• Executive coaching for lawyers

• Career coaching for lawyers

• Therapeutic & Stress coaching for lawyers

• Reflective supervision for lawyers

• Business mentoring for small law firms & sole practitioners

• Workhops & Training for law firms & chambers

Helping lawyers reach their true potential, de-stress, expand resilience & love their work

I have a special affinity for coaching lawyers, being one myself.  It’s an unusual mix, but I love it. 

As an experienced lawyer in practice since 1996 (first a barrister, then a solicitor), I deeply understand the particular mix of training, ways of thinking, professionalism and culture of the UK’s legal sector that we work in as lawyers.  It’s an environment that’s difficult to fully understand if you’ve not grown up in it. 

I’ve worked at the Bar, and then as a Solicitor in the City, in national and regional law firms, in-house and since 2009 running my own specialist law firm. So I’ve been around the block many times, and can offer a wide experience of what legal practice is like in many different settings.

So if you’re a lawyer who’s doing coaching work with me, there’s therefore lots that you won’t need to explain to me, because I already get it…  the culture of chambers and law firms; the highs and the lows of legal practice; the professional pride and the sometimes blinkered approach to how to practice; the need for clarity and precision while trying to be creative and still enjoy the work; the all-or-nothing nature of litigation; trying to contain the hopes and fears of your clients; the constant struggle for some form of work/life balance. 

I coach a wide variety of lawyers in different parts of the profession, including barristers, equity partners, heads of department, associates, sole practitioners and in-house counsel. Using video call, I work with lawyers in London and across the UK. For their feedback on how I’ve helped them, see the testimonials below.

My coaching with lawyers covers a range of topics and needs, including performance, promotion, career changes and leaving/re-entering the legal profession.

Increasingly, I am being hired by both law firms and individual lawyers to work in a partially therapeutic way, focussing on stress and the need to set healthier boundaries. Here my counselling, stress management and ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) training is very helpful, although it remains coaching.

* Please note that I do not offer career advice to law students or trainees *

“You have helped me enormously in being able to cope much, much better in this high-pressure environment.

I’ve learned that the very high expectations and demands upon me from the firm and clients are not only matched but often exceeded by the even higher expectations and demands I place on myself!

You’ve allowed me to make sense of all this stuff and then develop strategies for existing within it in a more healthy way.”

Senior Associate, magic circle firm, London

What’s your big question?

I find that many lawyer clients come to me for individual coaching because they have one or two big questions on their mind.  They may not even know what their big question is, but they have a nagging feeling that there is one.  These are what come up again and again as my clients’ big questions:

• How can I manage this enormous workload better?

• Is it going to carry on being as stressful as this for the rest of my career?

• How can I manage my team better?

• Can I learn to enjoy and succeed at business development?

• I’m worried I might reach burn-out - what can I do?

• How can I make myself stop working in the evenings and at weekends?

• Is this stuffy, old-fashioned, risk-averse approach the only way to practice law?

• How can I spend enough time with my family?

• I fear my health is suffering from the pressure and long hours - but what can I do?

• How can I deal better with my clients’ demands, anxieties, anger, etc.?

• I hate the aggressiveness of litigation - what can I do about it?

• Do I move firm or chambers? Do I move in-house?

• Do I start my own law firm?

• Is this career what I really, honestly want at this point in my life?

Do any of these resonate with you?  What’s your big question at the moment?

“Luke, you’ve provided me with exactly what I needed to make some important decisions about work versus family time. It’s so easy to put these things off or pretend you can ‘just about get by’, but I wish I’d done this work with you years ago.”

Criminal law QC, London

What I can do for you

If you work with me, I will help you to:

• make decisive, well-informed choices about your career and practice - choices that fit with your values and play to your strengths

• manage and reduce the stress and pressure of your work, allowing you to enjoy your career more healthily and more sustainably

• bring more of a sense of fulfilment and balance to your career and life in general

• understand your mind/mental wiring better, including both your particular strengths and the things you find difficult

• identify any neurodiversity issues for yourself or those around you that might be helpful to explore

• develop greater self-awareness of how you react to the challenges of life and work - and how to take better steps to make things easier for yourself

• improve your capacity to make conscious, better decisions on a daily basis through greater self-reflection and insight

• plan and develop your practice - whether you’re self-employed or in a large firm

• look after yourself more, by putting better boundaries in place

• take proper, powerful control of your career and life in general

• improve your professional relationships

• improve your client relationships and cope better with their demands and their emotions

• improve your personal relationships

• improve your attitude and approach to Business Development, and enjoy it more (yes, really!)

