Articles From the Team

We talk to Angharad Warren about her career journey - from qualified Solicitor to BCL Director...

How many years’ experience do you have in legal recruitment?

10 years in October less two years’ mat leave.

How long have you worked at BCL Legal?

Since Oct 2011!

What are your market specialisms?

Real Estate (to include Construction and Planning), Corporate and Commercial, within central Birmingham.

What do you most enjoy about your job?

I would say...

• Helping candidates make huge leaps in their careers; whether that’s a big pay rise that allows a young lawyer to get on the property ladder or helping candidates move from much smaller firms to big national or international players, you always know that those are going to be career defining moves for them.

•  Working on senior hires; Legal Director and Partners, they’re always a little more complex and you tend to learn something new on each one.  

• The social side of business development; meeting clients and candidates for breakfasts, coffees, lunches or after work drinks and supporting and attending candidate events, such as the BTSS Summer Party that we are sponsoring next month.  BCL Legal has always been a really social business to work for so as restrictions ease, I’m excited to get back to our internal socials too – I think we already have about 6 dates in the diary!

• The flexibility my job gives me around family life; I’ve spent a good portion of the last few years working remotely (we were ahead of the Covid on that one!), attending the office as and when I need to.  I work a four day week but I have the freedom to switch my non-working day around and also to work shorter days over five days – it’s whatever works for me and the business.

What’s your professional background prior to working for BCL?

Angharad's story:

I studied law at the University of Leeds before completing the LPC and qualifying as a solicitor in 2005.

As a lawyer, my focus was on acting for property investors and doing the front end work on new build developments for large groups of purchasers and then managing teams of paralegals on the scalable work so it was more project management focused really.

My role also involved a lot of business development; regularly presenting to upwards of 200 attendees at seminars for property investors and attending various networking events to develop new revenue streams for the firm, I was also involved in recruitment and other HR matters.

I remained with my training firm from 2003 until 2010 when I took a year out to go travelling and upon my return to the UK in 2011, I made the move into legal recruitment at BCL Legal.

Tell us about your journey to becoming a Director at BCL…

Having studied in Leeds, I started out in our Yorkshire and North East team where I spent two years building what was then a relatively new patch for us in Leeds.

I then had my daughter, Ava, and spent a little over 12 months on maternity leave at which point I relocated back to my hometown in Mid Wales.

Following my maternity leave, I returned to our Birmingham team (given the direct train link) and spent 12 months getting to know the market before taking my second maternity leave with my son, Beau.

I returned to work in Feb 2017 and have steadily built up my relationships with the regional, national and international firms and the candidate base specifically in Birmingham city centre since that time.

I was promoted to Senior Associate in May 2017, Associate Director in April 2018 and Director last month (June 2021).

If you're an experienced Paralegal, Trainee Solicitor or qualified Solicitor looking for a new career pathway that offers flexibility, more autonomy and excellent progression prospects (like BCL Director, Angharad was back in 2011)

...Please get in touch to find out more about current lawyer retrain opportunities with us.