What’s the relationship between diversity and AI? Join us in this episode as your host, Rob Hanna, and guest Nikki Ogun, discuss the importance of D&I in regulatory law, data protection and AI. Nikki is a Senior Associate at Hogan Lovells, where she leads a number of diversity initiatives, including the Black Women in Law Network.  

So why should you be listening in?  

You can hear Rob and Nikki discussing: 

• Nikki’s background and career journey  

• Challenging regulatory issues 

• Insights from the banking industry 

• Evolving D&I in legal leadership 

• Advice for diverse legal professionals  

Transcript

Rob Hanna 00:01 

Welcome to the legally speaking podcast. I’m your host Rob Hanna. This week I’m delighted to be joined by Nikki Ogun. Nikki is a Senior Associate in the global regulatory team at Hogan Lovells in London. She specializes in providing business regulatory advice to businesses in the payments banking and lending industry. She has previously completed to comments at the likes of Lloyds Banking Group and HSBC. Nikki is passionate about advancing diversity at Hogan Lovells and as a member of the Committee of the Hogan Lovells black and minority ethnic network, she is also the proud co founder of The Black Women’s Law Network, Nikki volunteers, her time to speak and educate individuals at legal careers events in London, focusing on diversity. So a very big warm welcome, Nikki. 

Nikki Ogun 00:47 

Thank you, Rob. Good to be here. 

Rob Hanna 00:48 

Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Before we dive into all your amazing projects experiences to date, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the legally speaking podcast widget on a scale of one to 1010 being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law? If you’ve seen it on a scale of one to 10? 

Nikki Ogun 01:10 

I would say it depends on such a lawyer. I would probably give it as a set. I would say maybe six, seven. I say six, seven. I think if I was a US lawyer, I might give it a different answer. Because obviously a lot of the things I have on there quite like us more specific. But yeah, I think six sevens.  

Rob Hanna 01:37 

Yeah, yeah. Seven fair answer. And with that, let’s move swiftly on to talk all about you. So would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey?  

Nikki Ogun 01:47 

Yeah, sure. So I am a senior associate at Hogan Lovells in terms of my background and what I do, so I do regulated financial services law. So primarily advisory law, advising the full spectrum of financial services clients on complying with law and regulation around regulated financial services. And when I say financial services clients, that has to be caveat it now because we have not just your typical banking clients, but we have people who are in the FinTech space. We have people who actually don’t offer financial services as their kind of bread and butter, but they do have an aspect of their business, which involves payments, banking, lending, and we’re finding a lot of companies do that more now than they used to. So when I say full spectrum, it really is full spectrum in terms of my journey into law, so I never know how far back to go. But I studied law at the University of Nottingham that was after a short stint of trying to study economics and changing course. So when I finally left the Uni of Nottingham, I was made an offer to train at Hogan Lovells, which I accepted, very happy. That was my first choice of law firm. I then went to BPP law school. So I did the LPC as it was then I did the accelerated OPC. So I was only doing it for six months. And then I joined my firm in the summer of 2017. So I did four seats, I did data protection, I did regulated financial services, which is where I have no qualified. I did a client to convince Lloyds Banking Group in the consumer finance team. And then finally I did a see in financial services litigation. So a very kind of financial services, Reg, advisory heavy training, contract experience. And then yeah, qualified into my team. And 2019 had been very happily working there since and then very recently got promoted to senior associate. So that was end of April, so a few months ago. So I’m a very junior senior associate. But yeah, that’s kind of like a quick whistlestop tour of my journey. And obviously, we’ll go into a bit more detail about specific aspects as we as we have our chat, but that is me. 

Rob Hanna 03:57 

Yeah. And it’s super impressive. And yeah, obviously super fast career progression as well, which is inspiring for our listeners. And yeah, Nottingham University. I know that well, I had friends there, partakes in campus 14 I have to admit, and I love the I love the energy there and university. But let’s go quickly, one step back before that, what inspired your wish to pursue a career in law or is it something you just fell into? 