• develop a more powerful competitive edge, without alienating colleagues

• fast-track yourself to a more mature, wise and filfilled version of you

To achieve these results you will need to allow yourself to be open-minded and curious, give yourself permission to explore and try out new ways of looking at things, and have the courage to change certain attitudes and habits.

“Working with Luke has really helped me identify where I should be placing my efforts, in order to be a happier and more effective lawyer.  His sessions are practical and enjoyable.  Would recommend.” 

Head of Law, public regulatory body    

What sets me apart

If you’re a lawyer looking for a coach, I can offer you a quite unique set of experiences and levels of understanding that will help us create together some really outstanding coaching outcomes for you.

What I believe sets me apart from other coaches in the legal sector are these special features:

• Current knowledge, from the coal face: I am still very much in practice as a lawyer, running a thriving specialist law firm. Every day I continue to working on improving my own approach to my practice and to developing the advice and ideas I will share with you.  

• Significant legal career achievements: I have been highly successful in my legal career, gaining a prestigious national award and finding deep satisfaction and reward, mentally and financially, from my work. 

• Wide-ranging legal sector experience: I have worked as a Barrister in chambers, then as a Solicitor in a City firm, in regional firms, as an in-house lawyer and now as CEO of my own law firm. As a coach, I’m regularly hired by City, international, national and regional UK law firms to support their lawyers and other senior staff.

• Entrepreneurial and leadership skills: I have a strong business head and know what it takes to establish and run a highly successful legal practice.  In 2009 I set up my own firm and had it top-ranked in both Chambers and Legal 500 within 4 years, where it remains to this day.

• Extensive thought and analysis: I’ve spent a lot of time analysing the challenges of being a practising lawyer and working out how to successfully overcome them to achieve a successful, happy working life. And I’m constantly learning and training in relevent knowledge and skills. All this I would love to share with you.

• Psychological & therapeutic understanding: I bring understanding and acceptance of stress and anxiety, mental health issues . I have had a wide range of training, including counselling, psychotherapy techniques and stress-management skills, which all help me find an approach that works best for you.

• Neurodivserity specialist: I bring to my coaching an extensive understanding of neurodiversity issues and how they feature in the workplace. I am experienced in one-to-one coaching with neurodivergent lawyers. I also provide neurodiversity awareness training for legal sector teams.

“As a result of our work together, I am much more clear-headed, hopeful and so much better equipped to do things than before. I feel like a different person to be around. I feel I have a lot more choices now”

Partner, London law firm

‘Do I need coaching or therapy?’

Ultimately this has to be a question for you, but the reason I’ve raised it here is that I’m increasingly coaching lawyers who are very stressed, or falling out of love with their work, or feeling really mentally/emotionally ‘stuck’ or experiencing something similar.

To be honest, these things can often be usefully worked on with either a therapist or a psychological coach like me. Each of us would probably take a fairly similar approach to many of your issues.

The main differences would be that, as a coach, I focus more on the ‘here and now’ and how you can usefully change today, tomorrow and next week, rather than focussing on your past and how it contributes towards your thinking, feeling and behaviour. Therapy goes deeper, while I go more into ‘action’ and helping you plan new ways of thinking and dealing with what’s on your plate in the coming days.

But while I’m clear that I provide coaching not therapy, the reality is that my appoach does tend to have therapeutic benefits. And I understand neurodivergence. (You also get the benefit of me being an experienced lawyer who doesn’t need the legal profession explaining to him.)

Please also see my statement on mental health.

Other services for the Legal community

I have a life-long commitment to helping lawyers and the legal profession to find ways to live and practice law in more psychologically flexible, less stressed ways, with greater self-awareness, emotional regulation and healthier professional and work/life boundaries.

