How did you get qualified and get to where you are now?

I don’t really know how I got here! My mum was a housewife and my dad was self-employed.  I worked hard to get a good education and build up my knowledge. I completed my legal exams over 4 years, whilst in full time employment.  Once I had passed all of my exams I was admitted as a Member of the Institute of Legal Executives and after a further 2 years qualifying employment, I became a Fellow of the Institute.

My professional qualification is something that I am proud of not just because the course is quite intense but also because I studied whist in full time employment and with two young children.  I actually gave birth to my youngest child in the third year of my course!  It wasn’t easy but I was motivated and made it work. I was lucky to have the support of my husband and family.

What has been your biggest professional challenge?

I got made redundant twice during the economic crash of 2007 when the bottom of the property market just fell out overnight. A lot of my colleagues at that time went into alternative industries but I wanted to stay in law and managed to secure a position within a different firm each time.   Redundancy is a difficult thing to understand if you haven’t experienced it and both times it happened to me were probably the most difficult times I have experienced on a professional level.  What redundancy did teach me though was never to take things for granted and to grab every opportunity with both hands.

How did Dee & Griffin support you?

I have had a really positive experience here at Dee & Griffin. I was given the freedom to run the Quedgeley office the way I wanted to. It is not a firm stuck in its ways, everyone is open to taking on new ideas and implementing better ways of approaching things.  The staff at Dee & Griffin are supported and encouraged by the Partners to obtain professional qualifications which allows the individual teams to be better placed to support each other. There are consistently positive impacts all around us. Dee & Griffin are certainly a forward-thinking organisation but what I like most about the firm is we are all local people who want to give something back and the work we do within the local community demonstrates that.

You can contact Leah in our Quedgeley office by calling 01452 724343 or by email at info@deeandgriffin.co.uk.