Nikki Ogun 04:20 

Good question. I initially wanted to be a banker. And as I kind of hinted, tried to study economics in kind of pursuance of that career, and I think so I come from a legal background. Actually, my mum and dad are both lawyers. But funnily enough, my dad actually used to be at Hogan Lovells when I was like three years old. So yeah, he was originally a tax lawyer. At Hogan Lovells back then it was called Lovells white Duran, but it sets them and I think a part of me was kind of trying to be a bit of a rebel. And so the obvious choice would have been for me to Just go directly into law, don’t waste time do your law degree, you know, it’s the obvious choice, I had quite a bit of legal experience, just you know, bits and bobs of like, helping out my mum and dad in the office. And, and then also, you know, during secondary school, they encouraged you to do all sorts of different types of work experience. And a lot of the work experience I did was quite law heavy, because that was the easiest thing to do, given my background. I personally was really interested in banking, at least, that’s what I felt coming out of college, I enjoyed economics. And I thought, yeah, I could I could do a good job as a banker. And so the initial decision to study economics was it. I think I learned quite quickly that my skills didn’t really align very well with doing a straight economics degree. There was a lot of maths in there. And I’m sure you hear lots of lawyers on this podcast talk about how maths is just not their thing. And I was more interested in kind of the social side of economics, so to speak. So I think I was humbled a bit by how advanced the maths was. And there were other aspects of it that to be honest, I didn’t find that interesting. And begs the question why went into in the first place, but I think at that point, I’ve been kind of used to like making the right academic decisions, nothing was particularly challenging to the point where I couldn’t do it. So everything was kind of conquerable. But I think uni is where that kind of stopped. And so when I realized that economics wasn’t for me, it was quite soon, it was probably like, end of my first year, I would say I was very much like, this is just not, this is not the degree for me. And at that point, I then had to think a lot more sensibly about what my next steps were going to be. Because, as far as I was concerned, you know, not only was time running out in my head anyway, but also uni is not free, right. So I’ve spent a year doing something that I wasn’t enjoying, and I had to make, what I felt was the best decision about where to go next. And at that point, as I’d said, I’d had a lot of legal work experience. I had done enough of economics to know that my skills didn’t lie in the kind of statistical analytics side of things. But I really enjoyed the reading and writing side of economics. So I think the move into law was governed by number one, my background, up until that point, it was very law focused, and I had practical legal work experience that at least told me that I would do okay in the job. And so that was my next move, I decided not to stay on the economics course, I spent a year almost reapplying for the law degree, because I guess as far as my uni were concerned, they were like, well, you could just stay on economics and do a conversion course. But I felt so strongly about, you know, the fact that I wasn’t enjoying myself and economics on the economics course. And I didn’t see myself spending two more years doing something that really just wasn’t for me. So I managed to persuade the uni to let me change to study law instead. And so it’s not the typical answer where people say, you know, I was passionate about law from a really young age. And I knew that I wanted to go into it. I could have gone into it earlier. But I think that if I had studied law to start with, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much, because in my mind, I would have been thinking that, Oh, there’s something else I should be doing or could be doing. Whereas actually, I think the way that I did, it was almost in the reverse. I tried something else. I was like, that is definitely not for me. And so then I had to think about okay, well, what is for me? What are your skills? What can you do? Well, what would you genuinely enjoy? And I think that’s what then kind of pushed me around to doing law. And the benefit of having done my first year of uni already, and then doing it again, the law degree, is that I kind of knew exactly what to do. I hit the ground running. So I didn’t have the first year of mucking about some people have at uni, because I’d done a first year already. And I didn’t want to have to do it again. And so yeah, like slightly different route into deciding that I wanted to be a lawyer, but I am happy with the decision. So that’s good.  

Rob Hanna 09:02 

Yeah. And the success speaks for itself as well, in terms of how you progress. And I guess, let’s get let’s get up to sort of present day because we’ve touched on it. You’re you’re a senior associate at Hogan Lovells in the sort of global regulatory side of things. So, again, for those that are less familiar, you touched on it before, tell us a little bit more about the regulatory advice, you know, touch on a bit more around the clients and what a typical day looks like for you. I think they’ll be super helpful for our listeners.  

