What was your professional background prior to joining Express?

Very little! I had graduated university in a totally unrelated field, I did some self-employed face painting and realised it wasn’t for me. I then started in the admin team at Express, which was my first proper job.

Why did you choose to join Express?

I was a little nervous to join a law firm at first, I thought lawyers would be scary! But during my interview, I heard how friendly everyone was and I immediately saw that first hand. Everyone understood I was new and had a lot of patience, I was very lucky to be looked after by the team.

How did a move into our IT department come about?

I hadn’t even considered a move to IT would be possible until I got talking to an old IT technician who told me he’d done the same. He suggested some reading materials and an exam that I could take. I then spent every lunchtime reading in the post room or out on the roof garden.

I pestered, Partner and Head of IT, Stuart McLachlan regularly to see if there were any trainee roles and, when one did open up, I jumped at the chance.

What skills, training and support were on offer?

Express has really been rooting for me from the get-go and supported me through any struggles I had getting to grips with my new role. The team spent countless hours offering guidance and never made me feel bad for any daft mistakes I made (and I certainly made some!). My trainee role also had a lot of specific Proclaim elements, and the development team would always go into cool details about how things worked so I could really learn Proclaim inside and out. Express also offered external online training courses for all of us to use to work toward advancing our careers to the next level.

What’s it like working as part of an in-house IT team in a law firm?

From an IT perspective, you get to see some really interesting software, including Proclaim and online portals, as well as the countless ways third parties like to share CCTV – which always makes for a fun challenge! On top of that, as someone who enjoys listening to law stories on podcasts or YouTube in my free time, it’s even cooler to hear these stories directly from the lawyer themselves.

What is the most rewarding part about your job?

Although I’d rather someone never feel that panic in the first place, there’s a real pride and joy to being able to recover a document that someone had already written off as a lost cause, either a few hours work lost to a Word crash or a document that had been misplaced. It may not seem like the most exciting thing in the world, but the relief when they realise, they don’t need to redo a ‘ton’ of work never gets old.

Express has experienced rapid growth, what has it been like from your perspective?

It has been a wild ride! Setting up South Court (our new HQ, in South Manchester) is one of those scenarios that would very rarely be experienced by regular in-house IT helpdesk. It taught me a lot about project management just from watching it all happen and though it was a very busy time, I got to have a go at skills that I might never have had the chance to organically learn otherwise, including setting up communications rooms, switches and cabling from scratch.

As we have experience growth in personal and more home working, I have enjoyed the challenge of learning to manage the extra IT requests and how to best allocate tasks to a growing team.

You have experienced several promotions during your time at Express, did you expect to progress as quickly as you have?

If someone told me I’d be becoming 2nd line IT staff when I first joined the admin team, I’d have laughed at them! Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to be where I am today, and I’m forever grateful to Express for giving me this awesome direction for a career.

What is next for you in 2025 and beyond?

There’s going to be a lot of learning in 2025! Now that I’ve finished the general knowledge IT exam, I’m really looking forward to getting to learn more specialist stuff that I’m particularly interested in, I have my eyes on two exams I would like to start. I have the itch to add more to my certifications already. Stuart (head of department) really tries to find each member of the team a niche in that we are skilled at and enjoy, I’m confident that if I can prove my skills then Express will be eager to let me show them off.

What advice would you give to an IT professional considering joining Express?

I would say if you’re looking for somewhere to really put down roots, Express is a great place for long-term employment. You’ll be encouraged to push your career forward with positivity and supported by a fantastic team of folks.

Fancy joining the team?

We are currently recruiting for a number of roles, including positions within our IT department. You can see all our vacancies here.