Spread peace, love and joy

Lawyers in Local Government’s newly appointed president, Rachel McKoy, speaks to Adam Carey about her journey to becoming a lawyer, stark differences she noticed between working in central and local government, and her aims for improving LLG’s offering during her tenure.

On Wednesday (29 March), Lawyers in Local Government (LLG) ushered in a new president with a remit to spread “positivity, cheer and joy” throughout the local government legal profession.

Rachel McKoy assumed the role under a manifesto with face-to-face networking at its heart, which features a pledge to boost in-person events and a commitment to highlighting the profession’s success stories and best practices.

“I want to tease people out and get people together,” she told Local Government Lawyer. “That’s a real real push of mine, and I’ll make sure that we are putting on a lot of events like we used to do.”

McKoy has played an active role in the membership body since 2015, but she is taking the reins of an institution very different to the one she first joined.

Seven years ago, LLG had clear issues attracting young lawyers and the board was composed of “white males of a certain age,” she recalls.

“The reputation was more stuffy, old boys club.” However, in her time, that reputation has been “kicked to the kerb,” McKoy reports, pointing to the current diversity on the board, now made up mainly of women from a range of backgrounds.

“It’s unrecognisable from when I joined it, which is a good thing because it needs to be current, and it needs to reflect the people we represent.”

This is not the only corner of the organisation that McKoy has seen evolve. When she joined in 2015, the LLG relied on volunteers. Now the 4,500-member-strong organisation is steered by a full-time Chief Executive and a set of paid staff.

It also has a new lobbying arm that has recently spear-headed litigation on virtual meetings and the pension cap. “We never really were involved in that type of thing,” McKoy says. “But now we are because we need to represent our members – and if that means taking litigation, we will do that.”

And there is much more still to change, according to McKoy. Increased networking is a mainstay of her manifesto, but greater collaboration between LLG and its partners – which include Solace, Association of Democratic Services Officers (ADSO), the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman – is also high up on her to-do list.

“That’s where you get best practice – through sharing narratives, stories. Just talking. Communication is really important.”

Starting out in law

Speaking to McKoy about her professional journey, it is easy to understand the provenance of her manifesto policies.

McKoy, who was the first in her family to pursue a profession in law, said she first considered the career while watching the 1970s drama Rumpole of the Bailey.

“It was this old-school drama with a real quintessential old-school lawyer. What you’d imagine really, you know, portly and round,” she jokes.

“I was just captivated by it, and I think it played into a fascination with history and institutions.”

Outside of television, McKoy drew inspiration from former Attorney General Baroness Patricia Scotland, who quickly became a hero of hers. “She was a black woman just rocking it, and she was a vanguard of her time.”

“She was just so inspiring, and I wanted to be in that world and in that space.”

McKoy took her first legal role at Islington Council as a legal executive, but a year in, she realised she wanted to take the more traditional degree route. “Lots of people said, ‘oh, that’s your legal career over,’ and I went: ‘oh, I’ll show you’”.

“My mantra was always the tortoise wins the race. It might be a bit slower, but just watch,” she says.

McKoy’s mantra paid off, of course. She completed her degree and took a short role at Southwark Council before leaving the capital for a training contract at Buckinghamshire County Council – and it was at Buckinghamshire where she found her specialism.

“One of my seats there was planning, and I absolutely loved it because you can transform the whole built environment or non-built environment, depending on what it is,” she recalls.

Having a hand in creating a new town, new infrastructure and transforming an area piqued McKoy’s interests.

“I love the tangible legacy it leaves,” she says. “I love bridges, I love architecture and infrastructure, so I’m a bit weird,” she laughs.

As luck would have it when McKoy finished her training contract at Buckinghamshire, a planning lawyer role opened up back at Southwark Council. She applied, landed the role, and left for London.

She spent a decade at the London borough, rising to the position of Senior Lawyer and having a hand in some of the area’s biggest developments between 2005 and 2015.

“London Bridge Quarter, I negotiated the s106 on that which was to do with the Shard and London Bridge Station and the Judicial Review that we had.”

But after ten years, McKoy again exchanged the urban for the rural, moving to a position as Assistant Borough Solicitor for Place at Bracknell Forest Council.

A different set of skills were tested here, as projects involved working with multiple landowners from different communities. “You have to get them together to form comprehensive development. That’s really difficult because people say, ‘well, the school is not on my patch and land, so why am I contributing X?’”.

“You don’t really see that so much in London,” she notes. “It’s already in the hands of whatever big developer, and then they build it out and do the s106 – it’s not getting them all together and saying ‘come on, you know, we have got to find a way forward.’”

The real McKoy

McKoy eventually left Berkshire – and local government entirely – for Whitehall, joining the Government Legal Department’s (GLD) Rail Major Projects (Commercial, Roads and Rail) Team.

“It was always the badge,” she recalls, “when you’re in local government, you’re like, ‘ah, I want to go and work for the GLD’.”

But the reality of working for central government was complicated.

“There’s a lot more bureaucracy because everything’s supersized. By virtue of that, it means that there are lots and lots and lots of tiers. Whereas in local government, you’re much more at the coal face,” she describes.

