This post is in our series What’s it like to be…, giving a glimpse into the realities of certain jobs. Ever wondered what someone who works in marketing actually does all day? What are the lesser-known qualities you need to work in finance? What unexpected surprises does being a teacher hold? This series is here to help answer these questions! This week we’ve been having a chat with Philippa, a lawyer.
What job do you do?
I am a lawyer. That is an umbrella which actually covers a wide variety of things: criminal, family, barrister, solicitor, human rights, in-house, private practice, government, you name it… I am an associate solicitor at a ‘Magic Circle’ corporate law firm. I have been there about seven years now, including training.
It is quite hard to narrow down what I do as my firm, fairly uniquely for its size, espouses a real ‘multi-specialist’ approach. This means you are expected to pick up and run with completely new jobs regularly.
The plus side of this is that the work is constantly varied and fresh and interesting and you get to see the big picture (not just a narrow aspect of a deal you are working on); the downside is that you can feel like it is the first day of school again and often end up negotiating against lawyers from other firms who have been doing the same thing for years and have a lot more experience. It balances out though, and as you progress through the firm, a rounded experience becomes a real asset and we’re able to assess deals more holistically and always hit the ground running.
Another feature is that my firm tends to do a lot of ‘big ticket’ work. That means you don’t get a lot of the smaller, often more repetitive, corporate jobs but get the bigger, more complex, more challenging, more interesting and more expensive ones!
I do a lot of work in the Projects/Energy and Infrastructure space (think construction, airports, electricity). This involves a lot of different aspects: competition, government/regulatory, construction, shareholder relationships, debt financing to name a few. I really enjoy and appreciate the variety (work is rarely dull) as well as seeing ‘behind the scenes’ of a lot of the things which we take for granted in day-to-day life (like the lights turning on, or our baggage arriving at a destination airport).
I also work in what I like to call the ‘marriage phase’ of corporate relationships: putting a deal together to build something new. A lot of this involves attending meetings and translating general good intentions into specific agreements. I don’t do any appearing in court.
If you prefer the ‘divorce phase’, when things have started to go a bit pear- shaped, disputes and litigation work may be for you… That's actually another good thing about 'multi-specialism': you can adapt to the changing needs of the market in boom and bust because, ultimately, it's all about the client and their business, not about the area of law.
How did you end up in that role?
A few reasons:
Firstly, both my parents are lawyers so I always had it at the front of my mind and assumed (rightly or wrongly) that I might be predisposed to be good at it. There was certainly no family expectation that I would follow suit so this was quite a ‘soft’ driver and mainly meant I was more aware of what it involved.
Secondly, I organised a fair bit of work experience for myself (mainly mini-pupillages with barristers' chambers, commercial and family, and did some clerking for a judge), all of which I found really interesting. I would definitely recommend spending a few days in a several areas of law to get a feel for what they do.
Lastly, I studied Classics at university, which is very much a broad (sensing a theme here?) liberal arts degree and doesn’t have any particularly natural vocational ladder attached to it, so I researched a lot of options.
I was pretty keen to train as a teacher at some point in my life but I decided, at the age of 21, that I didn’t really fancy going from school to university then back to school without trying something a bit further afield and out of my comfort zone first! It was also important to me to be financially independent, get some savings and maybe onto the property ladder. Self-sufficiency is a pretty big motivator for me: I didn’t want to be in debt or to be asking my parents for help. My firm offered a very competitive starting salary, paid for me to study law as a conversion degree, gave me the chance to do six months’ travelling in South America and then provided excellent on-the-job training, so it was very much a no-brainer for me.
What's your general working day like?
This is a bit of a trick question. There is absolutely no such thing as a typical day or week, which was and still is a major part of the attraction of my job to me. Having done this for the better part of a decade, going back to a ‘typical’ week might feel quite dull! I certainly don’t do any clock-watching. With 'Project' work, in particular, a deal can go on for several years so there are a lot of peaks and troughs during its life-cycle.
But as that is a cop-out answer, I will have a go:
MORNING
I am (pre-Lockdown anyway) more of a morning person and a lot of my clients are based in Asia, so they’ve been working for several hours when I wake up. The alarm goes off early (ish) and I will roll-over and check my iPhone for all the messages which have come in overnight or over the weekend and get a feel for what is a priority and what can wait. Sometimes, if I am very unlucky, someone will have scheduled a conference call at 8am, which I will simply have to dive straight into from home in my pjs!
I will then usually walk into the office (based in the City of London), either dialled in to a meeting on my headphones or enjoying a podcast. Our official working day starts at 9:30, but everyone is pretty flexible: I try to be in well before nine, whereas others tend to get in later. There are no mandatory hours or a face-time culture at my firm so, providing you meet your work deadlines, you can set your own hours.
AT DESK
When I get to my desk, after the ubiquitous catch-up with my colleagues around the kettle in the ‘pod’, the day really starts.