As well as the one-to-one coaching mentioned above, I also offer lawyers, law firms and chambers the following:

Reflective supervision

I provide reflective supervision to a range of lawyers who work in areas of law that particularly benefit from this type of support.

Workshops & Training

I deliver workshops and training sessions to a variety of legal organisations on psychological flexibility and mental fitness, emotional intelligence, stress management, neurodiversity and coping with challenging clients.

Conflict resolution

Using my training in relationship coaching and therapeutic approaches, I provide mediation for disputes in the workplace. My style of approach is particularly effective when the dispute is a particularly emotive one, where those involved may be very sensitive and may perhaps be stuck in their focus on a past sense on injustice or where their relationship with one or more colleagues is breaking down but needs to repaired for the sake of the organisation as well as those involved themselves.

“As a Sole Practitioner I greatly appreciated Luke’s help and the benefit of his experience and gentle guidance as I made significant decisions about my practice.  I can strongly recommend him as a coach and mentor for lawyers in general and SP’s in particular.”

Stephanie Pritchett, Solicitor

Pritchetts Law LLP

From ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’

Many lawyers would say they enjoy, even love, their legal work in theory, but the trouble is that we are under so many demands on our time and so many distractions that we often end up making countless compromises and just ‘get by’ week to week, rather than flourishing to anything like our true potential. This is not how we imagined it would be when we started law school!

I believe I have a great deal to offer you in terms of helping you discover how to reshape your approach and attitude to the various aspects of your work so that it can become pleasurable and fulfilling, rather than a drag. Together, we can plan a path towards you creating a deeply satisfying way of working - a way that is sustainable, suited to you and enjoyable every day. Back to the dream you had in law school.

Legal life is not a stroll in the park

I’ve spent years studying the work of lawyers: the challenges, the stresses, the ups and downs, the good and the bad, and the impact on us psychologically of handling often very difficult issues for impatient, angry, distressed, frustrated, pushy, obsessed, rude, anxious or needy clients, where the outcome could have a major impact on their lives and their financial security.

In most types of legal work, it is not for the faint-hearted. Certain areas of law require us to try to help distressed and needy clients, such as family, personal injury, clinical negligence, criminal, employment and immigration law (to name just a few). Other areas have the pressure of huge sums of money and commercial implications riding on them. Litigation’s adversarial aggression and ‘zero-sum game’ approach can eat away at your soul.

Yet, as a profession, we have none of the professional training and support mechanisms to help us deal with this level of psychological impact on us that some other professions provide to their staff. The culture in law tends to be that we must be strong, stoical and shrug off the emotional aspects as ‘not our business’.

I believe this approach to be both wrong and harmful to us. We are not machines. I can help you be fully aware of these aspects and able to confidentially, thoughtfully manage them to the benefit of you and those around you.

“Thank you for all your help and insight over the last few weeks. I’ve found the sessions both interesting and valuable, and learned a lot about myself.  What I found particularly revealing was that the coaching drew me in a different direction to my initial expectation.”

Equity partner, national law firm

Find out more

For more information on how I work and the investment required, see My Coaching Approach.

I offer a free chemistry session which allows us to see if I could be of help to you and whether we’d work well together. Contact me here to book one.  

More about me

I enjoy collaborating with Bristol Law Society in webinars and panel discussions on various aspects of coaching and the life of lawyers - you can find these sessions on my Blog.

I was pleased to collaborate with Leading Minds in delivering our joint programme, The Emotionally Intelligent Lawyer, to London law firms.

I also work as an Associate with Coaching Advocates, an international community of like-minded professional lawyer-coaches dedicated to helping organisations and individuals through coaching, consulting, facilitation and training. I can strongly recommend Coaching Adovcates’ Modern Lawyer Program, which is is designed to help you think differently, increase your communication and relationship building skills, overcome resistance to change and become a better leader in the legal profession.

(Please note that I am not associated with Donna McGrath or The Lawyers’ Coach Ltd.)

Hear me talk

In this interview with Leading Minds, I talk about how I bring my experiences as a lawyer to my coaching work with lawyers.

What my clients say…