Lisa Williams - a story of an unconventional legal career

IMD Legal Translation and Interpreting's very own Client Relationship Manager on how she got to where she is...

Lisa Williams has had an unconventional route into and out of her legal career, here is her story and how she chose her own path.

Lisa hails from South Wales and amongst other things is a classically trained singer, pianist and songwriter.  Having always had a creative nature she decided to undertake an English degree at Cardiff University. During this time Lisa also undertook classical singing lessons at the College of Music and Drama in Cardiff in her spare time and achieved Grade 8 and her Performance Certificates. Lisa is also a singer songwriter and plays piano.

After her degree, Lisa went on to complete a master’s degree, in Forensic Linguistics, where she studied legal language and linguistics, this led to her final dissertation being based on police interview techniques for children involved in abuse cases. At this point Lisa decided she wanted to pursue a career in Law and completed the Post Graduate Diploma in law (law conversion), followed by the Legal Practice Course in Cardiff University.

After her time at Cardiff University, Lisa trained as a solicitor for 2 years at JCP Solicitors in Swansea. During this time, she attended evening classes at a local college and completed her CIM Level 5 Marketing Diploma.  Whilst working as a trainee solicitor, Lisa was heavily involved in networking, events, marketing and business development. This was the perfect training ground to what was to become her full-time career.  Lisa specialised as an Employment Solicitor and worked for various law firms across South Wales. She continued to study and achieved her NEBOSH qualification and Train the Trainer qualification whilst working a s a solicitor, she then used the training qualification to deliver in-house training at law firms.  Lisa then managed a case load and a marketing, sales and business development role, but it soon became apparent that one was becoming more enjoyable than the other. She then decided to leave her secure legal career and take up a role as Corporate Sales and Marketing Manager.

For the last 10 years Lisa has focused her energies on marketing, business development and sales, she has also enjoyed mentoring start up businesses with Business Wales in the past and working as a consultant across many sectors including Legal, HR, Technology and the Charity sector.  During her time out of law, Lisa completed the ILM Level 5 Leadership and Management qualification and has always enjoyed managing teams throughout her career.

Lisa has faced many challenges throughout her career, including being diagnosed with dyslexia, during the LPC. This had gone undiagnosed throughout her school, college and University life, but the diagnosis was something Lisa was grateful to receive after always sensing that she struggled with certain aspects of her education in an unexplained way. She was told by the consultant who diagnosed her that to achieve what she had with her level of dyslexia, must have ‘taken blood sweat and tears’, which it literally had. Lisa is now an advocate for schools regularly testing children in primary school for neuro diverse conditions.

Despite many challenges both personal and professional, Lisa has not only had a successful career in law, but also in the world of sales, business development and marketing and in her most recent role, Lisa is finally marrying the two careers, which is something she has always hoped to do. Lisa is Client Relationship Manager and Solicitor (non-practicing) at IMD Legal Translation and Interpreting. She is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with law firms across the UK offering legal translation and interpreting services in any language pair across any legal discipline.  When asked about the role Lisa stated ‘I feel like I have come home to the legal world again, but this time I get to do what I enjoy and what makes me happy. I love building long term business relationships and becoming the chosen contact/business for all legal translation and interpreting’.

Get in touch with Lisa at: l.williams@imdtranslation.co.uk