In the third of a series extracted from her new book, Elizabeth Cruickshank describes the career of Lesley MacDonagh, the first woman managing partner at a top-ten city firm

Lesley MacDonagh has been the managing partner of City firm Lovells since 1996.

She is in charge of 27 offices, 333 partners and 1,600 lawyers worldwide.

'My mother worked in the RAF for a while, so perhaps she was a bit of a role model,' says Ms MacDonagh, but she points out that there are no legal connections in her family.

Nor was her career path dictated or even suggested by her father, a Dorset businessman.

It was 'a complete outsider' who suggested that she might have some legal talent.

Ms MacDonagh went to work for nine months for 'a very forward-looking local authority, where I was given what was in effect a sort of internship.

Being moved from department to department, architecture, weights and measures, with a stint at the abattoir, and finally with the town clerk, it was a very privileged commercial training'.

It was the town clerk who suggested that she could qualify as a solicitor by taking the five years' articles route and being sponsored by the local authority, which would also pay her College of Law fees.

'I was attracted by the prospect of a job with money.

They gave me 3,000 a year and I could afford a car.

The local authority was very cutting-edge, engaged in all sorts of activities, very switched on and it had an intense degree of service towards its clients.

By chance, I was involved in the environmental and planning side where there were big developments at this time - re-designations of land use and compulsory purchase orders.

I was lucky to be able to get stuck into this specialist planning type of work, so that when I came to Lovells I already had a good idea of what it was to work for a commercial organisation.'

Today's trainees may be the same age as Ms MacDonagh when she arrived newly qualified at Lovells, but what they bring through the front door is very different.

'It is a bit of a truism to say that although they are very talented, when they first arrive they do not come with experience of applying the law.

But they do adjust pretty quickly, and they do work very hard at making that adjustment.

At that time, things were different.

I applied for the position without even researching the firm, turned up at Serjeant's Inn for interview and liked the partners I met.' Ms MacDonagh was instantly placed in the department specialising in planning and environmental law.

She had no grand personal career plan; she was merely happy to be working in London in the late 1970s, but the firm was 'very far-sighted, they recognised a specialism of the future, and I was lucky that my previous experience matched what they required.

'Nowadays young people are much more clued up from the start and much clearer as to what it means to be a litigator or a corporate lawyer and have a much clearer idea of what their own career is about.

There is also a change in attitude in the firms themselves, and there is much more effort to accommodate the wishes of trainees than there was before, when they were simply told which seats they would have.'

Ms MacDonagh found two niches at Lovells - the first as a planning and environmental lawyer, and the second as the firm's managing partner.

She was not the first female partner at Lovells and she did not feel that this was unusual, or something which she had had to fight for other than by being a good lawyer, because she has 'genuinely never felt any sexism within the firm'.

Ms MacDonagh does not think her elevation seven years ago to managing partner was unexpected in the context of the firm's natural character.

But she was surprised by the 'external attention', although in retrospect she realises that it was 'a bold move in the market context' to elect a woman to her position.

During her watch as managing partner of Lovells, the number of offices and the number of staff have both doubled.

In the past three years, there have been mergers with firms in Germany, the Netherlands and most recently France.

It would be easy, but Ms MacDonagh considers it would be unproductive, to spend too much of her time on aeroplanes visiting international offices when modern technology can provide so much to facilitate communication.

What she looks for is a way to expand communication beyond the two-dimensional.

'Video-conferencing helps because you can see the person on the other end, and I prefer voice-mail to e-mail.

I am a great fan of voice-mail, because you can sense in the other person's voice just how anxious they are or how urgent the matter is or whether the response can be deferred.

So many people don't edit their e-mails before they send them because they are in a hurry and all sorts of misunderstandings can be created.'

Armed with the technological means, Ms MacDonagh considers that it is no more difficult for a woman to manage an international office than for a man, although there may be initial difficulties of acceptance because of domestic cultural differences.

However, by way of compensation she considers that women generally 'are more attuned to the differences in the way of doing things that are important to other people'.

The skill of being a good manager in these circumstances is to be able to 'pick up on what is best in each different jurisdiction rather than to impose a way of working from a single office.

'A multicultural firm has a lot of strengths.

When our clients are doing a deal that crosses borders, we are not restricted to recommending lawyers in other firms that we barely know - we are using our own people, whose quality of work we do know that we know because we are a single firm.'

Ms MacDonagh says Lovells has formed 'something new' by integrating into 'international practice areas.

We encourage people to think on international lines by organising international "retreats" for each practice area, by sharing know-how and taking every opportunity to get to know each other'.

