Former Youth Training Scheme worker Toby Joel celebrates 35th work anniversary.
An equity partner and head of litigation who started his career at just 16 as a £29 per week YTS worker, is celebrating 35 years with Jacksons Law Firm.
Solicitor Toby Joel started Jacksons as a “fresh-faced 16-year-old” in 1989, having made the decision to cancel his plans to go to Acklam Sixth Form College to study history – and embark on a legal executive course instead.
Toby has always worked in the litigation department at the firm and has witnessed technology change drastically during more than three decades.
Over the years, he has also seen two big office moves and estimates he has worked with more than 100 people he describes as “great characters”.
Speaking of what is an unusually long tenure for a 51-year-old, Toby jokes he finds it “unfortunate” that everyone in his team is now younger than him!
He explains: “I’ve never known anything different to working for Jacksons!
“I came straight from school on September 2 in 1989 and I’ve been here ever since.
“I was due to start college, but my Mum was a secretary at Jacksons for the then senior partner Kevin Fletcher and she mentioned this ‘legal executive’ course they were offering.”
The course offered the attractive prospect of paid work, with study being carried out on an evening.
Enthused by the thought earning a living as he studied, Toby went to the Teesside Chamber of Commerce, which used to be on Exchange Square in Middlesbrough, and enrolled onto the course.
“They gave me an interview straight away at Punch Robson,” he said.
“I didn’t get that – but the next one was with Jacksons, with Robin Bloom.
“They recruited me straight away and for the first 15 years, Robin was my supervising partner who trained me and looked after me.”
Now an equity partner of Jacksons, Toby admits that as a Youth Training Scheme worker on £29 a week, he realised he could have earned more money in another role elsewhere.
However, he enjoyed the work and could see the potential career progression it offered.
“I was on the YTS for two years,” he said.
“After that, the firm don’t have to keep you on but if you show potential, they do.
“I stayed on with Jacksons and have never left!
“I’ve now got colleagues in the team who weren’t even born when I started.”
Toby was the first person in the firm to get a mobile phone “the size of a house brick with a big rubber arial” for making calls between client court appearances.
He adds that over the years, Jacksons has gone from having “a really old-fashioned town centre office” to its current fresh and modern open-plan facilities.
“When I started, there was not really such a thing as IT as nobody had a desk computer,” he said.
“I was the first person at Jacksons to get a mobile phone and a computer in the early to mid 1990s.
“I was doing a lot of court work and sometimes needed to take last minute instructions from clients or solicitors.
“They only had a payphone in court and it was always really busy, so I managed to get my hands on a mobile telephone.”
As well as the phone being like a large house brick, Toby recalls the computer he had in the mid 1990s was “gigantic”.
“It took up the whole desk!” he said.
“We also used to use audio dictation tapes and now we use a digital system where you just talk into a microphone and it records what you say on the screen for the secretaries to pick up.
“Obviously, technology has evolved a lot to where we are now with modern IT, computers and software.”
Toby also recalls the offices used to have libraries which housed the many books that solicitors were expected to do their research from.
“Now, everything is online,” he says.
“You search for procedures, rules, laws and authorities through different search engines.
Despite the advancement of technology, Toby says he doesn’t really foresee any major changes with the work his department does in the future.
“There are always going to be disputes, and you’re always going to end up in court representing somebody on one side of the dispute,” he says.
“I really don’t think in the commercial work that we do that there will be much change.”
The thing that really stands out for him in the midst of his fourth decade with Jacksons is the people he has met over the years.
“I’ve worked with a lot of great characters,” he says.
“When I started, the partners would have been younger than I am now but to me they all looked so old, as a fresh-faced 16-year-old!
“There were some lively, funny characters who were part of the history of Jacksons and had been there 20 to 30 years when I started.”
Toby realises not many people stay in jobs as long as he has – but he plans to stay with the firm for his entire career.
“In ten years’ time, I’ll have been here 45 years and will be 61, looking towards retirement!” he says.
Asked what advice he would give to today’s school leavers, college students and undergraduates, Toby simply says: “Stick at it!
“As long as you’re doing something you’re enjoying and there is progression, you should keep putting the work in and showing enthusiasm,” he advises.
“You will reap the rewards in the long term.”
For more information on careers with Jacksons, visit https://www.jacksons-law.com/careers-job-vacancies-teesside-newcastle/
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