Annmarie and Adam Carvalho
“It’s not possible to divorce being a lawyer from dealing with emotions and psychology,” Annmarie Carvalho, told eprivateclient.
That’s why she trained and qualified as a counsellor and subsequently left her role as a family solicitor at Farrer & Co to found The Carvalho Consultancy. Through this, she provides one to one counselling and coaching, and group training on issues such as how to manage and support vulnerable clients.
Because of her background Ms Carvalho had thought the consultancy would focus on family lawyers but has since been working with private client and corporate lawyers as well. The Carvalho Consultancy also includes a couples’ counsellor, Tim Rice, who frequently works with couples referred by matrimonial lawyers.
Business has been booming and there are further plans for expansion, with her husband Adam Carvalho also recently leaving Farrer & Co, where he was a private client partner, to join the business.
Mr Carvalho said private client work is “changing quickly”. The work is becoming more time sensitive, more complex and higher value over time. There is increasingly a recognition that “the work can be really quite challenging.” There are the technical aspects and client relationships but often also complicated family dynamics and an increasing expectation for advisers to be on call.
More generally, Covid-19 blurred some of the traditional lines. Ms Carvalho gave the example that some private client lawyers have had to take shopping to vulnerable clients and undertaking other tasks for them while they isolated.
The pandemic has also accelerated changes to working practices. The trend in recent years had been towards working more and taking fewer breaks, Ms Carvalho says, and that has increased significantly for many during the pandemic.
Peer pressure plays a part in this too. People are starting work earlier and finishing later. If one team member starts work at 6am or is still online at 10pm, other members feel they have to keep up or fear they will be seen as lazy or that they are letting the side down.
“Often it relieves a sense of anxiety to get that email out, but that can have an impact on the person receiving it in the middle of the night.”
It is not clear whether things will return to how they were. It seems likely that after the pandemic and when life becomes more normal again, there may be different pressures. For example, while firms have seen the benefits of flexible working, many will worry they might miss out if they are away from the office which could introduce different stresses.
Mrs and Mr Carvalho are seeking to provide insightful and useful support to lawyers and other professionals. The traditional approach to “wellbeing” is often too “fluffy” and generic to help busy professionals in demanding areas.
For example, much of the advice around improving work-life balance doesn’t work in circumstances where the client and workload will come first. Professionals are told to develop resilience but that can often feel as if it is simply another task placed upon the individuals’ shoulders.
Mrs and Mr Carvalho believe that more one-on-one support and tailored solutions are necessary if teams and team members are going to perform to the high standards that are now expected in this area, and that this will increasingly be demanded by younger generations.
Mrs Carvalho has spent time developing tailored solutions and detailed support to teams and she runs regular in-house counselling clinics. The staff involved benefit from having someone they can trust and speak to outside of the firm and often the clinics can enable her to provide more targeted support to the teams.
“Clients are always going to be ultra-demanding and often we feel that we cannot say no to them,” Ms Carvalho explained. Part of being able to deal with this effectively comes down to psychology, something the wife-and-husband team believe lawyers should have more training in.
Sometimes, younger employees are starting to take the lead in this area. “They’re teaching the rest of us,” Mrs Carvalho said.
Partners have now realised they have to get on board. The old ways of working and servicing clients which grew up in an era before smartphones and flexible working need to be revisited.
That’s not to say it’s easy for junior employees. As the profession becomes more and more competitive many are working harder and longer hours to try to stand out at an earlier stage.
Understanding the generational differences and finding effective solutions to deal with this is something The Carvalho Consultancy focuses on.
Mr and Mrs Carvalho can see the benefit of their work in their own lives too. They’ve both done the long hours in legal practice and running their own business. Having four-year-old twins is one thing that helps - “they’re good at forcing you to find balance,” Mr Carvalho said, “though there are difficult challenges in both parents juggling careers and childcare, which is one of the issues that the younger generations of professionals are navigating”.
Having begun as a service designed for to support solicitors, The Carvalho Consultancy is starting to see more queries from barristers, accountants, employees of fiduciary service providers and even private bankers and wealth managers.
While the technical challenges and exact work may vary, any profession which deals with private clients will face many of the same difficulties.