[Music] the problem in this regard is that I see a lot of I get a lot of challenges when it comes to my name is Ahmed Elnaggar and this is Monday Legal welcome to a new episode of Monday Legal my guest for today is Carolina Gerding she is a senior technology and telecommunication legal council of KLME Law good morning and how are you good morning Ahmed thank you so much for having me over in this uh wonderful uh podcast on a great and friendly Friday afternoon thank you so much for coming I would like that you give a quick introduction I know it is very hard because he had an amazing career and is full of different jurisdictions and diversity as well in the practice but I want you to give us a quick brief where did you start your journey with the law MH what did you study and take us through your journey in a brief way when I moved uh the first one uh to the US there was a good you know studying opportunity when I moved to France I was particularly interested in the technology and and site and the contents of the master degree that I was pursuing but that remains civil law to civil law right coming to the Middle East and you know it was exposure to different to like a variety of of system and while I was working in Satellite regulatory um it was very interesting to see because the Telecommunications law that that regulates satellite started in the 90s and then there are three or four main models of law right so it was interesting to see how each jurisdiction had adapted to the same problematic and because satellite networks are Global well you have to understand how each country in his jurisdiction is managing their frequencies now it's BEC I'm a little bit technical uh but uh but had the I had the opportunity to see how the same issue was treated globally and that made me very curious not so much of what sets us apart but what actually brings us all together in the treatment of the subject so um yeah I think that looking for the similarities and staying curious is was has helped the most in uh in that jurisdictional and and Fields change and with all these changes what did you see that there is most common between all these jurisdictions because you worked in different continent different uh fields and so on so let's say with the telecommunication you had with the French uh part of your career you had been moved a lot in in in many countries and so on what was the common thing between uh all these regulations or all these jurisdictions for example I think that what it's important to know that regulation always applies to people and even if we don't want to believe it people are kind of the same everywhere and it depends a lot on you know cultural background at EDC and Crosses how is it that we are going to apply a certain decision but traveling and changing systems it just makes you see that actually people are the same everywhere and everybody is trying to get some sort of sense of uh how business is evolving and how things want to be organized and everybody wants to feel that um the law is on their side and there's order at the end of this madness as the founder of CG consulting which is a company that provides Executive coaching for lawyers I would like to ask you what is that all about what does it mean Executive coaching to lawyers I think we are trained enough thing is it you're orienting the question is is coaching U to there to provide skills and it's not a process that provides skills it's a thought-provoking process that makes you you know aware of the things that you you know you don't know what you don't know it gains awareness of all that blind sze and gives you New Perspectives from from where to analyze an issue that you're having it helps you visualize how life would be like once you solve that problem and it actually holds you accountable and you know partners with you into finding those Solutions and enacting them in your daily life so it's not really about training someone to do something it's about helping somebody understand why they do the things they do rewire that system and support them through the change and for me because you address this as the you are giving the Executive coaching for lawyers so I understand what you're just trying to tell me right now but what do you um why do you think lawyers specifically need it or how do you tailor this for legal professionals all right why do I think lawyers specifically needed because nobody's offering uh coaching understanding the perspective of a lawyer and a lawyer's life we have a very particular profession we have a way of being organized inside law firms or inside legal departments and the pressures and that we feel are very much um specific to the area that we're working in and support lawyer to lawyer and discussing with your peers and your partners is not something that comes easy to everyone it's an environment that can be very competitive and admitting vulnerability to other partners Associates or younger members of your staff may not be the strategy of choice it doesn't mean that a person doesn't need support it's just that it doesn't know where to go and get it and I thought being a lawyer myself and being privy to this kind of problems I would be best suited to support somebody in the legal profession in need to you know find different answers to their problems yeah I remember in the early days with my career we w we didn't have the concept of coaching at all even mentorship was not a word that we are uh quite familiar with is that you have some um colleagues who are a little bit older and you have some peers or maybe if you're lucky like me that you had a family member or two who are lawyers that you can go and speak to them and ask them about uh about an advice here or there but when when we move to the work um atmosphere it is very competitive and it's very unique because you don't know what kind of reaction you get on on a question especially that you're speaking to a colleague that you're basically competing with or you talking to a superior who you're reporting to and you don't want to look a little bit that you don't understand or you're not um smart enough or something so it's h it can be a bit difficult and um when did this whole concept start with the mentorship and the coaching I understand Maybe mentorship started a bit earlier but not in our profession the legal profession