Nikki Ogun 09:25 

Yeah, good question. And to be honest, this is one that I I tried to get across quite a bit because when you hear about law firms like Hogan Lovells and other similar sized firms, people talk a lot about the corporate work, the transactional work, see a lot about disputes, litigation, arbitration, etc. And I don’t think that Reagan advisory work gets the spotlight that some of the other areas of law do so it’s nice to be able to do that. And so essentially, the way the way that I tried to describe it to people is that there are a lot of areas of law that are very highly regulated. So the You know, you have the side where a client obviously has to think about, you know, piece of legislation or the different types of laws that might apply to them. But in terms of how they run day to day, it’s not necessarily based on kind of specific legislation or laws. Whereas in the industries that my clients operate in, there is that angle where they have to also think not only about what law applies to them, but also what a regulator is doing. So what the regulator thinks, in my area, it’s mainly the Financial Conduct Authority, or the Prudential Regulation Authority, and there are other kind of relevant regulatory bodies as well in the financial services space. And, and so what that does is it, it makes the advice that we have to give them quite specific, so not just okay, this is how you comply with the law. But also, the regulator in this space is very focused on the area that you’re trying to go into. And these are the things that you need to focus on to make sure that you not only get it right in terms of strict legal compliance, but also making sure that you maintain a good relationship with the regulators, making sure that you don’t become a company that’s constantly getting into trouble. And that kind of thing gives you that extra layer of work to do. And I think that makes the work quite interesting and quite different, I guess from other things that people might experience when they go into, you know, big law firms like this. And so, as I mentioned, the clients that we work for, across the board, there are so many different types, but we’ve served for a very long time, you know, you’re very well known banks. But we’re also moving now a lot more into the kind of FinTech space. So, we actually have a program called the FinTech mentor program, where we onboard a cohort of FinTech companies every year. And what we do is we provide them with 25,000 pounds worth of free legal advice and 25,000 pounds each obviously, not spread between the 10 of them. And what that does, is that we get to make sure that up and coming FinTech companies who might not always have the budget to spend on big law firms, at the kind of early stage, get the advice and support that they need to make sure that they’re doing things right from the beginning. And it saves them a lot of time and money trying to correct things down the line when they’ve scaled up, and they’re looking for investment. And then it turns out that, okay, they haven’t really sought the right legal advice early on. And so that, in that sense, it helps them a lot in terms of getting off the ground in a way that’s legally compliant, and making sure that it’s aligned with what the regulators expect. And it also helps us to kind of learn from them, look at what they’re doing, see how they do things differently, and kind of think about how to apply some laws and regulations that have been around for a long time to very new and innovative styles of business. And what happens typically, at the end and happy scenario is that even once there, you know, allocation is finished, they tend to stay with us, because we’ve obviously given them advice from the beginning. We understand their business, how they operate, what the issues are, that affect them. And we can continue to kind of maintain that relationship on an ongoing basis. So that’s typically what happens with those clients. And then yeah, as I mentioned, there are other clients who are not financial service providers, typically, but who are looking at incorporating payments lending into their day to day business. And we are advising those clients as well. And in terms of day to day. So as I said, a lot of the work circulates around giving people advice. And that advice takes lots of different formats. So it could be you know, preparing a presentation on a new piece of legislation and explaining to somebody exactly how it’s going to impact their business or a specific product that they’ve launched or trying to launch. There could be the scenario where there’s a question or an issue that’s affecting the business. And they need a note of advice to tell them exactly what they need to be thinking about what the potential risks and issues are laid out in a kind of almost essay style format, which actually is my was my favorite type of work. And we also then have the kind of okay, looking at new product launches. So advising on that, again, what kind of things that they need to consider if they’re moving into a new space. We have what we call, I guess, dealing with not necessarily heat issues, but you do get clients who for whatever reason, there’s been an incident, or they may not have complied with a specific piece of regulation or legislation, and they’re concerned about what the impacts of them on them might be. And in those cases, they might, you know, essentially ring us up in a panic and tell us what’s happened and ask us to advise ad hoc, and other times, it’s more considered and we can like sit down with them, you know, give them a real walkthrough of what the potential concerns might be and how to deal with it. So in some cases, they might need to remediate customers, for example, and we guide them through that whole journey. So there’s lots of different types of advice that we can give. We also run search So there are clients who we kind of have like an ongoing a month, it might be a monthly or quarterly call with them. And we asked them to send us in questions about different aspects of law regulation. And literally, we sit on the call, we answer each one. And so giving them the answers over the phone in what we call, like, almost like a surgery. So there are lots of different formats that that advice can take. And I suppose a typical day would involve progressing each of those forms of advice. And, and it gives me a good mix between doing work by myself. So sometimes the advice is something that, you know, I can do the research, I can answer the question, one on one, and I don’t need anybody else to kind of get involved or help me. And there are other times where it’s a big project, if we’re doing like, you know, a big review of terms and conditions, for example, that’s where you would typically have, you know, more team members involved, from, you know, training all the way up to partner. And there is a good mix of work in that sense. So I think I’m pretty much evenly split between work that I’m usually doing with other people, and then work that I might kind of be running almost independently. And so yeah, it the typical day, I guess there isn’t really one. But I would be doing different things to progress each of those pieces of advice, basically on a day to day basis. So it’s having internal calls with the team if we’re working as a team on a specific piece of work. And it might be a call with the client to give them a piece of advice over the phone, a lot of it will be time spent kind of progressing the matters just working on them, you know, building up the advice, no preparing the presentation, or preparing for a workshop with a client wherever it might be. So it’s a mixture of those different tasks. And then obviously, you know, spending time doing things which are not necessarily chargeable work, but which still help to develop the business of the team and the firm. And so there’s that kind of aspect of things, which I would also add spending at least I would say, like half an hour to an hour depending on the day. But doing work which is not chargeable, but which is important for business development.  

Rob Hanna 17:02 

So, you know, thank you for giving such a comprehensive overview. And I like the FinTech approach as well, because I always say like customer lifetime value, the more that you can go in front load that customer lifetime value, like you say you give them 25,000 pounds, you know, their business, you build the relationship, you showcase the value, it’s easily then to naturally sort of foster and nurture that. And yeah, you gave a really good, bro a broad brush of what you get up to, you know, two days the same. You talked about banks, and you’ve had experience of going on so common to lots of Lloyds and HSBC. So what insights Did you garner from your time with those? 

