Chloe Hayes, a trainee solicitor in BPP’s Social Impact Team, discusses her pioneering QWE route to becoming a solicitor

“I’m originally from South Africa and began my law degree there. After about three months, I realised I wanted to move countries, so I started again at Durham University, pursuing an LLB,” explains Chloe Hayes. Having successfully completed the SQE1 and SQE2 exams last year, she is now three and a half months into her role as a trainee solicitor at the housing clinic in BPP’s Social Impact Team—and loving it.

“Two months in, my supervisor told me we had a case in the county court and that I should represent the client — submissions, cross-examinations, the works,” she tells Legal Cheek Careers. She enjoys this fast-paced, hit-the-ground-running aspect of the clinic. “There is so much demand for our work, representing clients from lower socio-economic backgrounds who would otherwise be unable to access justice. Being thrown into the deep end has its advantages,” Hayes says. She notes that her supervising solicitor is incredibly supportive, but having to handle things independently after the initial guidance has been instrumental in demystifying the court process. “It’s not as scary as I once thought, and I now love litigation!” she says.

Hayes is one of five BPP alumni who are employed each year in paid six-month QWE placements in the university’s Social Impact Team. Recounting how she came to spend time in the housing clinic, Hayes explains that she initially volunteered at BPP’s Legal Advice Clinic while studying for the SQE, always being drawn to social welfare law and closing the access to justice gap that so many people, but especially women, face. Her current work perfectly complements these aspirations. “We only advise tenants, usually against councils — never landlords. Our clients are usually from low socio-economic backgrounds, who do not qualify for legal aid mostly due to government cuts so they come to us to close that gap, and our services are completely free,” explains Hayes. In addition to the housing clinic, there are also a family clinic, an enterprise clinic, a consumer clinic, and a welfare clinic.

“As for a typical day, it varies a lot,” Hayes tells us. A client interview, followed by research on the issue and sending out an advice letter, are typical tasks. She also assists clients in litigation, sometimes representing them before the county court and tribunals. “This involves a lot of statements of case, submissions, replies, witness statements, and evidence collection—it’s brilliant experience,” she notes enthusiastically.

Hayes also flags a pro bono project called Streetlaw, where BPP’s trainee lawyers visit schools, women’s refuge centres, homeless shelters, and many other community groups to educate on certain aspects of the law. They also visit prisons to educate prison communities on matters such as probation and how a criminal record might legally affect their lives after prison. . “Just last week, we did a ‘Goldilocks session’ with a class of 10-year-olds, teaching them about the criminal justice system by putting Goldilocks on trial for burglary and criminal damage — it was fabulous,” she recounts, smiling.

We then asked Hayes what the most rewarding aspect of her time in the housing clinic has been so far. “Representing a client for the first time in the county court, definitely.  Naturally, it’s very daunting, but the judge was so nice, and you realise that it’s not about having a fight. Rather, the end goal is to find an equitable solution while still advocating for your client’s needs,” Hayes points out.

On the flip side, the most challenging aspect of her time at the clinic has been time management. “The clinic is so oversubscribed because there are so many people who need the help we offer. Initially, I tried to do as much work as possible, and it took me a  few weeks to figure out how to communicate well with my supervisor.   At first, I struggled to let him know when I was snowed under. But once I communicated that, he was very understanding and worked with me to plan out upcoming deadlines,” she says. Hayes notes that as trainees, there is often an eagerness to please supervisors by taking everything on, but stepping back and communicating when you’re overwhelmed is crucial and very normal.

Having figured out how communication and time management go hand-in-hand, what’s been Hayes’ biggest takeaway from the clinic during her first three months? “This is going to sound so cheesy,” she cautions, laughing, “but it’s that I’ve realised that I was born to do this job!” She explains that a key worry she had was starting to train as a solicitor and realising that the role wasn’t quite what she expected or enjoyed, after having invested significant amounts of time, money and effort into completing a degree and the SQE. “Luckily for me, that hasn’t been the case. Even on the bad days, I really do feel that I love this job,” she says.

Hayes is now just over halfway through her six-month period of Qualifying Work Experience (QWE) in BPP’s Social Impact Team. Under the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) regime, aspiring lawyers are able to qualify by accruing two years’ worth of QWE in up to four different organisations. This introduces greater flexibility into the qualification process by opening up additional avenues alongside the traditional training contract route. Hayes plans to seek further opportunities in a range of practice areas following completion of her QWE in the housing clinic, to stay on track to qualify in 2026.

