The (untold) story of TCLA

Explaining why I do what I do

I gave this talk to our new team earlier on Monday, and I thought it was about time I shared this with you too.

“Today, I want to tell you the personal story of TCLA that I have never told before. I think it’s important because you will understand why I am doing what I am doing and why we make the kind of decisions we do at TCLA.

Steve Jobs has this great quote. I think it’s very true. You can’t connect the dots moving forward; you can only connect them looking back. When I started TCLA, I didn’t often know why I was doing what I was doing. But looking back, it’s much easier to piece together why I made the decisions I made.

Let me explain. Growing up, I didn’t have the easiest childhood. Without sharing too many details, there was a lot of shouting, and sometimes a feeling of a lack of safety and fear. This led me to bottle up a lot of my feelings.

This is baby Jaysen…I look so unhappy here!

What I did do was I put everything into my studies. I did well in school and got into a good university. I think academic success, to me, was something I could hold onto about my identity. I was not happy with myself about many things, but at least I could say that I was doing ‘well’.

My favourite part about my quote here is how matter of fact I am 😅

So I got into university, and I made decisions for what I wanted to pursue based on what other people saw as successful, rather than necessarily considering, 'Is this what I want to do?'. While I had my doubts about commercial law, it felt like the natural next step to ‘be successful’.

Now what I think my upbringing did teach me is determination and resourcefulness. I would spend hours reading forum threads on The Student Room because it gave me access to information I didn’t otherwise have. I also joined organisations like SEO London and Rare, where I felt very lucky to join a community of people who were driven by the same goals. Little did I know that this would play a role in my decision to start our forum.

I was lucky to get 13 interviews, four vacation schemes and three training contract offers. This was an objective success, but deep down, I feared that commercial law wasn’t for me. I hadn’t really talked through the stuff I faced during childhood and I bottled up a lot of my insecurities about entering a legal career. 

Fast forward to law school and joining a law firm. The problem of me not resolving the personal challenges I grew up with led me to use substances to cope with the stress I was feeling. This obviously wasn’t healthy. It didn’t take long before I really wasn’t looking after myself, and I left. 

Looking back, I don’t know if having an avenue to talk about my issues would have solved the problem. But it would have been nice to know that I wasn’t alone. 

I am sharing my personal journey here because it explains what I want to fix through TCLA:

1. A job is not just a job. The process of applying to a job like law is heavily tied to your life. It makes you question whether you’re good enough. You have to keep going despite facing rejection. It brings up a lot that you may have been carrying with you from a young age. And acquiring the job is just the start. If you go into a career in law, you are giving up a substantial proportion of your life to a career. This is why it’s important to 1) make sure you are informed; and 2) get the support you need to make it a success.

2. Not everyone has access to equal information. The information and skills training people receive at an early age have a substantial influence on their future success. This includes whether you went to a certain type of school, the family support you received, and where you grew up. What is special about the power of the internet is that this need not be the case. We can democratise access to information.

3. More transparency. This is not exclusive to the legal profession, but I wish there was more truth. One of the reasons it’s really hard to make a decision as a junior applicant is that there is so much information that is locked up. I’m also very long on the belief that more transparency makes an organisation more attractive to work for because it will attract someone the right person for the role.

I think I’ll see my work as done when we have a platform that gives millions of students and graduates the information they need to make better decisions about their future and the skills training to succeed in whatever career they choose - whether that is in law or outside of it.”

Thank you for allowing me to share my story :)