Interview with Sophie du Boulay, a lawyer at Nokia Corporation

In this article, Diya Gupta interviews Sophie du Boulay, an accomplished in-house lawyer at the multinational telecommunications and electronics company, Nokia. Sophie shares her path to becoming a solicitor and varied experiences, having worked at several different types of firms and across multiple jurisdictions.

Hi Sophie, please could you introduce yourself and explain where you’re currently at in your legal career.

Hi! I’m Sophie du Boulay. I am an English-qualified solicitor, and currently the Global Head of Investigations at Nokia. I trained at Slaughter and May in London, where I spent 3 years in the Disputes group. This was followed by a move to the Disputes group at Herbert Smith Freehills in Tokyo, then by six years in-house at EY UK before moving to Nokia last year.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in law, having studied English Literature?

I realised that even if I didn’t want to pursue law long term, a legal training would be a solid professional foundation. I could also see that English teaches much that transfers usefully to law (which is actually true of most academic disciplines). In my case, studying English meant I was comfortable expressing myself in writing, which I knew was important for a solicitor.

During your training contract, what other seats were you placed in? What appealed to you about Dispute Resolution?

Corporate, Disputes, Competition and then a second Corporate seat in Paris.

Litigation strategy and practice were much more intuitive to me than anything else I saw in my other seats. For example, interviewing witnesses, building a case and going to court was what I had pictured when I imagined a legal career.

Are there any specific skills that Litigators more commonly employ (rather than as a Corporate solicitor)?

For junior litigators, the ability to assimilate and retain a lot of factual detail is a uniquely important skill. By knowing all the facts of a complex case, you can make yourself an indispensable part of the case team, no matter how inexperienced you are as a lawyer.

In a broad sense, many city-based law firms have very similar practice areas – having worked at some of these highly-reputed, private practice firms, what key differences did you note between them?

Honestly, my experience is that it’s not the firm, but the individual lawyers with whom you work who set the tone and determine what your experience is like. I worked with a couple of wonderful partners who were good teachers and invested in their junior lawyers – they made the difference, not the firm per se. Additionally, my three experiences of law firms have been in three different jurisdictions, so whilst there have been obvious differences, these have not been firm-related.

How was your experience working in Japan and were there any particular struggles (with regard to culture and business practice)?

Working in Japan was absolutely fantastic, both professionally and personally. Working in a smaller office meant smaller teams, more responsibility and better quality work (which translates to feeling like a ‘real’ lawyer, as opposed to someone there primarily to learn). There are also lots of cultural practices which take some getting used to. For instance, when you meet Japanese clients, it’s very important to give a business card to each person in the meeting; it took me ages to stop forgetting my cards. Additionally, learning the appropriate depth of bow for these interactions was also hard!

What was the key factor in triggering your shift in-house?

No matter how closely you work with a client in private practice, you are always an external advisor, and a step removed from their internal decisions. Whereas, in-house, you are part of the team, and being a partner to the business is something I have really enjoyed.

On the personal side, the demands of life in-house are different and, in my experience, there is not the same culture of always being available, which can be a challenge for working parents like me. I hope things are changing in law firms now though.

Given that the business itself is an in-house lawyer’s client, is there a material difference in their demands and the way in which you present advice?

Well, all clients want clear, commercial, practical advice; what is different is that in-house, your client is unlikely to be another lawyer. It is even more important to keep it commercially-focused, and if any legal specifics need to be laid out, they need to be brief and clearly-explained.

On the upside, in-house, there isn’t the same effort required to understand how your client’s business functions and what its drivers and pressures are in seeking your advice – you will already know (or be learning!).

As the Global Head of Investigations, what does an average day look like for you? 

The only thing that’s the same every day is the rhythm of the time zones. Due to the fact that my team is global, I begin the morning with case updates from my team members in China and Australia, because it’s already almost the end of their day. Then I focus on Europe for the middle part of the day, and after lunch, my US colleagues are online.

Each day, there are three primary types of activity I focus on: individual investigation cases my team are working on (all about factual detail and legal risk); managing my team (all about people); and the more strategic aspects of my role – things like how my group can improve what we offer to the business, and how to encourage more people to speak up about anything they think isn’t right in the company.

In your opinion, what is the greatest legal difficulty with working at multinational organisations with a range of non-legal services?

For many lawyers, I think the greatest difficulty is not a legal one, per se – it’s building a detailed enough understanding of those services or products (what they actually are, how they work, who their clients or customers are, how they’re charged, where in the world they’re most important, what can go wrong…). A portion of our investigations centre on situations that may be quite unfamiliar to a lawyer sitting in the UK and therefore it is essential to be curious and ask a lot of questions to understand what your client teams are experiencing on the ground.

In hindsight, what would you do differently if you were a trainee now/would you say that expectations have substantially changed?

During a busy day, I always felt pressured just to get on with the task in front of me, and often wished I had a better sense of where and how it fitted into the big picture. If I were doing it again, I would ensure I took that time, because I know now that it would pay off in the long run.

I am probably out of touch with expectations on trainees, but it is hard to imagine the fundamentals will ever change: trainees who throw themselves in, who can communicate clearly, and who pay close attention to detail (a cliché but genuinely so valuable!) will always find themselves in demand.