Paige Skudder qualified as a solicitor in March 2025, but the weekly sessions that got her there started months earlier. Every week, her supervisor Laura Mackain-Bremner carved out time—not for case reviews or billing targets, but for questions, doubts, and the thousand small uncertainties that come with finding your feet in a profession.
Those sessions worked.
Now Skudder, based at Clarke Willmott’s Taunton office, is encouraging others to replicate what she describes as a “wonderful and collaborative relationship” with Mackain-Bremner. Yet the story doesn’t start there. It runs back through three generations of women lawyers, each lifting the next, each passing on what they learned from the woman before.
Mackain-Bremner, now a partner in the commercial and private client litigation team, had her own mentor: Esther Woolford, a partner and solicitor advocate who joined the firm in 2013. “When I first joined Clarke Willmott, Laura, who was my supervisor, kindly offered me weekly one to ones,” Skudder explained. “Those sessions often involved talking through my workload or exploring the many questions that naturally come with finding your feet.”
The format was simple. The impact wasn’t.
“I’ve benefited enormously from Laura’s time, her investment in my development, and her willingness to share her knowledge, experience, and support,” Skudder said. “In return, I’ve had the chance to learn from her supportive leadership style, the way she works with clients, and her approach to business development.”
Mackain-Bremner traces her own approach directly to Woolford, who showed her what deliberate investment in junior colleagues could achieve. She described herself as “extremely lucky” to have had that example. “During my career I have seen a year-on-year rise in the number of female solicitors, and it is so wonderful to see more equality generally in the industry,” Mackain-Bremner noted. “I had a wonderful female mentor in Esther, who showed me the difference a strong role model can make, particularly one who lifts you up and encourages you to be better.”
That rise in female solicitors is real—the Law Society’s latest figures show women now make up 52 per cent of practising solicitors in England and Wales, though partnership remains more elusive. By 2023, women held just 33 per cent of partner roles across the profession. Which makes deliberate mentoring chains like this one more significant.
Mackain-Bremner’s position in the middle of the chain—mentored by Woolford, now mentoring Skudder—has shaped how she leads. “As my own career has developed, I’ve found myself increasingly invested in supporting junior colleagues and sharing whatever guidance or insight might help them,” she said. “I believe in championing everyone in the workplace, but there is something special about women lifting each other up. It’s a pleasure to play even a small part in someone’s career journey.”
Woolford, who also heads Clarke Willmott’s agriculture team, sees the investment as practical, not altruistic. “Investing time in junior colleagues not only helps them grow; it strengthens the whole team and the work we deliver to clients, whilst also building a happy and productive team,” she argued. Twelve years into her tenure at the firm, she’s watched the knock-on effects multiply.
The weekly one-to-ones that Mackain-Bremner offered Skudder weren’t mandated by the firm. They weren’t part of a formal programme. They happened because Mackain-Bremner remembered what Woolford had done for her and decided to replicate it.
That’s the chain in action.
“I’m delighted that the guidance I was able to offer Laura has gone on to inspire Paige, creating a chain of support that is helping shape the next generation of women lawyers at the firm,” Woolford said. The language is careful—”inspire,” “support,” “shape”—but the mechanics are concrete. Time set aside. Questions answered. Experience shared.
Clarke Willmott operates across seven offices, including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Southampton, and Taunton. The Taunton office, where this particular chain has taken root, houses the firm’s agriculture team alongside its commercial and litigation practices. Whether the pattern will spread beyond Taunton, or beyond these three lawyers, remains to be seen.
What’s clear is that Skudder, barely two months into her qualification, is already thinking about who comes next. The weekly sessions gave her more than technical knowledge—they gave her a template. Mackain-Bremner modelled how to make time, how to answer questions without condescension, how to treat development as an investment rather than an interruption.
For Woolford, who started the chain back in 2013, the return is now visible. The junior colleague she mentored is mentoring in turn. The approach she demonstrated—carving out time, lifting people up, sharing what you know—has reproduced itself.
The legal profession has long struggled with retention, particularly of women who leave before reaching partnership. Formal mentoring schemes exist at many large firms, often paired with diversity targets and retention bonuses. Yet research from the Solicitors Regulation Authority suggests informal mentoring—the kind that happens outside structured programmes—often proves more effective. The relationship matters more than the framework.
In Taunton, the framework was simple: weekly sessions, open questions, deliberate investment. The results, for Skudder at least, were transformative. Whether she’ll offer the same to the next newly qualified solicitor who joins the team is her decision. But the chain is there, waiting to be picked up again.
