Spotlight: RedLaw interviews... Catherine Adam, Partner, K&L Gates LLP

To mark International Women's Day (IWD) on the 8th March, RedLaw has caught up with a number of leading female professionals within law to learn about their personal and professional stories.

The first in our series of interviews this month is with Catherine Adam, a partner in K&L Gates London office, who specialises in commercial contracts with a particular focus on clients in the retail, fashion and leisure sectors.

Named in the Legal 500 as a next generation partner, we discuss her rise in the industry, best advice for hungry legal professionals and, as a leader of the Firm's IWD London events for 2020, we talk about K&L Gates' newly formed Pledge initiative to encourage people to encourage, support, and embrace diversity and inclusion.



Catherine, you have been with K&L Gates LLP for almost 4 years and made partner in under two years of joining the firm. Take us through your entry route and your rise to your current position. As a ‘young’ partner, what have been the main barriers or bias, if any, you have had to overcome?

I trained at Linklaters starting in 2005 and completed my training with a final seat in the Milan office. I qualified into the Asset Finance practice and spent the next 2.5 years working with aircraft. Although I enjoyed it, I realised that, ultimately, I really wanted to work more closely with my clients commercially, working on matters that were part of their day to day business in a more hands on way. So, at 2.5 years PQE I moved from Asset Finance to TMT - not the most obvious of moves!

In making that transition, I realised there are two elements to developing as a solicitor: (1) developing experience and expertise in a specific practice area (on which I had basically just reset the clock) and; (2) understanding my role as a lawyer and focusing on becoming a trusted advisor to my clients (which I had effectively started to develop since starting my training contract).

After a further 2.5 years at Linklaters as a commercial lawyer in the TMT team, I made the move to Olswang in September 2012 which gave me access to a totally different client base, much more in line with my personal interests. It was somewhere I felt I could build a practice, leveraging my genuine interest in and knowledge of my clients’ industry and where, as a result, I could really start adding value to my clients. I identified fashion, retail and leisure as my chosen sectors of interest.

Ultimately, the firm (or maybe the timing of the firm) wasn’t the right place for me to continue and I moved to K&L Gates in July 2016.

I came in as Special Counsel and was given the opportunity to develop a commercial practice focusing on the client base I had already started working with. I brought over some clients and starting building relationships with new ones and was given encouragement and the infrastructure to do so.

I am lucky in that I wouldn’t say I have had to overcome any particular barriers or bias as a female partner but I have had to develop feeling more comfortable self-promoting and asking for career progression; not just assuming that my work and commitment would speak for itself. So I applied to become a Partner at the end of 2017 (arguably a short time after joining K&L Gates) as I felt that I had a good business case and a clear view of where that was going and what I could do with it. After going through the business plan process and internal review of its and my “merits”, I was thankfully promoted first time around.

Why did you become a lawyer?

I am the first to be surprised that I am actually a partner in a law firm. I never wanted to be a lawyer despite studying law and business studies at university! I grew up in Belgium and the approach to university there is to study a ‘sensible’ degree so when I was looking for what to study in the UK that was my approach. I was looking through a book entitled “Your degree in the UK” and landed on the law and business studies page and thought “why not?”, that would definitely give me a strong foundation regardless of what I end up doing.

I graduated in 2001, and was keen to go into advertising or branding but due to the dot.com bubble bursting there weren’t any suitable opportunities and, just to get started, I took a job in education recruitment thinking it would be short term and a way of adding customer facing work experience to my CV. In doing that job, I realised I really enjoyed being the middle person, the facilitator, putting the right people together but that I also needed something a bit more challenging. So I reached the conclusion that I should be a solicitor after all - where I continue to enjoy being the middle person and helping facilitate matters and at times complex situations for my clients.

You have been named in the Legal 500 as a next generation partner. What one piece of advice or tips would you give to young professionals hungry for success?

