Legal Unmasked Brings Together Legal Leaders to Explore Neurodiversity Authentic Leadership and Inclusive Workplace Conversations

Programming example

I’ve been reflecting on last week’s hashtag#LegalUnmasked - it felt so different from most professional events I’ve attended.Huge thanks to Jessica Lazarus , the other speakers and everyone who made it such an open, thoughtful and genuinely welcoming space.What particularly stayed with me was how naturally neurodiversity had been considered in the design of the event itself. Not tokenism. Authentic and unapologetic. An understanding built from the combination of science and lived experience.🤿 A lot of the discussion touched on masking, self-regulation and the hidden effort that many neurodivergent professionals put into navigating environments built around unwritten rules. That resonates.❇️ During my panel, I found myself reflecting on school, early professional life and the long process of learning that success is not always simply about hard work, or even delivery. Sometimes it is about understanding styles of communication, hierarchy and social expectations that nobody explains to you. Maybe neurotypical people “just know” and no explanation is required.❇️ I remember moments as a child where enthusiasm or curiosity seemed to land badly and not really understanding why. At the age of seven, I remember putting my hand up in French class, taught by my headmaster, and complimenting him on his bow tie. No idea why I did that. I might as well have been asking for the souls of his firstborn. I was labelled “precocious” for the remainder of my time there.❇️ Later, in private practice and then in boardrooms, I realised there were still countless unwritten rules to navigate — just in more sophisticated forms, and still with the jeopardy of labels. I am now very careful not to comment on ties. I am relieved they seem to have largely exited the corporate wardrobe.❇️ Even when you start to decode the rules, they are not always an easy fit. One of the things I’ve come to realise over time is that many neurodivergent people spend enormous energy trying to regulate themselves into “fitting”. But there is also a danger in overcorrecting. If you spend your whole life trying not to be too much, you can slowly lose some of the very things that make you who you are: curiosity, pattern-spotting, working out underlying intent, openness.At hashtag#LegalUnmasked, there was less pressure to perform professionalism in a narrowly defined way. Less self-editing — this was the director’s cut.hashtag#LegalUnmasked hashtag#Neurodiversity hashtag#ADHD hashtag#Leadership hashtag#LegalLeadership hashtag#Inclusion hashtag#NeurodiversityAtWork hashtag#generalcounsel Tina Squire, PCC, ACCG Helen Burness Prof. Amanda Kirby MBBS MRCGP PhD FCGI Christopher Hurst Dr Ruth Briant-Jones Sarah Clark Marco Mendola Rory Bremner Misha Patel Nicki Schroeder Paula Hatfield Kate Gaskell

Communities

• Disability & Neurodiversity

Formats

• Panels
• Speaker Presentation

Goals

• Grow