This integration strategy and its implementation have been the most important points on her agenda for the past few years.

For the past eight years, she has done no legal work, which she recognises could be viewed as a serious problem for a lawyer.

'There are people who return to practice and attempt to take up the threads of legal work again, but it's very difficult to do that.

When you take on this job, it's a personal decision that you have to think very hard about.

It's a very fun train-set, the most fascinatingly varied role.

'Apart from the excitement of the mergers, the largest project that I have been involved in is the building of the building.

I knew that if we got it right it would help Lovells as a firm both in terms of client perception and in terms of helping the lawyers in the firm.

I was involved in every design decision.

I was passionate about it.'

A site was chosen so that the whole building could be suffused with as much natural light as possible; all fee-earners' offices either face to the outside world or into a huge central atrium, which is dominated by the largest indoor water sculpture in Europe.

The detail of this design and the part that the managing partner has taken in it is surprising.

There are 'sleeping pods, rather like Travelodge rooms, on site.

Not because we want people to sleep here.

But just in case they are in the middle of a deal in the middle of the night and they can have the opportunity to catch a couple of hours of sleep, then they can take it, get up and have a shower and feel a whole lot better'.

Unlike many other firms, the reception area is not at ground floor level but on the 11th floor.

It is staffed by 'people who have been trained in the airline industry, who are used to fixing up video-conferencing, sorting out laptops and making alterations to clients' travel arrangements for them if meetings over-run.

It's good for our lawyers too because they feel properly backed up, knowing that the clients are getting the best support service that we can give'.

Described as having 'a human touch with just that hint of steel', Ms MacDonagh is determined that the new building will work for her staff and that everyone will feel that they have a part to play.

She is even involved with the choice of receptionists' uniforms.

She is shy about this, 'perhaps that's a level of detail that I need not concern myself with, but it's also about keeping a relationship with all members of staff going and not just with the lawyers who work in the firm'.

Ms MacDonagh herself enjoys her 'feminine' side and does not consider that a woman needs to ignore it to succeed.

Between caring for her firm and caring for her family of four, her time is nearly all allocated.

She finds occasional time for herself.

Every now and then she has what her husband - also a partner at Lovells - calls a 'hormonal shopping burst'.

Ms MacDonagh is in the unusual position in the City of having a husband who is her working as well as her domestic partner.

The firm is so large that she does not see this as a problem.

'We communicate a lot by voice-mail during the day', and the situation means that he understands perfectly the background to the pressures of her job.

When, for example, the annual partnership conference is in process of organisation, 'I turn into some sort of werewolf for about three weeks beforehand, but then he can see and understand when he attends the conference what I have been spending all my time on'.

For her, working in the same firm 'takes a whole layer of irritation out' because in all aspects of their lives they are working for common goals.

However, Ms MacDonagh would not pretend that this is the complete answer to being a successful working mother.

Her recipe for combining family and work has two main ingredients - efficiency and luck.

You have to be lucky, 'lucky certainly to have found the work that you really want to do, but the real luck is in having children who sleep through the night.

If you can have your sleep you can try anything, and I've been very fortunate that all my children have been good sleepers'.

You also need to have a partner who fully understands your ambition so that you can work together for the common good.

In her view, efficiency is not just about doing things quickly and well, but in analysing what life decisions have to be made to ensure maximum flexibility, because bringing up children is 'an ever-changing scene'.

As soon as Ms MacDonagh learns of any dates involving her children, they go straight into her diary.

'If you don't do that immediately then you will never be able to prioritise them.

With enough notice, you can do anything that you need to do.'

Being rigorous about diary dates may be relatively simple advice, but ensuring a proper family life goes much further.

She has eschewed 'the rolling acres' of country life and a daily commute to and from the Home Counties for a home in Marylebone, so that she can be home in 20 minutes if there were an emergency.

It is a view of life that Ms MacDonagh would encourage in her partners.

Lovells has a part-time partnership scheme, of which several women but no men have taken advantage.

The firm perceives that it is better to lose some of someone's time and attention than to lose that person entirely.

She herself does not suggest that juggling family and work life is easy.

To make it work, you have to 'love your work and love your family' to the extent that you can exclude the necessity for 'room to one's self' and take great satisfaction from making it work for everyone else.

This is an edited version of an interview that appears in Women in the Law: Successful Career Management, edited by Elizabeth Cruickshank and scheduled to be published in October by Law Society Publishing.

It can be ordered from Marston Book Services, tel 01235 465 656, at 29.95 plus 3.50 postage and packing