To finish up our conversation, Hayes offers some practical tips to stay on top of recording QWE. “Keep a weekly record of what you do – you’ll need two years’ worth of records when you apply to be admitted to the roll of solicitors. Even on a weekly basis it can sometimes be difficult to remember every task you’ve worked on if you haven’t actually written it down, and you will be working on a lot– so really make sure you’re diligent about recording, because if not, you’d be shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to getting the QWE signed off at the end of the two-year period,” she advises.

Chloe Hayes will be speaking at ‘How to get Qualifying Work Experience — with BPP University Law School’, a virtual student event taking place this Thursday (11 July). Apply now to attend.

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Follows similar moves by Kirkland & Ellis, HSF and Clifford Chance

Allen & Overy has become the latest international law firm to plant its flag in Saudi Arabia, consolidating its Middle Eastern presence.

The firm’s Riyadh office is its third Middle East outpost, with existing offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The long-anticipated mega-merger with Shearman & Sterling, to create A&O Shearman, is said to be on track for 1 May. Shearman’s Riyadh team will be joining A&O’s Saudi lawyers post-merger.

Put together, the A&O Shearman team in Riyadh will cover matters including corporate and commercial, M&A and capital markets, and restructuring and insolvency.

The move to open a new office in Saudi Arabia has been made possible by a change to the Saudi Code of Law Practice in March 2023, which made it possible for foreign law firms to apply for a licence to practice in the country from the Saudi Ministry of Justice. Prior to that, foreign outfits were only able to operate in the country through associations with local law firms.

Legal Cheek has previously reported on other law firms securing an on-the-ground presence in Saudi Arabia, including Kirkland & Ellis, Clifford Chance, Herbert Smith Freehills and Squire Patton Boggs.

A&O regional managing partner for the Middle East and Turkey and interim global managing partner commented:

“We are thrilled to announce the opening of our office in Riyadh as we look forward to supporting the Kingdom further on its ambitious diversification programme as part of Vision 2030. A&O has had a strong presence in the Middle East since 1978, including a long history of advising clients in the Kingdom, and as A&O Shearman we look forward to continuing to combine the best of global and local to offer our domestic and international clients a full-service offering, bringing a breadth and depth of resource that we believe is unmatched. We are delighted to have established an independent office in the Kingdom and we look forward to the opportunities ahead.”

A sneak peek into the world of legal consulting at Allen & Overy’s Peerpoint

Having international exposure as part of one’s career is crucial. Not only does it open up new opportunities, it also builds awareness through navigating different cultures and working styles in international teams. Peerpoint allows lawyers to acquire valuable international experience without sacrificing personal and family commitments.  

Peerpoint provides its legal consultants with the opportunity to access global opportunities without the need to relocate. It is open to lawyers with upwards of three years of post-qualification experience, and is focused on providing its legal consultants with a career that allows them to balance fulfilment in their personal and professional lives. Some of Peerpoint’s teams from the UK, Australia, the UAE and Singapore sat down with Legal Cheek to speak about the opportunities it can offer its consultants.

Lucy Hamblin, Senior Resourcing Manager at Peerpoint UK

Hamblin tells me that with A&O being the first Magic Circle firm to establish a legal consulting platform in the UK, Peerpoint has been in the market for ten years now. “This makes us well-versed at understanding the pros and cons of a consulting career and what support consultants need to be successful in this way of working”. Being part of A&O, Peerpoint’s consultants are able to benefit from technical assistance, career coaching and softer skills training, giving them well-rounded support.

Hamblin explains that current client needs are pointing to a demand for legal consultants at the level of two to seven years PQE. “This is a product of lots of in-house functions being relatively top heavy, having budget constraints and a difficulty in sourcing typical secondees from law firms”, she details. In terms of the types of practice areas where this demand is most likely to come from, Hamblin earmarks corporate and capital markets as far as the UK is concerned, noting that this follows a period of substantial market uncertainty.

Peerpoint’s legal consultants benefit from the platform’s flexibility, both in terms of geographical location and between personal and professional projects. It currently has a UK-based consultant on assignment with an energy client based in the Middle East, supporting the negotiation of their infrastructure contracts and general land matters. In addition to some travel to the region, the consultant is working a local Sunday to Thursday week. In another example, a Hong Kong-based consultant is supporting a UK client by providing legal support on a broad array of M&A transactional work and other corporate matters. They are working fully remotely and flexing to UK hours, without the need for relocation.