maybe not mentorship but it was always a profession of apprenticeship there used to be uh senior partner and then he would have some uh Associates or a junior and used to be family offices and the the image of the lawyer was was that person that the whole family would go to or all the businesses related to a whole family would go to this person and that has evolved through the decades and the ages into like you know bigger offices more specialized team and Global uh organizations so that that that initial feel of apprenticeship has now M you know morphed into uh more like more the likes of mentorship which is very very uh used in the corporate world um coaching as such is not new I think that what is new is coaching as used and appli to lawyers to provide support for their career and or their their specific life needs and when I say career and life needs is because we all like to think that there is a clear distinction between one and the other where we are now in a society in which we're not looking at work and life we're trying to look at the balance between the both of them and the newer Generations are not even looking at that they're considering what is called the for your life in which they look at skills and experiences and those may or may not match a career or a situation in life and there's a more Dynamic uh concept of them so when when lawyers are looking at work and life in one aspect in a generation their younger Associates are seeing things in a different way and miscommunication about expectations or what we want out of a career um can lead to teams not working seamlessly and effectively and with as much joy as they could I I I agree with you very much because my experience and the way I let's say grow up uh in in the in the legal field is completely different than the newer generation so I see the Juniors who are working in law firms right now they don't have the same struggle that I had it's completely different and I think that the mentorship that I was seeking was mainly asking questions on how to do stuff from some senior lawyers and or where to find information on how to do a legal research or something like that it is something that is already a given to anybody who is uh starting their legal career now because the moment they C come into the law firm they find out all the legal resources available they find out all the tools for research is easy maybe they get a training for a week or two and they're able to get the information but I guess the coaching and the mentorship in this regard is different I think it's different and I think that that's not where it is the brightest Le you know the best use for it I think coaching comes at the time of developing soft skills uh because lawyers are trained they have training accessible they are wonderful resources today to get more acquaintance with the details of law of laws on anything that is coming up however in in that technicality we lose the human aspects our clients our human beings people that are worried as much as we are that have their own uh careers maybe at stake or their own businesses at stake and so how do we actually connect and empathize with our clients how do we actually get somebody to trust us how do we actually uh take note of what is going on inside of US during a meeting where where our own values may or may not be challenging uh challenged by what's happening around us and so those soft skills they're TR trained by sitting in meetings by going out and trying to you know professional um uh Gatherings and trying to understand what is the market feeling the need for and trying to relate to what our client must be facing so as much as you know technically you can be very good and you don't need people to become very good or you maybe you need them less you're going to need them for other things and that development of soft skills is starting to be a gap like younger Generations are unfortunately not as exposed to other people as before they don't need to to get the knowledge they can you know we can get them out of Technology but how are we actually going to handle those face-to-face difficult conversations how are we going to take a step into meeting new people and having them trust us and how are we going to honor that trust and communicate effectively about what we are doing for the client so when you're doing the coaching for the lawyers you're going to be talking or discussing a lot of things related to the career but then a lot of career steps or career decisions that uh happens to be instrumental in someone's life it will as I say affect their life as well and this will affect their um stability or life in general in and their mental as well uh Readiness whether they are ready for that step or for that career step or not and um I I just want to understand whether this leaves um th this requires a certain set of skills from the lawyer to be able to cope with these kind of changes well the first thing would be to admit that we are we are a whole a person uh has different aspects of their life there's career there's your personal lives your friendship your health your finances your spiritual commitments uh even even the amount of fun that you want to have there are different aspects of a person's life and it is normal to see a shift in one area of our life that impacts other areas of Our Lives career is very important to most lawyers because that's what we spend I would say 80% of our time trying to develop and what we feel is going to nourish other interests and the and the and and the well-being of the people that we care for uh so it is very normal to see a lawyer that is experiencing a significant amount of stress in their career uh transmit that stress and have certain attitudes in other areas of their lives however we also see that when we trying to work on improving the quality of not I'm saying not the time but the quality of time spent in other endeavors other than work we can also see a shift of how that actually translates in well-being and helps a lawyer be you know more creative or more social more enticed and able to cope with the stress that is already there and hasn't changed a different way so we can talk about career we can talk about personal life but there is there is a deep connection between the two of them I I totally agree but I understand as well on like how I