As part of our 50 Years of Girls at Rugby School celebrations, we are meeting with some of our female Rugbeians to discuss their careers and their time at Rugby School.

In our second feature, we spoke to in-house Lawyer at Team GB, Tilly Bennet-Jones on her time at Rugby and journey as a lawyer.

Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and what lead you to pursue a career as a lawyer?

My name is Tilly Bennett-Jones, and I was at Tudor from 2005 to 2010. My parents both studied law at university and advised me to choose a subject I would genuinely enjoy (they both found academic law a little on the dry side!). Having loved languages at Rugby, I went on to study French and German at Cambridge, with a fantastic year abroad in Berlin. Studying a four-year degree also gave me time to work out what I wanted to do after university and having seen many of my friends take the law conversion route. I thought another couple of years of studying with a guaranteed job at the end sounded like quite a nice set-up. I also enjoy the problem-solving element of law: I know many people view lawyers as a barrier to getting things done, but I see my job as helping to find commercial and practical solutions that enable things to happen.

My eternal-student years finally came to an end in 2017 when I started my training contract at Freshfields and realised that the 10 a.m. wakeups were a thing of the past. I always knew I didn’t want to stay in a big firm for my whole career, so I qualified into the Intellectual Property team because it opens many doors in terms of going in-house and working with major brands. I am now doing my dream job working at the British Olympic Association or, as you probably know it, Team GB.

In your role as an in-house lawyer for the British Olympic Association what does a day-to-day look like and what do you enjoy most about it?

Each day looks totally different and that’s the main thing I love about the job. The legal team is just me and my boss, and we deal with anything and everything from helping sports with their selection policies, drafting sponsorship agreements with our commercial partners and working to stop third parties misusing our brand.

We also work closely with all the teams within the organisation and have an overview of everything that is going on. Before starting at Team GB, I hadn’t appreciated the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to take athletes to the Olympics, but it really is mind blowing how much effort goes into trying to get the smallest performance gains. Whether that is from ensuring at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games that every south facing room had an air-con unit installed so the athletes could get a decent night’s sleep to taking over a secondary school in Paris to be used as a ‘performance lodge’ where athletes could train away from the Village – here they could get medical and psychological help as well as work with a team of performance analysts to optimise chances of success. All of these aspects require contracts - I never thought I would spend a day drafting laundry contracts, but athletes get through a lot of kit!

What is the biggest challenge you faced within your career, and how did you overcome it?

As a trainee at Freshfields, we rotated departments every 3 months and you were expected on day one to be able to hit the ground running, often getting put on very complex litigation cases or commercial deals that had been running for years. At times this was really difficult, and I felt like I was totally out of my depth and would be rumbled by the more senior members of the team. But then I realised that all of them had been in my shoes and they aren’t expecting you to know everything. Asking questions when you are stuck is not a sign of weakness and saves a lot of hours of mental sweat! 

I remember on my first day at Team GB, my boss (who coincidentally also trained at Freshfields) said to me that, despite not having done much sports law before, I would be able to use my skills from having to hop around different teams and absorb new information fast and that it would soon become second nature, which of course it has.

Whilst here at Rugby, were there any teachers or members of staff who had a lasting impact on you, and what are some of your favourite memories?

Absolutely - I had so many wonderful teachers and we were lucky in Tudor to have a great assortment of house tutors. Madame Corvi and Mr Woodhead in the languages department were two of the most inspirational teachers who had unerring enthusiasm for their subjects and my decision to study languages at university was largely down to them. They were both unconventional in the way they taught and encouraged us to not be bound by a quite boring syllabus - anyone who did French GCSE will remember the deadly dull ‘tricolour’ textbook. So, I ended up with a French Vogue subscription, watching some amazing German films and soaking up a lot of language and vocabulary this way, which let’s face it is a lot more fun than rote learning verb tables. 

This year marks 50 years since girls joined Rugby School – an incredible milestone. How do you feel that your time at Rugby Shaped who you are today?

I adored my time at Rugby and the friends I made there are still my very best friends. When you’ve lived with people through your teenage years, it creates a bond that I think is really hard to replicate. They’ve seen it all, including the myriad of bad decisions - very glad that Instagram wasn’t around for the electric blue eyeliner phase - which we look back at and laugh about now. We were lucky we had such a fantastic group of girls in our year at Tudor - in fact, a group of us recently met up with Debbie Horner with our new babies in tow, which felt like a full circle moment. 

I turned up to Rugby shy and left with a confidence that has served me very well ever since.

Being in such a supportive environment where you are celebrated for who you are and whatever your strengths might be is such a privilege. I loved that in our group in Tudor, everyone had different strengths and there was never a sense of competitiveness - everyone was just happy for each other’s success. 

What advice would you give to the girls currently at Rugby, or those wanting to join?

I know this sounds cliché, but to make the most of all the amazing opportunities on offer. During my time at Rugby, I tried windsurfing, studied Japanese for a year and spent many a Sunday making the most of the art school. Once you’ve left school, it is so hard to find the time to do all of these things and you never know, you might just find a hidden talent for windsurfing!

Looking back, is there anything you wish you had known during your time here?

From a career perspective, that there are so many jobs out there that you won’t even realise exist yet - you don’t have to have it all planned out aged 18.

And from a more general perspective, that those 5 years would be the best foundation for all that follows in life. I touched on this earlier but the friendships you make will serve you so well. My Rugby girlfriends are the ones I ring in a crisis, the ones I turn to when I need any advice and the ones who I know I can be totally myself with. 

And finally, that electric blue eyeliner is never, ever a good look. 

What does it mean to you to be part of Rugby’s history, especially in this 50th anniversary for girls at the school?

Whenever I go back, I am conscious of how lucky I was to have been able to go to Rugby and all of the opportunities it has afforded me. 

I am so grateful to have been at a mixed school. It is funny talking to my father-in-law who was at Rugby in the early days of girls having started - he felt the School became a much better and more rounded place with the introduction of girls. 

I also love that even though I was only at Rugby for 5 years, being an OR is something that continues to open up exciting doors. From careers events to carol concerts, there is always something in the calendar that is a perfect excuse to get together with fellow ORs. Here’s to the next 50 years of girls! I hope that our baby girl, Florence, will one day be able to have as fantastic a time as I did at Rugby.