Amy Bell, Solicitor, CEO and Founder of Teal Compliance and AML Sorted.
I lasted eight years as a fee earner.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t just the job that led to my first major episode of depression. But do read on to hear about my personal dive into depression as a Solicitor and the “fee earning” jungle that changed everything in my career.
Amy Bell in Childhood
I had a difficult childhood, not the worst, but far from ideal. Couple that trauma with my undiagnosed neurodivergence (ND), my divorce, and having a bipolar parent who I had to care for.
I was living with a series of emotionally abusive authority figures that left me with a “try hard” attitude, and just trying to make people happy.
Amy Bell as a Fee Earner in a Law Firm
Everything from our childhoods mould us. We don’t know any different. So all the above made me an ideal team member, because I wanted to please and make people happy. I said “yes I’ll do that”, “yes, give that matter to me”, “yes, I’ll take that on” and so it goes on.
….. Until I was handling twice as many cases as anyone else.
All I wanted was to get to partner level, and every year I was a fee earner the bar got pushed further and further.
Whilst in my 1st year as a PQE I could see that 3rd year PQEs were being made up to partner level. I could see that my hard work would pay off in three years.
But by my 10th year, the firm had stretched out those promotion levels to between 10 and 12 years PQE (after a stint in associate and senior associate)! Partner status seemed against me.
It was dog eat dog, political back stabbing each other to get to the front of the “pick me” pack.
Nobody dared mess up, the pressure was immense.
The Realisation
That pressure? I dropped the ball. And I dropped it badly.
I begged the GP not to sign me off. I was scared of being busted for the files I was stuck on, that they’d see I wasn’t good enough. Yes, the classic case of “imposter syndrome”.
For five months I was broken.
What “Broken” looks like
After five months I was out of credit on every credit card, so it was my Dad who was paying my bills after I’d stopped being paid after four weeks.
I wasn’t ready mentally to go back to work, but back to work I did. I couldn’t afford not to.
But I couldn’t do it anymore.
I couldn’t pretend the system wasn’t broken, I couldn’t sit back and watch my friends when they came to tell me they couldn’t handle the pressure either and they wish they were as brave as me to stand up and ask for help.
I didn’t think there was anything brave about it, I didn’t have any choice, after all, my boss had threatened to have security remove me if I didn’t go home when I was signed off (she was just trying to help me, I know).
I tried my best to make it bearable, got an informal file swap going with my mate Claire (a great friend to this day). We’d swap each other’s hard files to stop them being a problem.
I set up meetings with peers once a month for everyone to come along with their tricky files so we could workshop the answer.
My inner drive to chase that partner status had gone. It was over, I thought my life in law was over.
I took the job in the Compliance Department just to escape the feeling of being a failure in the personal injury team.
I needed a job, and they needed someone to do training, so I took it and said goodbye to my ladder climbing.
From Fee Earning to a Love of Compliance
I was going to leave the law altogether.
I started Amy Bell Events and built a portfolio of wedding and event planning. I even had an event when I was rushed into hospital when I was having my daughter, Charlie.
But parenthood doesn’t mix well with the wedding season, so I stuck it out in law!
I started to learn about management models, about culture, about the safeguards which should be in place to protect the lawyers as well as the clients.
That drive to make a difference had returned.
And the rest as they say is history!
I loved my job as a fee earning solicitor in the early days, until it began to haunt me.
I realised how badly equipped I was but also how vulnerable the industry is if we don’t make sure we look after our people.
I’m not blaming the firm or the industry for what happened to me, we were then (20 years ago) miles behind in understanding the impact on people of dysfunctional work environments.
And now we know better and many places are doing better.
But I will tell you, if I shout out to my network and say “are you struggling with stress at work, book in for a chat” I can promise you my diary would be full pretty quickly (I know because I’ve done it!).
The Legal Profession and Mental Health
We’ve all got to do better to look out for each other. Because we can’t keep losing talented people from the law because they don’t feel safe, because risks aren’t managed, because they are exposed.
As mental health awareness week draws to a close, and I look at all the great stuff Team Teal has posted this week in our Teal Wellness channel, I’m so proud to see how openly we talk about mental health.
My brother started a campaign in his industry (advertising and marketing) to have one mental health first aider trained for every 10 employees. I’d love to see that campaign gather some pace in legal, because I really do believe we need to support our people before they crash.