how I grew up and how I started in this career it's a very competitive job and it's not just I'm not I'm not just competing with with my colleagues I'm sometimes competing uh or in in with with with the counterparties in every case competing with my client to prove all the time that I'm doing the better work competing with myself to see if I really can achieve what I promise myself to achieve it it it really affects and I understand that I see some professionals getting a nervous breakdown or something that is really affecting their mental stability because it's really a stressful job why is it are we too weak or vulnerable because this is a new Trend this is a new thing mental health and all this uh new um or I believe it is a new thing I when I grew up no one spoke about mental health at all in the professional life why is it so much of a well there many topics that sometimes ago some years ago nobody was talking and now we're talking about and that can also be felt as an evolution in in how actually we are now enabling everybody to be uh open about the vulner this and be able to address those issues right uh there was um there was a study done by the international B Association about uh lawyers and how they perceived their career as it affects their life and then one out of I think one out of five is saying that it has a negative impact on their life if in a in a in an index if you know 50 is more or less you know like the I am worried ly for well-being like lawyers were well below that line women lawyers were even below uh minorities and people with disability they're not having a great time so we cannot really say as a society that being a lawyer is now where the most fun is being had okay but it has always been a stressful um profession but maybe now we're talking more about it maybe now we're taking uh note that it doesn't really need to be that way that there are things that we can do to live our profession in a different way now yes our profession has always been stressful but there are now new stresses and there're now different challenges that our profession did not face before and as we accommodate to the new era it is normal to to feel this this queeze of the circumstance okay um in-house departments have grown a lot and with that the role of a of a lawyer that is now challenged to be not only technically Savvy but very close to business and be able to do both at the same time and to measure that distance and that diplomacy in in a very Dynamic way right um lawyers are now facing new technology coming in there's Ai and what's going to happen to all of us right and people that are in our students are in law school now will find a completely different market and completely different profession in 5 years and all of us that are here today are adapting and learning now the professional of a lawyer has always had adapting and learning in it because regulations were always changing but now regulations change much faster we're regulating and we're investigating in new eras that we were not doing before so that adds a stress this the wheel is spinning faster than before and it is spinning in directions that we didn't know before and it is normal to experience more stress than the generations with stress were feeling before um and with that I think it's a positive thing that we've decided to talk about it we're not weak weer we're just facing higher challenges and that maybe we're actually becoming emotionally smarter in being able to collaboratively uh you know lift each other up and you know handle that stress as a community of lawyers in a better way and do you believe that U more and more lawyers should address this issue by um by by immediately admitting to coaching or admitting to be more aware of the mental health or the the effect of the profession on their mental health so they have to um do I don't know a checkup well there there are different ways of support and I I would say that yes having a a checkin not a checkup but a checkin with yourself or where you're standing as regards the mental health uh lawyers are people that are perfectly able to cope with the normal stresses of Life uh they are and they're looking at their future they're looking at how they can do better and the challenges that they want to uh that that they want to go and you know um try themselves at they will be looking more for a mentor or for a coach or for training but lawyers that are not having a good time in managing their stress that are feeling the negative impact of their profession uh destroy what they've been building and jeopardize that effort may be best suited not for coaching but for uh for a psychologist for psychological Aid and it is very very important to talk about coaching in a in a responsible way coaches are specifically at least I am specifically licensed and specifically accredited by an International Federation not everybody can call themselves a coach and do that work appropriately and coaches are subject to a code of ethics which obliges them to refer certain issues to a trained Mental Health specialist okay so it is very important to deal with people that are trained and that will be ethical enough to support that lawyer with what they need if there if that is what they can do or support them in finding the right professional to assist with their issues if that is what they're actually needing so there is H it's a very important uh issue of Ethics in in coaching and especially for lawyers and that's what I thought my particular training as a lawyer and you know our ethics code of conduct and membership to bars you know makes us uh at least there are other coaches that are out there also coaching lawyers that makes especially ATT tune to that um to that specific um matter thank you very much for this amazing and interesting discussion I hope uh more and more uh people in this uh legal profession are aware of the effects on their mental health and they more aware of the how they feel and how they uh work and more and more people are open to coaching thank you thank you so much for having it having me here and uh yeah looking forward to being able to provide support to uh peers and colleagues out there uh that want to know more about how to uh how to do more and how to get better amazing thank you so much and uh this is your dose from Monday legal see you next week