What does your job entail?
I’m responsible for the IT department serving Taylor Wessing’s UK offices, which
accommodate around 700 lawyers and their administrative staff. We primarily
provide helpdesk support, customer services and training, but there is a
strategic element as well. A project team looks to add new applications and
enhance existing ones, for instance.
What was your first job?
Washing dishes in the canteen at Woolworths.
How did you get into IT?
I’ve been in legal IT for the past 10 years, but prior to that I worked
for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) for 13 years. Towards the end of
my time at the FCO, just about the time when PCs first started to emerge, I
learned MS-DOS at night school, though more by luck than judgement. I then
applied for a role as a network manager and got it.
Do you have any other IT qualifications?
Apart from the MS-DOS night school qualification, I became a Novell certified
administrator back in the days when NetWare was widely used. I have since done a
law degree because I wanted to know more about the industry I am in. At this
stage of my career, I am less hands-on and more strategic, so I wanted to look
at parts of the law that affect IT, like data protection and retention.
Which IT-related problems keep you awake at night?
Things have improved in terms of system and application stability over
the past couple of years, and I very rarely get disturbed [outside office
hours]. That said, if there is a single thing that must always stay up it is
email – I would sleep very soundly if I could guarantee it would never go down.
What would you most like to see happen in the IT industry?
I’d like to see the industry step back a bit and let technology do what
it is supposed to do, which is make life easier for the people using it. Also,
it would be great if we could identify all the areas of software applications
that never get touched and then de-bloat it for users, so that what is in front
of them is what they actually use – that way we could train them in the right
areas. Unfortunately, the trend with software developers is to just add more and
more features. I’d like to see something like that reported back to you in the
press.
