Nearly seven years into the job as Twenty Essex CEO and Jemma Tagg has certainly made her mark. Last year the former solicitor, who also co-chairs the Legal Practice Management Association (LPMA), was at the heart of several innovative projects to improve life for chambers’ staff and barristers alike.
Having interviewed at Slaughter and May the day after 9/11, Tagg spent six years as a disputes solicitor. She found her true calling in the business of law, however, moving into BD at the firm before joining Twenty Essex in 2017.
After more than a decade of the Bar Council surveying barristers on their working lives, Tagg helped create a similar survey for chambers’ staff and contractors, the results of which were published in December. Jointly run by the LPMA and the Institute of Barristers’ Clerks, the survey sought to benchmark quality of working life for clerks and other staff to aid their future improvement.
Meanwhile, Tagg has led on the design of a new digital practice management system for the Bar with Australian company Barbooks, offering an alternative to only two other software options on the market. Although it will first be adopted by Twenty Essex some time later this year, it is hoped that a number of other sets will come onboard as users in the months that follow.
Closer to home, Tagg oversaw a more than 20 per cent increase in work at Twenty Essex last year, along with the expansion of the chambers’ offices with the acquisition and design of 23 Essex Street.