
I sought out coaching from a Consultant at Cambridge University Careers Service and went through a deep process of self-reflection on my values, interests, personality, preferences, strengths and development areas which led to me qualifying as a Coach myself. I then did a lot of coaching to help people develop their leadership skills which led to me branching out into delivering Leadership Development.
From your experience in both litigation and leadership coaching, what would you say are the biggest behavioural challenges that lawyers face when stepping into leadership roles?
Most lawyers are promoted to leadership positions based on their performance as individual ‘star’ contributors, because that is what firms have chosen to place value on. In addition, most lawyers who are promoted to leadership positions are promoted because they are driven and ambitious and want to lead others.
However, lawyers who appear ‘leaderlike’ or conform to cultural norms about leadership, are often credited with being ‘good leaders,’ when in fact, their technical expertise as a lawyer, or being charismatic or assertive, has little to do with leadership ability.
When lawyers are newly promoted to leadership positions without the development to understand that being a leader is not about a job title, but the ability to inspire the people they manage to set aside their personal goals in favour of the team’s and organisation’s goals (i.e. your focus becomes your team and not yourself), their leadership behaviour can create problems.
You’ve worked across multiple sectors and cultures - do you see anything distinctive or unique about leadership in the legal profession, particularly in-house?
As members of CLL will be aware, GC’s and in-house lawyers face the ‘double jeopardy’ that is the challenge of being both Business Partner and Legal Advisor, when there is an inherent tension between the two functions: in-house legal leaders have to balance being both strategic business partners and independent legal advisors.
Unlike external law firms that serve multiple clients, they're embedded within one organisation, creating unique tensions between business objectives and legal risk management. They face a unique structural challenge in that legal training emphasises risk identification and mitigation, while business leadership often requires embracing opportunities for growth.
The in-house legal leader also has to deal with other challenges they wouldn’t experience in private practice, such as complexities around people management relating to professional identity, wellbeing challenges related to limited headcount and budget, and translating legal concepts into business strategy for multiple stakeholders with limited understanding of legal concepts.
In-house legal leaders therefore have to develop a unique hybrid skill set combining traditional legal expertise with business acumen, change management capabilities, and exceptional emotional intelligence to navigate the complex dual loyalties and expectations inherent in their roles!
Your MSc thesis explored the ‘dark side’ of personality - how do these traits emerge in high-pressure environments like law and what are the implications for teams and clients?
As you’d expect, our personality has an impact on our performance at work, though perhaps not to the extent you might think. The personality psychologist Robert Hogan contends that for leaders to be ‘effective,’ they need to possess certain positive characteristics, and the absence of what he refers to as ‘dark side’ characteristics.
These are behavioural tendencies that emerge when people are stressed, distracted or unconcerned with the impression they’re making, and can be associated with ‘ineffective’ leadership, with detrimental consequences for their teams and organisations in the long-term.
We now know that personality traits do change e.g. under stress, and in different situations such as promotion to leadership roles, and that context or situation can also play a significant part in whether leaders display ‘dark side’ behaviours, and so they emerge in high-pressure environments like law because of the high stakes work lawyers undertake: pressure from external clients or senior internal stakeholders, billable hours targets or KPIs, limited headcount and budget, and sometimes people’s lives and liberty of course, often increase the pressure and stress faced by in-house lawyers face at times.
There is a substantial body of evidence that there is a great deal of ‘ineffective’ leadership in organisations (>50%). The implications of this for teams and clients is that poor organisational leadership leads to reduced job satisfaction and engagement, work performance and productivity, and reduced wellbeing which then impacts an organisation’s ability to retain its staff. The costs of this are significant for highly skilled staff like in-house lawyers and really impact the ‘bottom line’.
You’ve contributed to projects involving leadership frameworks, stakeholder buy-in and organisational change. From your perspective, what does sustainable culture change look like in legal teams?
I’m optimistic about the changes to legal workplace culture I’ve seen taking place across the sector in recent years, championed by the SRA and other regulators, and organisations such as the Mindful Business Charter (a UK association of leading law firms and banks) amongst others. They have advanced a strong regulatory, ethical and business case for culture change, and it feels like we are at a ‘tipping’ point in terms of the future of the legal profession whereby organisations and professionals are ‘taking the long view’ when it comes to sustainable work culture.
I think law firms and other organisations are increasingly recognising that pushing legal teams towards burnout is not a sustainable way to achieve or maintain competitive advantage in the market: companies need to recruit and retain the best people to achieve this, which means giving people the opportunity to recharge and ‘sharpen the saw’ so to speak, in between periods of intense work.
Advances in medical care mean we are all living longer and healthier lives; changing demographics and economic conditions mean that we will all need to work into our late 60s going forward; and changing societal mores mean that every generation is more aware of and places more value on their mental health and wellbeing at work than in the past. The best employers are responding to these changes already, for example providing wellbeing interventions, counselling, coaching and mentoring etc. for their staff.
You’ve mentioned the impact of stress and long hours in your own legal career. What advice would you offer current in-house lawyers trying to maintain wellbeing while meeting commercial demands?
Take time or get help to work out what you want out of your life and career – it will save you a lot of angst and unhappiness in the long run! You may well need to do this at several stages throughout your life as what we want changes significantly throughout the different life stages.
Find the right ‘environmental fit’ between you and your employer: a mismatch will lead to disappointment both ways so treat the recruitment process as a two-way process whereby you are also assessing whether an organisation is a good fit for you.
There is good evidence from the fields of clinical and ‘positive psychology’ that skilled interventions can reduce work anxiety, increase your resilience to work-related stress, and help you achieve work-life balance. The usual recommendations about eating well, regular exercise, good sleep practices, and (fairly ruthlessly!) managing your time and priorities are always a good start.
What trends are you seeing in leadership development that you think in-house legal teams can benefit from?
The trends I see impacting in-house legal leadership development include:
Continuing to focus on building a hybrid skillset combining legal expertise with business leadership capabilities: leadership development aligned with current legal-business challenges doesn’t require an MBA – it can be fitted into your busy legal schedule using micro-learning/ bite-size length sessions.
Horizon scanning to ensure you can anticipate what’s happening ‘around the corner’ (in terms of PESTLE factors) and proactively ‘act on’ rather than ‘react to’ them; that you are highly adaptable to the current environment of constant change, particularly in the use of AI and changing client expectations; and finally, to practice using decision-making frameworks you can use in uncertain and time-pressured situations.
Work on developing a Collaborative Leadership style with your team, which helps create an environment of trust and psychological safety; companies are looking for leaders who treat team wellbeing as a priority at the same time as maintaining high performance standards.
If you could embed just one mindset shift into legal leadership culture today, what would it be and why?
This is an entirely personal opinion but I think the adoption of AI represents a real opportunity to reduce the cognitive load and extreme long hours culture for future generations of lawyers, whilst growing the role to become one that is more of trusted strategic advisor to business - something more akin to the role that Strategy Consulting firms have played in recent years (though I’m aware they’re not known for their short working hours!).
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I do ‘practice what I preach’ so I’m really interested in fitness and wellbeing: I love to be outdoors on my daily long walk and do longer hikes in beautiful places at weekends and on holiday.
I play pickleball with a club twice a week which is faster and more furious than I’d expected but also a lot of fun! During the winter months, I go to the theatre a lot, and I also run a Book Club which means I get to read lots of books I might not otherwise choose for myself.
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