Nikki Ogun 17:35 

um, so two different supplements. So I did one as a trainee to Lloyds Banking Group, as you mentioned, and I was in their consumer finance team. And then my second one was to HSBC, and I was in their global banking and Markets team. And so the consumer finance one was kind of more directly related to the work that I do now in the sense that the products that we’re working on credit cards, loans, mortgages, that’s kind of like the bread and butter of my team. And I think actually from a trainee development perspective, that specific secondment was really important for me. Lloyds Banking Group are a big client of the firm. And actually, I am the Client Development Associate now for Lloyds Banking Group at my firm. But we whilst I was on secondment, I think I’ve got a really good sense of kind of the level of development is expected of kind of later stage trainees. So you know, you come into a bank where they don’t necessarily have the same categorizations of the case of first see trainee does this in a second seat trainee does that. And so we’re very defined and understood. And when I got in there, it was kind of like Nikki from legals here, Nikki from legal was on the call. And this whole idea of, oh, well, I’m just a third seat trainee kind of went out the window. And, but from a development perspective, it was really, really good for me. So in terms of like, just taking charge of matters, being able to kind of give advice to the business, which is from an internal perspective. So obviously, I was working in their, you know, internal legal department. And it’s a different level of communication skill that you would need to use compared with communicating with clients when you’re working in private practice in a law firm. So understanding how to speak to the business and give them legal advice in a way that works for them without kind of making it seem like the legal team are trying to block the business from doing everything they want to do is quite specific skill. So I think that really helps me with my kind of client communication skills overall, because you really do understand how different your different clients are, and how important it is to know them and know their personality so that you can understand the best way to communicate your legal advice. And I think as an advisory lawyer, that is like key information that you really can’t let go off. So I think that was super helpful for me. So not just being able to kind of help to maintain the relationship with a big client, but really just understanding them from the inside. I think that’s what the most important thing that I got from that secondment. When I was at HSBC, the work was slightly different to what I typically do in my team. It was more like to do with banking, or providing banking and banking services to really large, global corporates. And they have a very specific type of like accounting and banking style, whereas a lot of the work that I do in my team is more around the retail and like consumer finance kind of space. Having said that, a lot of the kind of key principles around providing a banking relationship were the same. And again, I think getting that understanding of how the bank actually works internally, very useful for me at that point, I was a qualified lawyer as well. So, you know, the trainee bubble had popped. And I was really newly qualified, I think I had only been qualified for about, I would say, maybe like three or four months when I went on that secondment, so very junior. But giving advice as a qualified lawyer felt quite different. And obviously doing it from inside the client, again, was just a really great learning perspective that I got from there. So super useful secondments. And I think in terms of being able to come back to my firm, and maintain relationships with people who I hadn’t met on secondment, who often, you know, you end up meeting again, in different places, sometimes they move around to different banks. And, you know, you remember having done to conference with them. And it’s a really great way to kind of build your client relationships. So aside from the learning that you get in terms of the actual work that you’re doing, I think just understanding that client communication, having a real like commercial mindset, when it comes to giving advice to clients, because you have actually worked there, and you’ve been, you’ve been there, you understand how tunes are made, you understand why a massive project might get kicked off with this huge budget, and everybody involved and you know, you’re giving advice as a lawyer. And then all of a sudden, there seems to be a massive change in direction, being able to see those kinds of things from the inside is really helpful. Because when you go back to your firm, you can almost understand why certain things happen in the way that they do. And where you have specific stakeholders, who are the decision makers, understanding, you know, what might be the pressure point, what you might need to do to make sure that a specific idea or a specific way of doing things from a legal perspective, can get over the line, because you might get some people in the business who are not happy with an approach to something and you have to think about the best way to communicate that and help the business to get over that. So understanding the different stakeholders, the different decision makers, the way things work, the governance processes, valuable insight that I don’t really think it’s easy to get without having spent time with that client. So yeah, as you can see, I’m a big fan of comments. 

Rob Hanna 22:57 

But they’ve shaped your career, haven’t they? And they’ve given you both sides of the coin and probably a more rounded lawyer. So I think you gave some really good case studies there. Could you give an example of a challenging regulatory issue, you’ve helped a client navigate? 