Typical tasks might involve drafting letters to a foreign government, advising on fuel supply contracts or how Coronavirus has impacted on contractual obligations to build or deliver something. I might also be drafting an agreement to deal with certain shared infrastructure between two neighbouring utilities, or updating the term sheet to reflect comments which have come in from the commercial team. There are a lot of sudden conference calls as new developments roll in. I would catch up with any work experience students sitting with me, or my trainee, and offer feedback on their work, or discuss legal questions which have arisen with my colleagues.
LUNCH AND EVENING
I try to go to the gym for an hour or so over lunch to stretch my legs and have proper screen break and then grab something to eat al-desko.
It’s a bit of a myth that a corporate law job means you will never see your friends and family again or be able to make evening plans. I am pretty liberal about making evening plans (theatre, dinner with friends, pub quiz, choir rehearsal). Occasionally work demands mean I can’t make it, but more often than not I can work around it and it makes me more efficient and productive during the day. Thankfully, with a lot of my clients in Asia, they are in bed by the evening in London.
One of the real highlights of my job is the collegiate atmosphere: some firms have hours targets, which are linked to pay, so there is a perception that people can be quite competitive and precious about their time. That is not the case where I work and everyone is very happy to muck in together and help each other out with experience and ideas.
Is there anything you do in your job that you never expected you'd be doing?
I never in a million years thought I would qualify as a lawyer into one of my firm’s financing teams or enjoy doing banking work. Thanks to the ‘multi-specialist’ approach, financing absolutely does not just mean financing, and I have found myself with a much broader legal practice than I could have hoped for. I certainly never expected to be telling a Chief Engineering Officer of a company what his electrical connections are meant to look like… Although, it is quite flattering when a client thinks you are actually omniscient!
I also didn’t expect to be attending awards dinners in swanky London hotels, or travelling to Jordan and Turkey for business meetings. Jordan was particularly noteworthy as we stayed for five days, visited Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea, before being given a tour of the River Jordan baptism sites by a lovely man who turned out to be the Jordanian Minister for Culture! Turns out we were VIPS.
A lot of the work is a lot more practical and pragmatic than I thought it would be: a lot of problem solving and dealing with commercial issues which crop up, rather than black-letter law and researching points of principle.
Is there anything you thought you'd be doing but you don't?
Reading enormous tomes of law. Don’t get me wrong, research plays its part (in some specialisms more than others), but in my line of work the knowledge of the law is almost assumed and you are rarely given the time to produce an essay on every question you get asked. Also, most of it is now available online so the dusty tome is a thing of the past.
Working all night. I think I have only pulled two real all-nighters in my working life. There have been some late ones, and some weekend work, but it has all been manageable and part of the ‘flow’ of a deal so you can usually see it coming and plan for it. If I make evening plans, I can usually go through with them.
Are there any qualities that you didn't realise you'd need for this job?
Confidence: showing it even when you don’t really feel it. At the start of any career you will look and sound young. So much of client (and colleague) trust is in the delivery and it really helps if you can fake it until you make it. No apologising in advance, or second guessing yourself. You’ve got this! No imposter syndrome allowed.
Resilience: the ability to separate work from life, keep perspective and move on (and learn) from your mistakes. We all knew the hours could be tough and the work demanding (both in terms of intellectual rigour and volume). But nothing prepares you for how first-class your colleagues are, how on-top of the details your clients can be, how many zeroes are on the end of the deal value number, and just how high the bar can be for quality of work. At the end of the day, everyone is human and the most important thing is reminding yourself of that occasionally, abandoning a bit of your perfectionism (and having a good laugh). Be aware, that it can also be very intense: if you are quite a sensitive person, have a life event, or know you cope badly with stress, talk to someone – my firm is very supportive.
Professionalism: one aspect of the job I didn’t really appreciate before I began was just how much a part of the service industry this is. Just like a personal shopper, a barista, a personal trainer, or anyone else who provides a service for money, you expect your lawyer to be perfect, always available, always cheerful, always making you feel like you are their one and only client (despite the fact they have hundreds more…) A big part of the job is delivering that seamless service. Of course you develop personal relationships when you work for clients and with colleagues for a long time, but I would always recommend (unlike the hairdresser who has you as a captive audience for a massive overshare) keeping the client’s needs to the front and remembering who is paying.
Any words of wisdom for someone thinking of becoming a lawyer?
I would be a bit wary of ‘falling into’ the law. Have a real think about what you are good at, what you want from a job and where you see yourself a few years down the line.
A lot of people study law or convert to law because they don’t have strong views about what they want and it keeps options open and provides you with great skills. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but do spend some time thinking about it first. While there is always a place for serendipity, I always think you want to be positive and intentional about making your life decisions rather than letting them be decided for you (and then serendipity can get in the way if it wants to).
That said, there are plenty of excellent ways to get work experience, including holiday vacation schemes from most large firms, which should allow you to talk to people and get a feel for what the job is like.