“So yes [in local government] you’ve got your executive, and you have got your members, and your leader, you’ve got your corporate directors, but it is just so much more closer, and it happens at a much more accelerated pace.”

It was not just the nature of the work that was different, the type of lawyer that carried that work out differed too, according to McKoy. She knew of just one other lawyer with a background in local government in the department and was mainly working alongside ex-City lawyers who she notes were “a lot more cautious”.

“I was quite refreshing to them. They hadn’t really experienced someone like me before.”

“I’ll just speak to everyone the same it doesn’t matter if you are a deputy director, whoever, we all just treat each other with respect,” she continues.

“So I used to get on with everybody, and they just weren’t used to it. It’s quite bureaucratic. People just stay in their lanes.”

McKoy feels that the proximity to the public is a big difference between the two environments.

A different skill set is required in local government as lawyers need to communicate with a carousel of different characters, while Whitehall is more of a bubble, more contained and has a smaller interface with the general public, she explains.

“The community is right there, and there’s no escape,” McKoy says, describing local government work.

“When you have a public inquiry or any public meetings, especially in planning, and you are the advisor in the room, and you’ve got to keep the members at bay and make sure that they’re declaring all their interests. But then you have got – a lot of the time – really angry local people.”

The lack of direct contact with the public in her position at the GLD felt “far too removed” for her. “I missed local government, to be honest,” McKoy recalls. She left the position in August 2019 after two years.

McKoy returned to local government as Head of Commercial and Contracts at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for two years before moving to her current position at the London Borough of Hounslow in 2021 as Director of Law and Governance. She is currently also Monitoring Officer at Hounslow.

LLG’s most important role

So what is the most important thing that LLG does right now? McKoy believes it to be training and development, especially the kind that helps draw new talent to the profession.

Along these lines, she praises LLG’s work experience week, which she says helps show students that working in local government can lead to a “fantastic career, where you are serving, but you are doing really interesting, dynamic work as well”.

She also mentions LLG’s national recruitment programme, which seeks to feed prospective solicitors into training contracts by region. Under the system, LLG reviews the applications from potential trainees and sorts them into a bank. Councils in need of trainee solicitors can then be alerted of potential trainees in their areas.

McKoy adds that training programmes for those more advanced in their careers are also an important slice of LLG’s offering. One such programme that LLG is currently building is a leadership programme – named ‘Aspire’ – that seeks to set out the skills a lawyer needs in order to advance up the ladder all the way to Monitoring Officer.

“At the moment, the only dedicated course that is local government focused is the diploma in local government law and practice that is accredited by the Law Society.”

McKoy, who was the chief projects assessor for the Law Society course for three years and currently sits on the board, said that the need for comprehensive training programmes is becoming ever more important as the complexity of local government grows.

“There are so many more trap doors – put it that way – because local government is really complex now. It’s commercial – we’ve got massive trading companies doing really complex deals, from energy to town centres to airports, buying whole retail outlets. This isn’t what local authorities used to dabble in.”

“So that course hopefully will help bolster and give a bit more insight to lawyers on the journey,” McKoy says.

A serious commitment to socialising

McKoy plans to make training a central focus of her tenure as president, but unsurprisingly she wants to make in-person events an important part of membership too.

“For my presidential year [there will be] a big focus continuing on leadership and on our junior succession planning and just bringing everyone along,” she explains.

“But also networking face-to-face,” McKoy emphasises. “People need to see people, they need human interaction and communication, and through that, they can just share their burdens and get the best practice.”

There is a serious side to McKoy’s plans to nurture the LLG’s in-person offerings. These socials are “not for a jolly,” she says genuinely. “That’s because they’re essential, and we’ve lost out on a good few years.”

Of the five themes set out in her manifesto for 2023-2024, four are focused on getting people talking face-to-face. The first theme, ‘Visibility’, commits McKoy to raise the visibility of the role lawyers play in local government “through letting our voice be heard at conferences, in debate, and in the press”.

The second theme, ‘Out in the Community’, promises to nurture the community of local government lawyers through online and face-to-face networking and social opportunities.

Thirdly, McKoy wants to improve the profession’s sustainability through succession planning, nurturing junior lawyers and attracting new lawyers to local government.

Fourth comes ‘Communication’ and a commitment to encourage LLG members to share success stories and best practices on social media, blogs and in the press. This is, according to the manifesto, all in an effort to “spreading positivity, cheer & joy”.

Lastly, McKoy wants to increase member, regional and board engagement. This would involve a focus on in-person events to “build deeper relationships”.

It is these policies that McKoy hopes will guide the organisation towards becoming an “anchor institution” in the future.

“That place of solace as well, where training is there, networking is there, people who are experiencing the same difficulties or struggles or challenges can share knowledge, expertise stories through our hubs.”

Another central role will be through collaboration with partners at the LGA, Solace, ADSO and more, she says.

“There’s always strength in collaboration. You can’t just be an island.”

“So I think that’s the way to go and where I see us going. Right at the forefront.”

Adam Carey is a reporter at Local Government Lawyer.