Nikki Ogun 23:11 

I think one of them a good one, probably to mention, because it’s something that’s coming up soon, is about incoming changes to abscam refunds and reimbursements for people who have basically been the victim of what we call authorized push payment fraud. So fraud where you’ve essentially made a payment from your bank account to somebody or for a purpose, which you think is legitimate, but ends up being fraudulent. And the distinction there is that it’s authorized. So it’s not like, you know, someone stealing your bank card and making a transaction, it’s actually you have authorized it, you’ve said, Yes, I want to make this payment. But unfortunately, you weren’t aware that the person that you were paying was a fraudster or what you thought you were paying for, is not what you’re getting, essentially. And so there are changes coming in on seventh of October, about the level of reimbursement that customers can get if they are the victim of those scams. And different kind of information that has to be given to in terms of the decision that is made about whether somebody is owed a refund or not. And the length of time that has to be spent in terms of being able to give them that refund, for example. And what we found is that because of the way that the and I’m trying to answer this in a way that doesn’t make any specific, you know, regulatory body looked bad. There has been a lot of kind of industry discussion about the changes that are coming in the level of reimbursement, and also just kind of specific aspects of the changes that haven’t yet been kind of completely ironed out. But because the changes are coming in so soon, and banks are required to inform customers about the way that their accounts are going to be dealt with. Changes are having to be made to customers terms and conditions to make sure that they’re informing customers about These changes. And so what we’ve been trying to help clients navigate is, I guess redrafting their customer terms in a way that explains what’s about to happen, even though the changes haven’t fully come into effect yet. And it’s not entirely clear how they might play out for specific customers, because a lot of this is still kind of in flux. So there’s a lot of quiet kind of detailed consideration that we’ve had to give to the way that we describe these things. And because obviously, on the one hand, you need to be legally compliant, and you need to do what regulators and the government are saying that you should do. But also in an area where things are still quite uncertain. And there’s a lot of debate about whether or not these changes should be being made, for example. It’s quite a difficult area to grapple with. So we’ve had quite a few clients coming to us asking us, you know, how do we make sure that this is covered in our terms, even though we’re not exactly sure what these changes are going to look like? And that’s been quite interesting, because I think, you know, you deal with clients who are obviously very sophisticated and very keen to get things right. But sometimes the regulatory environment that they operate in doesn’t always allow them to do that in the best way. So it’s kind of working with them, in that sense to make sure that they get things right, essentially, 

Rob Hanna 26:17 

Yeah, and I love your partnering approach, everything that you sort of describe and articulate you’re very relationship and partner driven as well, which I think is really important as a lawyer, and obviously probably why you’ve also progressed really well to senior associate at a relatively, you know, low PQ level, which is great. Let’s talk about data protection, everyone loves a bit of data protection. With the obviously increasing concerns around data protection, what are the main compliance issues financial services companies need to be aware of?  

Nikki Ogun 26:45 

So I mean, obviously, data protection, I’ve spent a good amount of time as a trainee. Really enjoyed that seat. And as you said, yeah, it’s a big topic on a lot of people’s agendas. I think one of the key things that’s obviously coming up a lot now is the use of AI in financial services. So kind of the connection between using people’s information using artificial intelligence to make your systems, your processes, etc, more efficient, but also doing that in a way that is compliant with laws that are incoming about the use of AI systems. And I think that’s probably the main thing that people need to keep in mind. And so, at least in the UK, there’s still a lot of discussion about what AI regulation is going to look like. There are lots of different regulators who kind of have a hand in shaping AI regulation. So you’ll have the FCA, you have Competition and Markets Authority. You’ll have the Information Commissioner’s offices office, obviously, from a data protection perspective. So they’re still working out what AI regulation is going to look like. But I think there’s going to be a lot more focus on the use of AI systems, making sure that they’re being used in a way that’s fair, but still uphold people’s data protection rights. But also doesn’t mean that, you know, financial services, companies using them kind of fall behind the curve, in a sense, because everybody wants to keep up, everyone wants to make sure that they’re, you know, remaining competitive. And so they want to use these systems, whether it’s for doing people’s credit checks, or, you know, background checks on people, for example, when they’re applying for loans, and, but they want to be able to do that in a way that is compliant. And I think it’s going to be quite a delicate balance. So I probably say that’s the most important thing for people to keep an eye out. So at the moment, I know that the EU has introduced kind of an AI act. And even though obviously, we’re not in the EU, it is good to keep an eye on what’s happening in Europe, because that will sometimes not all the time, but sometimes give an indication of what the UK might do. There are obviously areas where, you know, we have completely diverged from them. But I would definitely say that that is something to keep an eye out for, because it’s likely that some of the features of the Act will be replicated in the UK. So that’s definitely an area that I would say financial services companies need to kind of keep their eye out for. And generally, we get a lot of questions about kind of retention of customer information. So in, I guess an age where it’s really important to try and keep a record of what’s happening in terms of relationship with customers from a financial services perspective, whether that’s for kind of for protection purposes, or protecting yourself against litigation down the line. A lot of people ask questions about how long they should be keeping customers records for. And there are lots of different regulations and lots of different regulators that play a part in what the kind of length of time you keep customer information for should be. But again, from a data protection perspective, all of those different requirements do need to be balanced with the need to make sure that you’re not holding people’s data for longer than you should do not keeping it for longer than is needed for whichever purpose we’re using it for. So, again, I think that is a more specific area, but something that comes up quite a lot and has a kind of data protection angle for financial services companies. 

Rob Hanna 30:06 

Yeah. And I always say specific is terrific. So thank you for those examples really, really helpful. Um, let’s switch up a little bit. So I want to talk about a topic that I know you’re passionate about, which is diversity and inclusion. And I know you’re a member of the steering committee for Hogan Lovells black and minority ethnic network. So what initiatives have you been part of? What’s been their impact? What what’s your passion? Schemmel?  

