My chapter ‘Your Own Potential, Your Own Terms: Crafting Your Career through Consultancy’ explores how this career option sidesteps the systemic barriers still inherent in private practice, especially traditional law firms.

It includes up to date data about the consultant lawyer market, data about women lawyers in private practice at different levels of seniority, and how being a consultant lawyer enables women lawyers, especially mothers to design a work life blend that works for them and receive higher earnings for the effort that they put in. Downsides of being a consultant lawyer are also shared. Quotes from female founders of platform law firms and female consultant lawyers who are mothers provide insights ‘from the horse’s mouth’.

The necessity to plan ahead and establish a personal brand and build your career capital is examined, for those interested in being a consultant lawyer, especially with more competition and with the platform law firm market maturing and changing in shape. The role of consultant lawyer work as a component of a portfolio career providing financial certainty, a growing trend in the changing world of work, to combine with other legal or non-legal work components, with examples of women lawyer portfolio careerists. Action planning concludes the chapter, enabling you to turn insights into actions.

This book is being published in the Autumn 2025 by Globe Law and Business. https://www.globelawandbusiness.com/

You can download our EnergiseLegal white paper about career agility. ‘The New Polymaths’ from the Resources section of this web page (scroll down):