A Q&A with Heather Gagen

Its diversity – genuinely no two days are the same. The role is a pretty amazing proposition, and probably fairly unique to a law firm structure. That’s because it involves not only responsibility for running a large and successful business, but also continuing in my chosen area of professional specialism as a disputes lawyer. So my days are very varied – advising clients on the most difficult and complex issues facing their business and working closely with specialists all across the firm to do so, while also ensuring that our business is healthy and growing.  Alongside all of that, I am a key point of contact and pastoral support for the many people who work in this team. I never quite know which of these different facets of my job will be top of my in-tray on any given day – and sometimes it’s all of them. That can be very demanding, but it also means this is by far and away the most professionally interesting time of my life so far, and I get to be in business with people I respect and admire hugely, working for the biggest clients out there. Not many people can say that their job gives them all of those opportunities. I feel very lucky that I was able to do this role at this stage in my career, when I feel like I have a huge amount of energy and hunger to drive our business forward and to enjoy the professional stretch it brings.

We will remain one of the few very top disputes practices in the City, lean and efficient and being highly successful for our clients. I have every confidence that the matters we act on will continue to be for world-class clients and be headline-making in their scale and commercial importance. To achieve those objectives, we will maintain our strategy of sustainable and organic growth, built on the hard work of a close-knit team of very bright people – who all ultimately do this job, despite its challenges and demands, because they love the buzz of dealing with the most difficult cases and investigations out there.

What is the best bit of the job?  And my answer would be, unhesitatingly, that it’s a lot of fun: definitely stressful and challenging at times, but I don’t have a day when someone hasn’t made me laugh and when I don’t feel that I’ve learned something. This is really important to me – I have a young son at home and a lovely husband, so being away from them at work can be hard sometimes. It most certainly wouldn’t be worth it if I didn’t get to work with kind and clever people and feel like I am thriving as a person in doing my job. 

Obviously the other really eccentric, but to my mind fabulous, thing about this job is that at Travers Smith, for some reason that has never been explained to me, we keep our healthy and not so healthy snacks in filing cabinets in the kitchens – so my craving for a KitKat and a cup of tea can be met at any time if I ferret around in a drawer. Hard to ask for more than that at work!