Nikki Ogun 30:29 

Yeah, so I’ve been on the steering committee for art, we call it the real network. So it’s race and ethnicity at Hogan Lovells are EHL. We’re very, very proud of that name. So I’ve been on the steering committee since 2019. So long standing committee member. And essentially, we’re there to support the firm and the initiatives that it comes up with to progress develop support black and ethnic minority lawyers at the firm. And that has taken a lot of different formats. So a lot of what we do is around what we call kind of race fluency. So making sure that people in the office feel comfortable talking about race, and they understand different concepts around race, diversity, ethnicity, etc. And they’re able to have like an open and engaging discussion about those concepts, because you find that a lot of the time, if you come in, and you try to kind of impose this idea of, okay, we well, this is how we’re going to do things, this is a new policy. And everybody simply has to follow it, because it’s important from an AI perspective, to make sure that everyone’s included, etc. If people don’t have the tools to talk about race, comfortably and openly, a lot of those things tend not to be successful. And so we really tried to run a campaign to make sure that okay, everybody understands at a base level, different issues around race and feels comfortable talking about them. So we went as far as running like a comms campaign where we had posters up in the lifts. And it was that they cover topics like, you know, is it okay to ask my colleague where they’re from? Or where they’re really from? Is it okay to talk to my colleague about fasting, for example, so, so there were lots of different things that we thought people might not feel comfortable to openly ask questions about, but might need information around. So we did a lot around that, in terms of my specific role on the committee. So I am really passionate about recruitment. That is my thing. It’s always been my thing since I joined the firm, and specifically recruitment of diverse talent. And so one of the main initiatives that I run on the steering committee is a yearly open day for black and ethnic minority students slash aspiring lawyers, some of them are graduates. And so what that is, is a day where they come into the firm, and they sit through various different sessions, application workshops, commercial awareness, workshops, panel discussions, from trainees, panel discussions from lawyers. All of that is to try and help them to make more confident and eventually successful applications to the firm. Because you find that one of the big pitfalls, especially from people, for people from diverse backgrounds, is that they don’t get enough legal work experience. And they don’t get enough exposure to law firms, such as Hogan Lovells. And I suppose that hinders them when it comes to applying, because in terms of being able to show, okay, you know, I’ve been committed to this career, because I’ve done all of these things, I’ve spent time with all of these law firms, sometimes they simply don’t have that because they don’t have the right networks. And so what this does is it opens up the doors of the firm, there are no entry requirements. So it’s not, you know, please submit an application to come, it’s really like first come first served. And it just gives them something that they can be able to say, Okay, I’ve got this experience, I spent a day at this firm, this, these are the people that I’ve spoken to this is what I’ve learned. And the whole point is to make it more likely that they will make a successful application to the firm. So we’ve had a lot of success with that open down one, what we do is we track people. So when they do eventually apply and hopefully, you know, become successful become trainees, obviously, not everybody will, but many of them do. We track back to see you know, what events have they attended, and a lot of them will have attended the real open day or other similar initiatives. So that’s been really useful for us, I think in terms of just widening access to the firm. And there are various different initiatives that we do, but that’s the one specifically that I run. So there’s that I would say that’s kind of the main thing that I’m responsible for. But also when people are in the firm, so I run various different schemes. So we’ve got what’s called the real buddy scheme, for example. So when people come through on the vacation scheme, they are offered the chance to have a buddy from the race and ethnicity network, and that buddy is not necessarily a lawyer. So we have people from legal and business services who partake as mentors. And all that is is to give people on the vacation scheme. Another point of contact in the firm, somebody who is a member of our race ethnicity network, and who can give them guidance whilst they’re on the back scheme. Talk to them about what we do around diversity and inclusion. And just make sure that they get a kind of different angle to understanding who we are as a firm because vacation The scheme two weeks, three weeks, you might not get all of that if you don’t get to engage with people, you know, in different parts of the firm in that very short space of time. So it’s just to give them that extra bit of support. And hopefully, by the time they then come to the interview, at the end, they’ve got more of an understanding of who Hogan Lovells are, and hopefully makes it more likely that there’ll be successful. So there are a couple of initiatives that I run that, I suppose as opposed to make sure that we are, you know, recruiting a diverse pool of people coming into the firm, and making sure that people feel supported, and they aren’t supported. And they understand that this is a firm that they would kind of be included in when they get here. 

Rob Hanna 35:37 

Yeah, and it’s creating that sense of belonging isn’t it as well, which is super important. You’re going to get some fantastic examples. Thanks for that. Probably quite a big question. But how do you see diversity evolving in the legal sector, particularly thinking about it from trainee level through to senior associate and even managing partner level?  

