Sara Barrett tells The Brief about her role as Talent Partner in the employment, pensions and immigration team at Mills & Reeve, her practice as an employment lawyer and what she looks for in new recruits to her team.

Sara Barrett is Talent Partner for the employment, pensions and immigration team at Mills & Reeve. She is tasked with supporting the head of the service, David Mills, with ensuring that consistent standards and best practice relating to career progression are applied across the team of 18 partners and 78 full-time equivalent staff for which he is responsible.

She is also a practising employment lawyer, leading the team in Manchester, and has been a partner at the firm since 2013.

Talent Partners

Mills & Reeve’s Talent Partner initiative was introduced in 2019 and was a contributing factor in the firm being awarded Platinum Investors in People status in 2023. It exists to ensure that career progression throughout the firm is based on consistent criteria, with everyone given the opportunity to develop themselves and access the opportunities to which they are best suited.

I travel around each of our locations having Talent Partner appointment days, during which people can book time in my diary to have a one-to-one talk with me about their careers.

This means, crudely, that promotion isn’t dominated by those who shout the loudest, and that everyone within the firm has access to somebody responsible for their development, other than their line manager, to ensure that they are aware of, and supported along, the career paths that match their skills and ambitions.

“I travel around each of our locations having Talent Partner appointment days, during which people can book time in my diary to have a one-to-one talk with me about their careers,” Barrett explains. “People really value this, and it’s something that I have shared among the other Talent Partners.”

Talent Partners meet regularly to share experiences and insights, she continues. “For example, our colleagues in real estate have developed an interesting mentoring and coaching scheme. We do something similar in employment, pensions and immigration but they have a more structured scheme so we can learn from that.”

By liaising regularly, she continues, the Talent Partners from across different National Service Lines (NSLs) can also share how decisions “land” with the staff for whom they are responsible.

"People feel they can be open with us and it has provided some really useful feedback: for example  in terms of how things have been communicated by line managers, who might think they have said one thing but the other person has heard something different."

Pushing the talent agenda

Talent Partners also help staff access opportunities around the firm. Barrett says, “The initiative consistently pushes the talent agenda, and essentially provides for better conversations and more opportunities for all staff.

The network the Talent Partners means I have been able to introduce people into roles that are more suited to them and therefore more likely to provide an attractive long-term career opportunity with the firm.

“It has introduced an extra layer of career support both for lawyers and executive support services.

“It has also opened up a network internally, enabling us to introduce people to other parts of the firm. We sometimes find that graduates, who may have legal qualifications, join our secretarial and admin teams as a way into a law firm, and aren’t necessarily looking for a long-term career in business administration.

"So, the network the Talent Partners means, for example, I have been able to introduce people into our business development or marketing teams, enabling them to move into roles that are more suited to them and therefore more likely to provide an attractive long-term career opportunity with the firm."

Growing team

Barrett’s responsibilities as Talent Partner sit alongside her “day job” as a partner in the firm’s rapidly expanding employment service. The employment, pensions and immigration team has grown its headcount nationwide by 67 per cent over the past five years.

Barrett attributes this growth in part to the firm’s reputation as an employer (including being awarded Platinum Investors in People status), “with the mechanisms and processes in place to back that up.”

Attracting and retaining staff is only half of the growth equation – it also requires a very clear and forward-thinking strategy which everyone has bought into. However, as Barrett explains, the firm’s ability to attract and retain lawyers “is really attractive to clients because we can say with a lot of confidence that when we put together a team for them, that is going to be their client team and it won’t experience significant turnover.”

My experience as a Talent Partner has definitely helped broaden my perspective in terms of empathising with some of the issues that clients deal with every day.

She continues, “It’s interesting that our investment into the people side of things then plays out in terms of how we can deliver to clients, and I think that’s contributing to our success winning work. It’s a virtuous circle.”

She also believes that her own role as Talent Partner has significant crossover with her practice, with each informing the other. She says, "The Talent Partner role is different from my ‘day job’ but it does build a lot on the work I do with clients, so my legal role has helped me carry out and grow into my Talent Partner role.

"And my experience as a Talent Partner has definitely helped broaden my perspective in terms of empathising with some of the issues that clients deal with every day."

Potential, enthusiasm and adaptability

When recruiting to the employment, pensions and immigration team, Barrett says that, while great legal skills and commercial acumen are the baseline from which the team starts, “We look for potential, for enthusiasm, and for people who enjoy being collaborative and buy into the concept of being part of a team.

“As a collective we all celebrate each other’s individual successes, but that is in the context of working together as a team to make sure our clients achieve their objectives.”

We are currently living through a period of change and evolution in the skills required by lawyers, particularly at the junior stages of their careers. Barrett says that while the need for technical excellence won’t change, lawyers will also need to be able to adapt.

More and more clients are expecting social responsibility to be a vein running through the advice they receive.

She explains, “People who like employment law generally are quite adaptable to change, because it’s an area of law that changes so much. It’s also a mirror that reflects the ways in which society is changing, so, if you’re attracted to employment law, you’re generally open to that change.

"Lawyers will also need to be able to embrace the technological side of things as we get more and more into using AI and other forms of software."

Another way employment law practice is changing, Barrett continues, is the need to understand responsible business practices and embed these in the advice given to clients. She says, “More and more clients are expecting social responsibility to be a vein running through the advice they receive.

“Increasingly, when we tender for work, both public and private sector, we are being tested on our credentials in that area.”

Training and development

Although the team, and firm, look for particular traits in recruits, they also provide “an excellent programme to upskill people, not just around core legal skills but also more generally to help them become a rounded Mills & Reeve lawyer”, Barrett says.

It’s a firm that allows junior lawyers to do more than just practise law, which I think is a really attractive prospect to them.

The firm offers internal networking opportunities at all levels to enable staff to meet their peers around the country, both within and beyond their own NSL. Everybody is expected to get involved in business development, and the firm also provides opportunities for its lawyers to take part in projects and discussion groups contributing to the firm’s progress.

Barrett says, “It’s a firm that allows junior lawyers to do more than just practise law, which I think is a really attractive prospect to them, and we put a lot of resource into supporting people, providing mentoring and creating opportunities for them to buddy up.

“It can be quite a challenging job but we do what we can to proactively support people. With 99 per cent of our people saying they’d recommend Mills & Reeve as a good place to work, we know the firm is a great environment in which to learn and thrive.”

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