Ep# 25 The Legal Leader: Mollie Stoker’s Transformative Career Insights

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Molly's had such an interesting and varied career and is so thoughtful about the lessons she's learned along the way that I know you'll find her reflections on career and life as well really inspiring. It's also really great for me to be able to showcase female lawyers who started out life in private practice.

But who have now moved on into the corporate and in house world in Molly's case with many very interesting and varied stops along the way. Obviously, given my background, I'm a big fan of private practice. But when I was earlier on in my career, I definitely felt like there was really no alternative, which sometimes to me felt like there was also no way out.

So that's why it's really great to have the privilege of talking to so many women who've taken very varied career paths in and around the law, including today, Molly. So Molly welcome, and thank you so much for coming in today.

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, and maybe like, what does Britvick do, but also what does your job encompass in terms of being both general counsel and company secretary on a day to day basis?

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We also happen to bottle for Pepsi. So if you think about brands like Robinson's squash or London essence, tonic waters, or Jimmy's ice coffee or tango, or our whites purdies, I mean, the list is endless. And with the Pepsi brands, you've got your Pepsi's and your Lipton's and yeah.products like that. So, we produce a broad portfolio of drinks, which we sell into hospitality, and also in the retail off trade

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Tell me, like, what's the day job like? What are you doing from day to day?

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So, which includes facility management.

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and then I sit on the executive team, so I know all the. financial like performance review meetings, and the exec meetings. I also sit on the pensions committee, the data protection committee, the ESG committee, and a number of others. I'm probably missing off some key ones there, but, it's busy.

It's varied. No one day is the same. And my role particularly is to kind of support senior management.

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and I manage, you know, a large, a very large budget for the 50 plus people in my team.

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Was it like, ah, how am I going to, I don't, I haven't been trained in that? How am I going to know? How to do that. Did you find it daunting or not? Did you just take it in your stride?

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But the good thing you learn as a general counsellor is to ask the right questions.so that really, then you learn and you stay humble and you don't anticipate that you know more than your team on those specialist topics. They are the subject matter experts. I am not, but I can lead them effectively as individuals and as, as a collective.

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So I think that's a great message for people to hear. You don't have to be the most knowledgeable person as you get more senior. You just need great people under you who are, who are giving you what you need.

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When I have big important meetings and they will update me before those to make sure I have the key facts of anything. I'm certainly not in all the detail,

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It isn't just about me, the individual.

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but probably fitting that my path to law did end up because I wanted to take care of people amusingly.and I can explain how I got there. It's probably not quite how you expect. So, I grew up in Camden Town. I was at Comprehensive Girls School, and I had a real thing about developing confident young women.

I'm not sure I like the word sassy, but that's probably a sort of appropriate, you know, know, know yourself and know your place in the world and you can do anything. And it was, had a strong emphasis actually music and arts.

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One of my oldest friends keeps laughing at me and saying, reminding me, even when you were five, you were doing more homework than everyone else.and I was that school girl who was always like, me, please, I'll put my hand up and answer the question. And that hasn't changed at all. And I was a super passionate, avid, avid reader.

I thought it's got to be something to do with books, be that, you know, editorial, publishing magazines, and even a librarian. My work experience was in the local library. And so it certainly wasn't near any sort of, I didn't even really know what the city was or what it did. So zero exposure to law as a career option.

and in fact, I did a test with a careers advisor, whose suggestion was that I become a careers advisor,

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you know, but it definitely taught me a lot of valuable, invaluable things. that I think have helped me with my legal career, like interpreting texts and people and languages and storytelling. these are all skills that have helped me later in life. So really, I think the turning point was, I finished my degree.

Absolutely no idea what am I going to do? And I. Was watching a program on domestic abuse and it really upset me and I thought I really need to do something that can help people like this. What could I do? Oh, I know law. That could be a way in. The only problem was law school costs were expensive even then.