Nikki Ogun 35:55 

Good question. I mean, when I joined the firm, which back in 2017, there was a lot of focus around diversity of gender. So lots of firms were focused at that time about in terms of making sure that they get women could not just coming into the firm, but progressing. setting targets feet, you know, like the level of partnership that would be made up by women, for example. And there was quite a heavy focus on that. And I think a lot of firms have been quite successful in meeting those goals. And there wasn’t, at least at that time, very much discussion about racial and ethnic diversity. I think now, it’s definitely more prominently on the agenda for a lot of the big law firms. That’s also partly because it’s it’s been client driven. So you find that a lot of clients are requesting information about diversity and inclusion are the firm’s that they are using for their legal work, putting on their panels, and making sure that they are meeting certain thresholds before they’re even considered to do you know, a specific piece of work. So some of that is driven by clients. And so I do think a lot of it is filtering through because law firms are thinking a lot more innovatively now about how to make sure that they do get diverse people coming through the doors. And not just that, but also progressing. So it you know, everything is taken in stages. But before the focus was okay, how do we recruit, making sure that people come in. But then there’s, you know, there’s a lot of discussion about retention rates, and what we call this the state gap. So the difference between the amount of time that somebody from a black or ethnic minority background stays at a law firm compared with their white counterparts. And you find that at a lot of law firms, there is a big difference between the length of tenure for black and ethnic minority associates, for example. And, and so now, I think a lot of firms, including Hogan, Lovells are focusing more heavily on Okay, when people are here, how do we make sure that they stay? What is it that helps them you know, to be retained, and to feel included and feel like they want to stay at this firm. And, and I think a lot of firms are following that same kind of trend to looking a lot more at that kind of like inclusion point. Also the topic of equity. So before it used to be kind of equality, but now this idea that not necessarily treating everybody equally, but treating people differently based on their specific needs. So the idea that we should be treating people equitably, has definitely come to the fore. So where people talk about D E, I, the E now stands for equity rather than equality. And if somebody needs a specific level of support, you meet them at their point of need, which is obviously very useful for people from diverse backgrounds. And the other thing that I would say is that there are different aspects of diversity, which I think are also now becoming quite important. So a lot of firms are looking at, for example, social mobility. At Hogan Lovells, we recently established the social mobility network. So looking at the support for people who haven’t necessarily come from the same socio economic background as other people in the firm or the kind of majority group of the firm. But ensuring that again, they get into the firm they progressed, they are, you know, developed, whilst they’re here is a really important thing for a lot of law firms. And also, I would say, neurodiversity, again, has become a big topic. And it’s always been important, but I think now, a lot of firms are waking up to that because diversity and inclusion is sometimes slightly easier to tackle, or at least identify issues with, well, it’s things that are visible. So if you can see that someone is a woman or you can see somebody as black or from an ethnic minority, and you have a specific approach to supporting them and developing them because the issues that they might face, it’s easier to know what they might be because you can physically see what characteristics they fall within. Whereas I think where people have, I guess some characteristics of diversity that not always visible, it is a little bit more difficult to identify those initially. And I think a lot of really good work is being done. I mean, I don’t know about other law firms, because I’m not there. But a lot of good work is being done at Hogan Lovells to make sure that people are supporting those who are from neurodiverse backgrounds. And we’ve done a lot of so we had, like an autism visibility week, which was really, really helpful. But just teaching people about the kind of different aspects of neurodiversity and how they would like to, you know, how they should be addressed in the workplace, and how we can make sure that we support people who face different issues that you might not always be able to see just from looking at them. So that’s how I see I think, in the next few years, the kind of dei agenda of firms changing because I think there will be a continued focus on race and ethnicity. But I think they’re going to start focusing a lot more on neuro neuro diversity, social mobility. And I guess, at that point, something else will become, you know, the main area of focus. But I do think I mean, it’s controversial, because people say, you know, you should focus on everything. But I do think that it’s good that, you know, people have something on their agenda, they do things to try and improve the experience of people who might be from a specific background or face a specific hardship, and they see what works. And then they kind of replicate that for other different types of diversity, which I think is probably the only real way that a lot of these things will get dealt with. So yeah, and there’s, there is no end date, there’s never going to be okay, everybody has been treated the same. And everybody has a perfect experience. There are always going to be issues, but I think firms approaches to dealing with them are going to change and develop. And I think that’s a positive thing. 

Rob Hanna 41:51 

Yeah. And it’s clear that you’re taking action, right, and, you know, progress over perfection, you know, you continue to look into progress get better. And as you say, there will be moving parts to it all. But again, really good overview there. Thank you. Because you’re also the co founder of the black women in law network. So could you tell us a bit about that network? And are there any upcoming projects you’re excited about? You’d like to share with our listeners? 