In this job, I think the key is to understand your role and know how you can add value. A client will want you by their side if they know they can trust you and that you are dedicated to helping them find the best solutions to further their commercial ambitions. Also, just be yourself.

Ultimately, you also have to be in control of your destiny - it’s not anybody else’s job to ensure you succeed.

Although I don’t feel that gender has ever been an obstacle to me, I think women can often lack or feel uncomfortable about self-promotion. I used to assume that if you worked hard, people would do the right thing by you. But that isn’t always the case. You do have to go that extra step, put yourself forward if that’s what you want. I think that’s the same for everyone, male or female but maybe it comes more naturally to men.

You are on the Women In the Profession and D&I committee. You are also leading the organisation of K&L Gates IWD events in London for 2020. Are you able to reveal some of the activities planned and what the firm is aiming to achieve both here in London and globally?

This year’s IWD 2020 theme is #EachforEqual with the premise that every individual can help to create a gender-equal world.

We are celebrating this event globally by hosting events in the same week in many of our offices across the network. On 11^th March we are coordinating a panel event in London of industry leaders (of both sexes) who have spent much time giving back and promoting equality throughout their careers.

The focus is not on their individual successes as such; we wanted to move away from highlighting ‘superheros’ which can sometimes be intimidating and lead us to wonder whether it is possible to achieve. Instead, it’s about promoting behavioural change and inclusivity, doing things to support others in their everyday lives and in the workplace.

We have set up a Pledge initiative and are encouraging people to make a pledge to encourage, support, and embrace diversity and inclusion. To this end, we have created pledge forms that can be used to record initiatives, goals, or positive changes people plan to make in their workplace. K&L Gates International Womens Day

Name three things that most people may not know about your firm.

Technology is in our roots, for example our history links back to one of the most prominent names in technology. The Gates in K&L Gates comes from William H. Gates, Sr (the father of Bill Gates) who began his career in private practice in 1951.

In September 2014, K&L Gates Pro Bono team founded the "Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project". The project involves more than fifty K&L lawyers, paralegals, and electronic forensics professionals working pro bono to filter through and respond to 1,000 claims of "revenge porn" every year and, as noted in a profile of the project by the New York Times, is believed to be first of its kind at a major United States law firm. Among the results the project has helped obtain have been an $8.9 million jury award for a Seattle area couple, one of the largest awards for non-celebrity targets of "revenge porn" to date; a $6.45 million judgement for a California plaintiff for various claims including copyright infringement and online impersonation with intent to harm; and several arrests.

Myself along with a couple of other female partners, set up a twinning programme, “Office Connect”, so our 1,800 colleagues can get to know each other across the global network of over 40 offices. Employee questionnaires were sent out to an initial “pilot” selection of offices and colleagues have been paired up from different countries regardless of the stage in their career but instead according to similar interests, travel or bucket lists, etc. I have been paired with an Associate in our Chicago office and look forward to getting to know her better and finding out about Chicago.

If you had to pick one thing, book you've read or experience that's changed the course of your life, what would it be?

Talking to a stranger in Wagamama has to be my real “sliding doors moment”. I had just secured my training contract with Linklaters and was celebrating with a friend over lunch. At one point a man sat down beside me and put his coat between us. I saw something out of the corner of my eye so glanced down to see what he was doing and he said he hoped I didn’t mind him putting his coat there. I looked at him and cheekily replied “Actually, I feel more comfortable having something between us as my mother always taught me never to sit next to strangers”. He looked a bit surprised and shocked that I would call him strange so I clarified I hadn’t called him strange but instead “strange to me”. So he proceeded to introduce himself and the friend he was with, we started chatting and by the end of lunch I had a job!

He was setting up a music company round the corner from where I lived and was always looking for extra hands. So I ended up working for the company on and off during my postgraduate studies supporting the start-up business and getting to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things I wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to do. It was an amazing week - I had my “sensible career” lined up thanks to my training contract and now I got to be involved in the music industry too! It was a wonderful colourful experience and am lucky to have made some life-long friends in the process.