My legal life: Jen Dinmore, Lewis Silkin

Some know from a young age what their career goals are but I didn’t. I read law at university because I thought I’d enjoy it. At school, I enjoyed writing analytical essays and was told that I was good at arguing (something which, annoyingly, my children seem to have inherited). It was only when studying law at Cambridge that the desire to qualify as a solicitor crystallised.

I did my LPC and a summer placement with a national firm’s London office. This led to a training contract and then qualification. I qualified into commercial litigation in a City firm. At that time, the culture of being in private practice was such that I spent many hours each week in disclosure rooms, barely seeing the light of day. However, in one case I had the Office of Fair Trading on the other side and this type of work really appealed to me. This led to me working for the Government Legal Service and being posted initially to the OFT. As a consumer lawyer at the OFT, I advised on many high-profile cases. These included a landmark cross-border case stopping an EU-based company from targeting UK consumers with misleading advertising.

My career continued with a promotion to the Office of Rail and Road. Initially, I advised across the office’s various economic functions, such as drafting licence conditions and investigating breaches. On promotion again, to the senior civil service, I became responsible for the ORR legal team’s day-to-day provision of legal advice across all of the office’s functions, including the provision of in-house employment and information advice. I also led a multi-disciplinary team to implement the periodic review of Network Rail’s funding. This was a five-year project which was implemented via thousands of changes to the contractual matrix of the rail network.

'I felt the time was right for a fresh challenge and to move back into private practice. I believe that if you create the right working environment then innovation and high performance will follow'

My final move within the civil service was to the OFT’s successor, the Competition and Markets Authority, to lead and resolve investigations into consumer protection issues. The subject matter of these investigations varied from gaming subscriptions to online daily deals promotions. My role was to lead teams to gather evidence of breaches of consumer law and to influence change to business practices to prevent consumer harm. As part of this, I also headed up the CMA’s work on online choice architecture, a multi-faceted programme looking to understand how digital design can influence consumer decision-making. My key achievements in this role were twofold. First, I am very proud of the real differences that the projects have achieved for consumers. Second, on a personal note, I developed a leadership style which led to my teams achieving a number of ‘firsts’ for the CMA, including taking its first contested consumer case to court.

After many years of public service, I felt the time was right for a fresh challenge and to move back into private practice. Lewis Silkin’s culture is a big draw. I passionately believe that if you create the right working environment then innovation and high performance will follow. This belief fits well with the ethos of the firm. Lewis Silkin already has a strong digital commerce and creative team. However, given the advent of the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act, which reshapes the enforcement of UK consumer protection legislation, Lewis Silkin and I both felt it was time to further bolster its offering in this space. The act will boost the CMA’s powers to enforce consumer law and to impose significant fines directly through administrative proceedings. This means that consumer protection work is likely to rise up client agendas to become of C-suite importance.

Given that I’ve worked in both the private and government legal sectors, people will often ask me to contrast them. I prefer to avoid blanket generalisations, which may feed into pre-existing prejudices. While working in the civil service, I was privileged to engage in varied and exciting work, and with colleagues who are extremely dedicated and expert in their subject areas. My new colleagues at Lewis Silkin are equally passionate and expert, so I am privileged to be working alongside them too.