The increased flexibility enables consultants to pursue their personal goals and interests. For example a Hong Kong-based Corporate and M&A lawyer who trains and competes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu when not working; an Australia-based regulatory lawyer passionate about yoga, who is on the board of Yoga Australia and pursuing a bespoke tailoring qualification; and a UK-based lawyer who has used the flexibility offered by Peerpoint to pursue a PhD.

Hamblin summarises Peerpoint’s offerings for its legal consultants in three words: “variety”, “flexibility” and “support”.

Rachel Carter, Head of Peerpoint Australia

Carter explains that Peerpoint was the first law firm-backed flexible resourcing platform to launch in the Australian market. “Five of the ‘Big Six’ law firms in Australia now have platforms like Peerpoint. One thing that sets Peerpoint apart from the others is its ability to offer Australian lawyers unique international work opportunities”, she points out. “Peerpoint now has on-the-ground operations in the UK, US, UAE, Middle East and Asia, and the Peerpoint management team in Australia has visibility of the work opportunities available in each of those markets at any one time, so that we can bring those opportunities to our consultants in a really meaningful way.”

Carter notes that in initial meetings with lawyers interested in joining Peerpoint, the focus is on gauging their level of interest in international opportunities — on a remote, fly-in/fly-out or a relocation basis. This, combined with an understanding of the markets they are interested in working in, then allows Peerpoint to tap into A&O’s extensive global client network to identify opportunities aligned with their preferences. “We have Peerpoint consultants based across Australia and they have remotely supported a wide range of projects. From the New York-based securitised products team of a global investment bank, to the operations of a Qatar-based energy company and a California-based solar panel manufacturer”, Carter details.

Carter also emphasises the importance of the flexibility that Peerpoint offers its consultants. “Peerpoint consultants have complete control over the direction and development of their career. Rather than allowing their career to develop in a linear way, consulting allows lawyers to choose each of their career moves in a way that is fulfilling and meets their personal needs at the time. We recently supported, for example, a former partner with a strong disputes and insurance practice, to gain in-house experience in an interest and market growth area by securing them an engagement to assist a major bank’s technology function”, she explains.

Jenny Grotepass, Head of Peerpoint UAE

The Peerpoint UAE team is international in its own right, with colleagues based in Dubai, Sydney, London and Belfast. “The spread in locations of the team reflects the global nature of opportunities, clients and consultants they work with on a daily basis. The team often places consultants who are based in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong or Singapore with clients, not only in the UAE but also across the wider GCC region,” Grotepass explains. What this means is that the team has deep knowledge in facilitating remote support into the region.

Grotepass goes on to provide a few examples of the kinds of projects that Peerpoint UAE’s consultants can get involved with. “We work with a broad range of clients in the UAE and wider GCC region. These include international and regional financial institutions, large state-owned organisations, regional gigaprojects and exciting growing UAE-based businesses”. She notes that the projects vary in nature and can cover ongoing support, specific strategic projects, GC and deputy GC roles as well as more transactional advice, with most of these being regional in nature. With such a wide variety of work available, consultants have ample learning and development opportunities.

Grotepass also discusses how Peerpoint allows its consultants to build a global career and what she sees as the benefits of acquiring such international experience. “Peerpoint facilitates a number of remote global opportunities as well as opportunities to relocate to a new location for its legal consultants. As part of that, lawyers are able to gain the benefits of working in new countries and being exposed to different cultures: varied legal experience, new technical skills and jurisdictional know-how, and – possibly most exciting – the opportunity to learn from highly diverse teams”, she explains. Through this, Peerpoint’s legal consultants are able to operate in new cultures and grow a much broader awareness of the sheer volume of different approaches in which lawyers operate, a crucial skill in today’s world.

To finish off, Grotepass explores how the role of a practicing lawyer differs from that of a consultant lawyer, an important consideration, no doubt, for those contemplating a career change. “Firstly, legal consulting provides the flexibility to remain in the workforce without putting the rest of life on hold. Its benefits are wide-ranging — more control over your time and the ability to balance professional and personal ambitions, including family responsibilities”, she notes.

“Secondly, you are also offered more control over, and variety in, work. Legal consulting enables informed decision-making about the future direction of a lawyer’s career, offering the opportunity to work with different clients, sectors, and teams (including within Allen & Overy in some cases), including the right to accept or decline potential assignments”, Grotepass details.

