Lucy Gardner
When you’re a journalist there are inevitably times that you must do something so embarrassing you want the world to swallow you up. Unfortunately for me a low point came early on in my career as a fresh-faced teenage work experience on a local newspaper where I interviewed shoe legend Jimmy Choo – while wearing a battered pair of £6 Primark ballet pumps. If you were wondering, he kindly didn’t mention my shoes.
I’ve always been fascinated by the law and originally wanted to be a criminal barrister until somebody wrongly told me lawyers had to defend somebody even if they knew they were guilty, which would have gone against my moral code. I also did tell my parents I would like to be God (when I was four) but they said the position was already taken!
My dad was a crime reporter and always had really exciting stories to tell after he had come back from long trips all over the world. I guess journalism was always in my blood as a result and it was inevitable that I would end up in newspapers. I grew up in a house surrounded by newspapers and books where the conversation was regularly about current affairs. I was always interested in the law as injustice really annoyed me and the law was a way of tackling that.
When I was 17, I got my first paid position as a journalist at the Ferrari Press Agency, an independent news outfit supplying stories to the national press. It wasn’t glamorous. I was watching Big Brother through the night and sending anything interesting that happened to the tabloids, but it was a start.
While studying journalism at university I did another work experience stint, but this time at the Old Bailey working with Fleet Street legend David St George. I remember walking into court for the first time, as it was pretty scary. Some of the worst criminals in British history have been tried there and the place exudes a dark history. It was fascinating to see the wheels of justice in motion and how journalists cover the big cases while managing to go to the pub at lunchtime!
At university I had an option in year two to do broadcast journalism and on reflection I should have done that as newspapers were dying at that stage. However, I loved print and was obsessed with working on a newspaper. My aim was to work for the New York Times by the age of 25. I never did that but I did make it onto the nationals by the age of 24.
I was in the fortunate position of my dad being well known in the industry and he was friends with the boss at news agency SWNS. They invited me down for an interview and I got a job on the features desk. I was working on stories for national newspapers before I had even graduated. Our job on features was to go through the 300 local papers across the country and find human interest stories that we could potentially sell to the nationals. There were a lot of tragic stories including survivors of natural disasters such as the tsunami in 2004 in Indonesia and South East Asia along with daft animal stories that people love to read.
One of the most important things we did was give victims of abuse a voice. I always sought to protect them as much as possible if they were speaking to me about their experiences, as getting the story isn’t everything, making sure the person who is confiding in me is.
I was eventually promoted to features editor and then moved onto the women’s desk at The Sun. This was a tough place to work where I had to come up with three ideas a day by 10am. One of the best things I did was to run one of the most successful charity campaigns in the paper’s history called Knit got Needy Kids where readers were asked to send knitted items for the millions of children in need across the world. To say we were inundated was an understatement, with half a million garments flooding into the newsroom.
Three years at The Sun was enough and left me a little disillusioned with journalism, so it was time for a change. After a stint at a research PR company I was approached by the head of communications at law firm Slater and Gordon and I was instantly interested because of my general fascination with the law and the amazing work they did to help people achieve justice. As it was a part time position, at first, this also allowed me to volunteer with the Red Cross at the Grenfell Tower warehouse. Prince Harry turned up one day and I have a picture of me and him, but I am still annoyed to this day that I hadn’t washed my hair that morning!
Slater and Gordon was excellent grounding in the world of legal PR and gave me experience in launching podcasts as well as helping clients through employment litigation or clinical negligence and personal injury cases. The best thing is to help people in their darkest hour and that’s what we do with legal PR.
One thing I love about the law is that I am always learning, and it is always evolving. Doing legal PR is also the closest you can come to being a reporter without actually being one. A lot of what we do is identify stories, writing them and getting them into the press.
Also, where would we be without the law? We would be in chaos and anarchy. When you have that and a free press then you have two of the most important things for a free and democratic society.
I worked as head of media at group action firm Pogust Goodhead for nine months but decided to take a break to travel and volunteer as I never got to do that when I was younger. It definitely changed my outlook on life and made me realise that I’m not just my job and the importance of a work/life balance. That’s one of the reasons I joined Black Letter as while we work extremely hard for our clients we also work remotely a lot of the time and are treated like adults. I really enjoy training lawyers about PR and seeing the moment that they really get it. I’m also enjoying helping clients achieve what they want from a strategic perspective by getting them where they want to be with the correct messaging. There is always something new and challenging to get my teeth into, whether it be producing a whitepaper on AI to future gazing for potential future risks.
In my free time I’ve started a course at King’s College, called Death Investigation: Coroners & Inquests which is run by former Chief Coroner of England and Wales, HH Sir Peter Thornton KC, as I find this area of law fascinating. I love exhibitions, live music and would like to travel more. Aside from that I’m a proud cat mum to Bella and would love to set up a cat café In New Zealand when I retire!