And I wasn't sure how I was going to do that. So, so, Very fortunate that I received some crucial guidance from a friend of my mother's who was a partner in a law firm, who said, you know, you need to go to a law firm. You need to get a training contract. They will pay your law school and some living expenses.

and he introduced me to chambers and partners, which you'll remember in the old days was this big red book. It's probably all online now. and it, you know, listing out all the top law firms there and He just ticked a load of law firms and said, I think these are the ones that you should apply to Molly, which thank God he did.

Because I didn't have a clue. I mean, I thought Freshfields was a supermarket because there was a supermarket called Summerfields. If you remember, it used to exist. I really didn't know what I was doing. And, you know, somehow that ticking of that box and sending my CV and got me an interview with Slaughter and May, which is one of the top

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And, and why do you want to be a corporate lawyer, et cetera?

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And so I said, I'm very disorganized. I'm very emotional. And then I couldn't understand why I kept getting rejected. And, and luckily in the Alenovary interview, they asked me about the class system at Exeter, which I was able to talk about very eloquently, but otherwise, and I got one offer despite having good grades.

I got one offer from ANO, but thank God. So it is. I mean, obviously we don't want people to go in, you know, we want people to have some understanding of how to get into Lord nowadays, and there's a lot more, knowledge available. But yeah, I mean, we were, we were lucky we, the way it turned out.

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Like, how do you, how can we support them best? So, Really important to get all the talent you can,

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suited me and I really enjoyed it. and yeah, it's kind of led to that career at Slaughter and May where I qualified, into the court, one of the corporate teams, studying, studying, practicing, MNA and capital markets. So, yeah, it just, I found mine. My niche or the thing that, that I was good at, I kind of liked, what was it I liked about it?

Probably just, it felt quite pragmatic. A lot to do with market practice as much as the heavy law. and yeah, I was just super excited to be in this environment around some of the greatest. Minds in the legal profession that taught us about excellence in practice. It was sort of drummed into us from that first day we joined as trainees, and I feel very lucky to have done my training contract there and learned a lot.

But I then had a sort of 12 year journey in private practice in all, and the thing that probably first shifted it for me was the, having children.

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They're like, you're great. You know, you'll make partner. What are you doing? I decided, that I was struggling a bit to, to make that work with a husband who also worked full time and two boys who I had very close together. so I decided to leave private practice and a sense of fee earning and become a professional support lawyer,

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And that is why we lose often lose women in droves from the workplace because they're, they're having babies and just struggling to make it. Or work effectively and be the kind of mum they want to be.but you know, it, it taught me some great things. I became a deep technical, have deep technical expertise in corporate law.

Now, I learned about being a support or what I like to call enabling function, rather than the, the kind of key fee earners or sales team. And so it actually led quite nicely into, what was really the big, turning point for me in my career, which is, I then got approached, to apply for a role as the general counsel at this newly formed business, which was when GSK sold a Lucas Aid and Ribena drinks assets to this big, Japanese drinks company called Suntory, a global drinks company.

You'll know them from a lot of their whiskey,

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In fact, you'll never get back on, actually proved not to be the case at all.

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I might as well go and meet these people. and I, you know, as ever, I prepared effectively, I read things about what risks could, you know, arise in drinks companies. I talked to people I knew, so I guess I was ready for it. I mean, It is unusual. I know that Rosemary Martin was a, who was the general counsel, group general counsel for Vodafone until recently.

She was also a PSL for a bit, so it is not unheard of. It's

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We'd love to get you a bit more commercial. We're going to put you in a commercial role, which is becoming the director of business development for Europe, Middle East and Africa and the Caribbean, which is running the M& A agenda, but also. Yeah. You know, looking at routes to market, white spaces, et cetera, different business models, and I had a small finance team reporting into me.

