Blog
Blackpool Rock
Blackpool Rock When I was a kid, our parents used to take us to Blackpool for days out. We’d always look forward to a stick of rock. Sure, it welded your teeth together but, hey, why let a nasty case of jaw lock stop you from indulging in a sugar high that could take...
Why don’t you just calm down?
"Why don't you just calm down?" Has anyone ever said this to you? Annoying, isn't it? Taylor Swift even sang it in her song "You need to calm down" (I'm pretty sure she was being ironic...) There's a reason why telling someone who's upset to calm down is completely...
Associates: building the foundation for your legal career
By Adam Carvalho – Coach at the Carvalho Consultancy and former partner at Farrer & Co. You’ve made it through law school and the training contract and suddenly you’re feeling that the real work begins and the training wheels have come off! Being an associate can...
What Support do I need?
By Adam Carvalho I am often asked by people who are looking for some sort of support what, exactly, they need. I am an accredited business and career coach, and a foundational therapist. At the Carvalho Consultancy, we provide psychotherapy, counselling, different...
I feel stuck in my legal job – how can I have the career that I want?
I see it a lot. Clients saying they are enjoying their career less and less – perhaps considering a change of firm or career but not sure that this will really help. It starts to have a detrimental effect on life. I think most lawyers do want to make the legal career...
10 Ways To Stop Chargeable Time Keeping You Up At Night
Chargeable time is something that, perhaps unsurprisingly, plays on every lawyer’s mind at some point during their career and an issue that we tackle frequently with clients at the Carvalho Consultancy. As former private practice lawyers ourselves, we now work helping...
Partnership in the 2020s
At the Carvalho Consultancy, our mission is to support lawyers who want to enjoy and thrive in their careers and lives. In the last 12 months, we have seen a high number of junior partners who are increasingly questioning how they can bring their own personalities and...
SENIOR ASSOCIATES: tackling common issues and taking control of your career
By Adam Carvalho – Career Coach at the Carvalho Consultancy and former partner at Farrer & Co. Senior Associate is an unusual role. You are in a hybrid position – you might not have official responsibility for cases and management, but you may well in reality have...
6 ways to regain control of “Toxic Productivity”
By Adam Carvalho – Career Coach at the Carvalho Consultancy and former partner at Farrer & Co Our aim at the Carvalho Consultancy is to support lawyers in enjoying and thriving in their careers and lives. This can involve helping clients to rethink how they view...
Motivational Interviewing – the next frontier for family lawyers?
Annmarie Carvalho is a therapist and trainer (and non-practising solicitor and mediator) and director of The Carvalho Consultancy. What on earth is Motivational Interviewing (or MI), I hear you cry? Is it some sort of technique where you ‘gee’ people up, like...
Taking the F-you out of divorce
Last month was an exciting one for family lawyers as the long-awaited introduction of no-fault divorce became law. There’s no doubt this is a big step forward for a system that was bizarrely antiquated in insisting that people still provided reasons for why...
The reality of pregnancy…
I’m having a ‘miracle pregnancy’. But this is why I’d never tell people to believe in miracles. Many, many individuals and couples go through fertility problems. It’s a situation that is at the same time both incredibly common and incredibly isolating. Suddenly,...
6 Top tips for great appraisals
Do you dread appraisal time? Tend to find them a demoralising experience? Or are you often the one conducting the appraisals? Find it hard to know how to deliver them well? Read on here for our three top tips on how to be a good appraiser…and a good appraisee… Tips...
Should there be a movement for family law becoming more therapeutic?
Family lawyers? Or Family Solutions Advisors? When is a family lawyer not a lawyer? When they’re a coach, counsellor, emotional support, psychologist and spend their lives trying to find magic solutions to intractable and complicated emotional and familial issues…....
What is love?
What is love? (“baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more”) Thank you to Haddaway for making it impossible to say those words without segueing into that 90s pop classic. Valentine’s Day is coming up next week. It’s a day associated with hearts, flowers and grand...
Supporting those who support us
With all our talk about wellbeing in the legal profession, what’s the glaring gap? What are we not talking about? Well, who do we mean when we talk about the ‘legal profession’? Is it just lawyers or do we include secretaries, PA’s, IT staff, front of house and...
What are you worrying about? Anxiety in a pandemic and why it’s better to be an open water swimmer than a hurdler
We’re all worrying about something, aren’t we? There’s always something that’s outside of our control. It’s a big old world out there and there’s a lot that falls into the category of ‘The Great Unknown’. The pandemic and other recent events have cracked open the idea...
How can a ‘good lawyer’ help a client have a ‘good divorce’?
It’s Good Divorce Week in the UK and the focus has been on the (worryingly high) numbers of separated couples who say they were not offered advice by their lawyer about how to put their children first. But what about those lawyers who do tell their clients to put...
Mental health MOTs for lawyers
Why therapeutic supervision for lawyers is the next big thing (And why it’s not quite the same as therapy) By Tim Rice For nearly two years I’ve been working with lawyers providing therapeutic supervision. Essentially this means I meet them individually every month or...
Lawyers: why telling your client not to do ‘the thing’ may not work. And what to say instead.
The recent and very public separation of Alice Evans and Ioan Gruffudd is a story that, in some ways is as old as time. Man leaves wife and starts relationship with younger woman. Wife vents her anger to all and sundry in a highly public way. Bitter divorce ensues....