International Women's Day | Introducing Emma McGrath

To mark International women's day happening this week, we spoke to Emma McGrath from our family law team and asked her to share her story.

Emma McGrath, a Senior Associate in our family law team

Starting out

I left school at 16 years old. I hated being told what to do, I hated studying subjects I had no interest in and I hated feeling bored. I just wanted to leave home, be an adult, work and look after myself. Although that didn’t last long!

After leaving school and spending a few years doing dead-end jobs I realised that I was still bored, but even worse I had no prospect of bettering my position. So I decided to return to education to study for my A levels.

I went to college in Leicester and I studied Law, Politics and Psychology. I did pretty well and the feedback from my lecturers started to give me a bit of the confidence I had been lacking. As I had been able to chose the subjects that I was actually interested in, it really made a difference to me and I started to enjoy studying.

Once I had my A levels in place, I then applied to study law at university and I chose to study in Colchester. After a whirlwind 3 years I graduated.

Shortly after leaving Uni, I married and had my daughter: yes, I was still intent on doing everything the long-winded way.

Balancing law, training and parenthood

Once my daughter was school age, I decided that I really should finish what I started so I took a job with a law firm in Manchester. I was a legal assistant in their immigration department. To be honest, I was just excited to be working in Burnage where Oasis grew up and this was despite the fact they had armed police outside the post office to protect the pensioners on pension day.

However, as far as the job was concerned, I loved it! I loved arguing with the Home Office who, despite popular press opinion, rejected every application for asylum regardless of how horrendous the circumstances, which meant every application ended up in Court where a Judge would make an informed decision. I thought I had found my calling.

However, I was then approached by a specialist family law firm in Manchester who offered me a training contract and, as training contracts were like gold dust back then, I snapped their hands off and joined them.

I spent the next few years covering cases where children had been, or were being, taken into care. I wasn’t sure I was cut out for the job as at the end of the first 5 day trial I sat in on (where a baby was taken from mum and placed with the local authority) I cried all the way home.

However, I plodded on and started to really enjoy the work. I also spent time working in other areas of family law too so my work became more varied over time. Once I started dealing with matrimonial finances, I knew this was a job I could do well.

Whilst working my full-time training contract I was also completing the part-time Legal Practice Course in Chester. I attended Law School for a full weekend once per month but because I was doing it part-time it extended my training contract by a year. I was also raising a young child.

People often ask me how I got through those years but I loved it, it was exciting getting into work and being handed a case I had never seen before and then being sent across Manchester to go to represent someone in Court on short notice. It happened all the time, I would be trying to read my case whilst sitting at traffic lights. It was stressful but it was an adrenalin rush and I thrived on it: not the way you really want to be trained but being thrown in at the deep end really worked for me and I learned a lot in a very short space of time.

The senior Partner of the firm also expected me to work until 1am in the morning with them, every Thursday, to show how keen I was. To be honest, I was not quite that keen but I did what I had to do.

From qualification to building a thriving practice

Once I finally qualified, I decided that working in the office until 1am in the morning was not for me and I moved back to Lincolnshire to be near my family, and my support network, and I never looked back.

As a newly qualified solicitor I joined a family law department at a local law firm. Again, I loved it. However, a recession then hit and, as I was the last one in I was also the first one out. I then joined a firm in Peterborough, again advising on family law matters, and I loved that job too. I would bump into Hegarty solicitors on my lunch hour not knowing what the future held. However, when the recession eased, I was asked to re-join the firm that made me redundant which I did. However, after working back there for a while I did come to the realisation that it simply wasn’t busy enough for me. I missed the buzz of being busy. So I joined a much busier firm, around the same size as Hegarty. I stayed there for around 10 years and by the time I left I was a Partner and I was running the family department. However, for one reason or another I eventually moved on to a firm around three times the size and I was once again made a Partner. I continued to advise on all areas of family law.

After a few years I was looking for a challenge and that opportunity arose when I was offered the opportunity to join Hegarty. Hegarty were proud to be opening a brand new office in Bourne and they were looking for someone to build a new family law case load at the new office. I love working towards something, it’s what keeps me going, and it’s also why I run long distances. So this opportunity suited me well. I would join the office with no cases and build up from there. The office was also closer to where I live. So I seized the chance and joined Hegarty, working in the Peterborough office for a couple of weeks before moving to the new Bourne office, which is thankfully now thriving despite it being such early days for the office.

Settling into Hegarty: A New Chapter in Bourne

I joined Hegarty at the beginning of October 2024 and despite not having been at the firm long, I have happily settled into the Bourne office and continue to take on new family law clients with a view to providing family law advice to the residents in and around the Bourne area. It is a lovely town, a lovely office and it has really given me something to get my teeth into.

If my teachers at school were asked to take a guess at what I had ended up doing with my life, family lawyer would definitely be a surprise to them!