God knows what they thought on day one. No, who is this lawyer? I then became the general counsel for DWF law firm when it was going through its IPO, the first and only law firm to list on the main market and since gone private. So that was a groundbreaking IPO. I then joined a CADA group during COVID, just to say we're transforming from a B2B to a B2C type of business, in a global technology business for online grocery retailers across the globe and beyond.

and now, you know, coming to Britvick, we're actually navigating a takeover at the moment. so doing that while leading multiple teams. So it's been a really busy 10, nearly 11 years in

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Talk to me about what that means or what, where am I looking on the P& L? If I'm looking at this company, and they've projected, you know, they've forecasted three years into the future. How do I pull that apart and, and understand why they've said they'll have that much revenue and, you know, et cetera.

So I just had to ask tons and tons and tons of questions.

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Yeah. But you, you were, you were like, I've got to understand this. So I'm going to ask. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that.

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They don't know half the stuff I know on other things. I don't need to lack confidence in that regard. I know I'm bright. I know I make things happen. I know I'm a good leader.I know, you know, I know I've got lots of things to work on as well, too, but I'm sort of comfortable with that. Hi, look, I just, I just need to understand this.

And I think one of my, my key ninja skills is. It's not just, you know, like, why are we doing it like that? I want to understand why and dig down and once I've understood the why, then I can explain it to anyone. Then I can go into a boardroom, then I can talk to an adversary, et cetera. But you do have to learn how to, it's not, blagging is the wrong word.

You do have to know how to be able to walk in and not know things and talk effectively. But you need to know when you need to know as well. And so you've got, I think that's the great thing about being a lawyer. You're used to digging in and why and what are the ramifications of that and who told you that?

One of my first lessons at Slaughter for May, I'll always remember this is, don't make any assumptions. What, where did that information come from? Have you checked the source? Who would know? Why did they write it like that? and I think that's sort of been a thread throughout. So it's just made me very inquisitive, but then made me more effective because, because I can grasp the idea or the thing that's being discussed.

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Like, is that always, has that always been there? Do you ever see it? Feel like you're an imposter or has that core always been there? And, and if so, you know, where, how does it, you know, where does it come from?

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Now, when I was a junior lawyer, it was scary as hell and things would come up on your desk. I haven't, I just, I don't even know where to start. I don't know what language you're talking. I don't know what it means. So it's not that I haven't had the fear, I've learned to recognize, Oh, good. It's the fear,

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And, and you build on it. My first review, year one of qualified, newly qualified lawyer. And I went in to have my end of year review. And I remember these two partners saying, so Molly, how do you think you've done? I was like, well, you know, I could have done this better and I could have done that. And I could have done this.

And they said to me, you're probably the only person we're going to say this to, but you're doing so much better than you think you are. And I realized. Stop. Okay, that's it, Molly. Don't do this anymore. Don't walk in the room and say, do the, Oh, I'm really not good at this and that. You don't need to do that to still be humble and modest and show you don't know things.

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And you're new and you don't understand. I had some embarrassing moments and where I'm like, totally out of my depth doesn't mean I didn't cringe at those or get embarrassed. It doesn't mean I still don't cringe and get embarrassed with myself from time to time. But, yeah, it's a way of kind of looking at the value of learning.

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Would you ever go back to the commercial role? Or, or are you happy in the law? Do you think? I mean, I know you do other things now as well, but are you happy as that being your core sort of area? Yeah.

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Could that be something even broader? Could it be like a COO type operational

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And then you've got to think about the corporate athlete in this long career,

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And. Some of them might be a bit good at the business development piece and suddenly they're flung into these partnership roles, which involve management, leadership, all these different things. And they haven't had to do that before. Not something you've learned. I mean, I went from PSL to a exec team member

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Like that was a big transition. but this, this first coach Sort of taught me, introduced me to the power of, for him, that was neuro linguistic. So that is how our thought patterns really shape our reality.

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He also taught me, I think, this really important thing for leadership. Or just for life, just for living a good life.