Nikki Ogun 42:15 

Um, yes, I can tell you about the network. So we are so it’s called the black woman’s law network. And we it’s funny, we actually initially started off through clubhouse. So you know, during lockdown days when lots of people were on the clubhouse app, I know that you’re on there as well, because we had a few sessions on there. I initially ran those clubhouse sessions, because to be honest, everyone was inside, it was quite easy to kind of gather around the lawyers that I knew and get them to speak on panels about different aspects of working as a black woman in the law. And when everybody kind of went back outside the clubhouse version, and didn’t, there was a lot of discussion about bringing it back in real life, but I didn’t at the time know quite what that would look like. And thankfully, I connected with loners, every who’s my co founder, and a few other people who are now kind of asked our committee members, and just working out how we could do this in a way that works for people in real life. And so we’ve got lots of input from different people, and obviously, from the sticker itself. And what we’ve now got is a network, which is there to kind of help black women lawyers, aspiring lawyers as well, to kind of connect learn from each other. And we do that in a variety of formats. We have so far we’ve had a launch party, which is great. Just to get everybody in the same room, mingling mixing get to know each other before we get into our kind of actual formal events. We’ve done a few collaborative events. So we have worked with the East London Business Alliance and Linklaters to hold two sessions at both held at Linklaters offices. One was about the power of networking. And another one was a career insights for lawyers event. But making sure that our members kind of get access to different people in the legal industry, who they might be able to learn from connect with and used for their development, essentially. But also the key thing really is for people to be able to make friends. Because what we found is that at least for a lot of black women in law, they are working in companies or working at law firms where they might be one of the very few or one of the group of very few people. So it kind of helps to people, people to kind of expand that network that they’ve got and interact with people who are in a similar position to them, but might not work at the same firm. So it’s really to give them that base that friendship that they might not get elsewhere. Our Instagram is black woman’s law network. So please do reach out if you’re interested in becoming a member so that we can make sure that you get all the information about what we’re doing next first, because yeah, we found that we put things out on our socials and tickets disappear in like, you know, a matter of hours. So we’re trying to make sure that Get this membership thing, right so that people find out about the information first before it goes out to kind of the general public.  

Rob Hanna 45:07 

So yeah, yeah, it’s a testament to the great work and value that you’re providing. And you know, this has been a thoroughly enjoyable conversation as I knew it was going to be full of lots of practical tactical insights as well and your career journey, which is inspiring for many listening. So just finally, then you volunteered speak at legal events, focusing on diversity? What message do you hope to convey for aspiring professionals from diverse backgrounds? And what advice would you give those interested in pursuing a career in financial regulatory sectors? 

Nikki Ogun 45:35 

Oh, gosh, great, great question. Um, I would definitely say, in terms of my experience, having worked as a black woman lawyer, at Hogan Lovells at a firm like this for as many years as I have, I would definitely say the best thing that you can do is use what makes you different to your advantage. I think for a very long time, there was never really a spotlight on people who are different. And everybody felt the need to kind of assimilate and be like everybody else to be successful. Whereas there were a lot more examples now of people who do things differently, who are from different backgrounds, who are successful in law, and who have made that their thing. So wherever that is for you, I think, use that that uniqueness as your way to become successful in the law, because what you’ll find is that in terms of being relatable to clients, and to other people, people do like that aspect of difference. And that’s helped me massively having different things to connect with people on just giving people a different perspective, I think you often get when you are from a kind of diverse background, and you’ve had a slightly different route into the law. So really try to use that as the thing that makes you stand out for positive reasons. And I think in terms of financial regulation, I would definitely say stay on top of what’s going on. There are a lot of things I think, in financial services that people would be familiar with, because they use financial services every day, you have bank accounts, well, most people do. You have bank accounts, people use crypto, people invest. And these are the things that are actually quite common to us in our day to day. And so becoming a financial services lawyer is almost an obvious choice when you interact with these products and services on a day to day basis. Because you can often give advice about what a customer would expect to see what a customer experience would be to a client because you effectively are that customer. So I would say like use your real life experience to kind of govern where you end up in financial services law, because actually, that tends to be what makes you a good lawyer, someone who can think like a consumer. And obviously, you would have the business knowledge as well, having worked with various different clients, so it’s much easier than you think, to enjoy. And yeah, just keep your options open, like expand your horizons. I think like I said, there are lots of areas of law which tend to get a massive spotlight and I think it’s really good to kind of explore different areas that you might not have obviously thought about, but which might end up being really useful for you 

Rob Hanna 48:03 

So yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, your your journey is a testament to that you gave a shout out before to the the black women’s law network and socials. I’d love for you. So I’m sure our listeners who want to learn more about your career or indeed Hogan Lovells, where can they go to find out more about anything we’ve discussed today? Feel free to share any social media handles any website links will also share them with this episode for you too.  

Nikki Ogun 48:24 

Yes, sure. So I actually have I’ve got a dedicated Twitter page for law related things, which I’m gonna be posting on more. It’s just law with Nikki and I’m sorry, it’s not good Twitter anymore. It’s x now. So Lord, Nikki has my specific page for law related updates on x. And then yeah, the black woman’s law network is my other social media handle which i i am at the stage of still running in the accounts with the committee because we were a small team. But it’s BW law network on x and then black woman’s law network on Instagram. Fabulous. 

Rob Hanna 48:59 

Well, Nikki, thank you so so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the legally speaking podcast, wishing you lots of continued success with your career but for now from all of us. Over and out.