#361 Unfinished Business — Dipali Dalia

<p>Dipali Dalia wanted to be a barrister at fourteen, became a periodontist instead, and then went back and trained as a barrister anyway, in her forties, while still practising three days a week. She joins Payman as a specialist periodontist at Emsworth Specialist Practice near Portsmouth, having qualified as a dentist, specialised in periodontics at Guy's, and then, nearly two decades into a successful referral practice, gone back to college to sit alongside twenty-somethings doing a law conversion course.</p><p>She's honest about why the second career never quite happened. A scholarship from an Inn of Court, a year of criminal law that suited her better than the dry civil procedure rules, county court advocacy work to build experience, and still no pupillage by the time her father died of dementia at the end of a long, hardworking life. That loss changed everything, and Dipali talks with real clarity about the Hindu philosophy she leaned on afterwards, focused on the action rather than the outcome, and about coming back to periodontics with a settledness she didn't have before.</p><p>Anyone considering the same leap gets something to work with too: referral relationships, the loneliness of the bar versus the immediacy of a dental chair, and Dipali's own conclusion that failure is better read as a redirect than a verdict on your worth.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>In This Episode</strong></p><p>00:00:50 – Introduction</p><p>00:01:56 – Choosing dentistry over law</p><p>00:14:53 – Maxillofacial training</p><p>00:17:57 – Deciding to specialise</p><p>00:24:52 – Becoming a periodontist</p><p>00:28:12 – Referral relationships</p><p>00:34:47 – Peri-implantitis management</p><p>00:46:31 – The itch to become a barrister</p><p>00:52:17 – Training as a barrister in her 40s</p><p>01:00:17 – Comparing dentistry and law</p><p>01:10:27 – Losing her dad</p><p>01:17:56 – Failure as redirection</p><p>01:22:20 – A happier periodontist now</p><p>01:29:23 – Fantasy dinner party</p><p>01:38:08 – Women in dentistry and law</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>About Dipali Dalia</strong></p><p>Dipali Dalia is a specialist periodontist at Emsworth Specialist Practice near Portsmouth, having trained at Guy's after an early spell in maxillofacial surgery. In her forties, she trained part-time as a barrister, completing a law conversion course and the bar course while continuing to practise periodontics, before returning to dentistry full-time.</p>