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It's, yeah, it's, it's really. So, so one of the other things I was going to ask you that we talked a little bit about when we first talked is, you know, being a woman in the senior executive roles and having, you know, a style that isn't, you know, you're definitely not abrasive and you're modest. How, you know, tell me about that.

How have you ever felt like, Oh gosh, I need to adapt my style. I need to talk more assertively. Because you, you have a very feminine energy, if you don't mind me saying that, but I wonder, has anyone ever said to you. You have a very feminine energy, you ought to change that.

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I remember speaking to her. Cohort of male partners, and I could see them just like, who is this woman?

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That is a great thing.

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I love it. and I would encourage all like female people. I, I worked with, I did have particularly, you know, male European find my voice quite difficult.

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Whereas I don't tend to do that with other people.but you know. Always useful to have, feedback, even if you don't agree with it. It's because it's subjective always, but it is useful to understand how you are coming across. It's useful for that self awareness piece. I did go and have some voice coaching, which was about how do I speak with more impact?

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And then keep building. It will, it will help you. So

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I spent then two months walking around like everyone was what's happened to Molly. I lost all of it. She's just not okay.so it's that fine balance.

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and completely sort of fiercely on something fighting your corner when you need to.

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It's what would be great to see in the workplace. But it

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I, I feel like it adds so much value.

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He was completely right because there was sort of a uniform and a way of being and you know, it didn't matter what color you were, what gender you were

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You know what's good about you. You might have other things that you need to learn, but you know, what's great about you. So I'd love you to say, what do you think your three greatest strengths are? And as Molly's doing that, everyone who's listening, I want you to think about like, what are your three greatest strengths?

Are they the same as Molly's? Are they different? You will definitely be. So don't start thinking about weaknesses. I want you to tell me three. Think about three strengths. So Molly, what are your, what do you think your three greatest strengths are?

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Because you have to, you know, sometimes you're in a difficult situation, you're in a piece of litigation, you're dealing with a difficult issue where you have to do the hard thing.

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So that's definitely number two and number three. I see. I, you know, I'm not used to doing this

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Just keep going at all costs, no matter what it does to your body. I don't know if you've ever seen that Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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You have to look after yourself in order to look after others.so I've learned how to do resilience. But in a kind of way to myself,

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And they go silent and then they spend all night beating themselves up. And then they spend a week and all weekend and then it's like three weeks later, they're still beating themselves up.

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You know, to have the support of my family, to be well fed, have a roof over my head. How lucky am I that this is my job? There is a, a different way to reflect on it when you're having a hard time. And, you know, I really think as a leader, your vibe is infectious. You set the tone, people notice. So if you're walking around now in a crisis, you don't want to pretend everything's wonderful because it's just not, but you walk calmly.

acknowledge people, et cetera. They'll feel much more like, Oh, okay. I can, I can be calmer. I, it's going to be okay. We can work through this. So super important. And, and within that as well, stop making assumptions. about anyone else. I always say to people, sorry, can you read their mind? Can you actually read their mind?

Wow, you're extraordinary because I can't.so you don't know what they're thinking. So stop making it up. And you know, the only person you can control and your response is yourself. You cannot control anyone else. The minute you try and do that, you failed. So stop trying to do it. If that person's going to get angry and shout, they're going to do that.

What you can do is control that person. response to it, you can say, okay, well, that that's feels a bit upsetting that you're talking to me like that, but you, you can't stop that happening. So I think all of those things free you up.and then that last point, which is just seeing rest as a strategic performance tool.

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The demands put on, on, on the lawyers is interesting. We know, and I hope at some point it will start seeping through into the profession. And obviously with wonderful clients like you, who say private practice lawyers don't stay up all night doing my redraft. So I've got it at nine in the morning. you need to have some rest.

Hopefully.

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So go look at that if anyone's interested, but thank you so much today for sharing your story, your advice, your learnings. It's been really wonderful to talk to you.

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