Felicity Warren, Senior Client Development Manager at Peerpoint Asia

Warren explains that the Peerpoint team in Singapore has been active in the market and servicing clients across all sectors since 2016. “The market works closely with Hong Kong to service both North and South Asia, and Peerpoint consultants can often be offered opportunity to work across both locations without the need to relocate”, she says.

Discussing what features of the Asia Pacific market make it a particularly fertile ground for legal consultants to gain global exposure, Warren notes: “The interest in Asia from markets all around the world as an attractive investment destination has been sustained despite challenging global environment — ASEAN (The Association of South East Asian Nations) is due to become the fourth largest economy in the world by 2030. This creates an opportunity to work on assignments that bridge across continents and cultures, as it continues to be one of the fastest-growing regions of the global economy.”

Warren also points out that Peerpoint’s role in allowing its consultant lawyers to benefit from international opportunities is continuing and long-term, recognising the challenges of time zone differences and inter-cultural communication. “Peerpoint is here to lead on negotiating a placement structure that is both pragmatic and commercial for the consultant and the client. Placement check-ins allow us to support and guide our consultants to navigate any ongoing cultural or other challenges they might be facing”, she notes. In terms of long-term career objectives, Warren provides the example of a lawyer they were working with, who was seeking to relocate to Australia within the next few years. “Our client team was thoughtfully briefing her on assignments that gave her this market exposure where it was available”, she points out.

Offering access to global opportunities without the need to relocate, Peerpoint is a viable alternative for lawyers who value increased flexibility and balance between personal and professional fulfilment. As such, Peerpoint’s legal consultants are able to gain international exposure, progress on their personal goals and shape their career as they choose.

Find out more about Peerpoint’s global opportunities and apply to join its panel of legal consultants here.

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Lachlan Low, White & Case counsel, talks cross-border work, ESG and how to demonstrate commercial awareness

“One day really doesn’t look like the next,” smiles Lachlan Low, counsel at White & Case, as he describes his typical workdays. For example, he tells me that just prior to our chat, he had been in vacation scheme interviews — a new addition to his mornings during the past week. “Usually, however, I’ll try and be in the office for around 9 am, deal with any emails that have come through already and prep for upcoming meetings. I’ll get some work done once I’ve sorted through that, and come afternoon, I try and go for a lunchtime run along the river once a week,” says Low who works in the firm’s busy global M&A and corporate practice.

Frequently advising on multi-jurisdictional matters, Low goes on to discuss the biggest challenges he faces when navigating these. “One of the main issues is just pure practicalities — if you’ve got a transaction with a presence in Australia, the UK and the US, just finding times that work for an urgent call can be hugely challenging” he notes.

Beyond this, however, there’s a further hurdle. “You’ve got sets of lawyers who each know their jurisdiction’s laws inside and out, so it really becomes a matter of communication. You have to understand that someone else’s perspective on exactly the same problem can be very different, because they’re coming at it from a different angle,” Low explains. And it’s not just a matter of different jurisdictions having different laws; it’s also about the different ways in which law is taught between jurisdictions which affects how lawyers approach a problem.

“If you’ve got a system that is heavily codified where you follow the rulebook closely, that’s going to be very different from a common law system based on precedent, where judges have more leeway,” he says. “Of course, the flipside to these challenges is that the complexities of multi-jurisdictional work can be intellectually stimulating and makes the work very rewarding.”

I went on to ask Low about the manner in which Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is often conceptualised as a monolithic entity, when in fact, it is comprised of a range of distinct factors. I wanted to hear how, in his experience, clients’ ESG priorities differ based on their size and maturity. “From our clients’ perspective, if we’re assuming they’re corporates, their ESG journey really depends on their development and the industry they’re in.” Illustrating with an example, Low notes that a FTSE 100 oil and gas company is arguably at the cutting edge of ESG in terms of the energy transition and balancing the competing interests of its stakeholders as they are in the spotlight and usually have deep pockets to invest in ESG. On the other hand, a smaller company that’s about to IPO, regardless of the industry it’s in, is likely to focus predominantly on the governance side of ESG. After all, it needs to ensure compliance with the listing rules and ensure investor confidence in order to list.

Staying on the theme of corporate governance, I ask Low about his role managing White & Case’s Public Advisory Team, and the kinds of legal advice that listed companies require outside of their deal cycles. “I’m also a chartered company secretary, and essentially our role in this team is to advise listed companies on their continuing obligations throughout the year,” he explains. This covers everything compliance-based to do with the Companies Act, listing rules, disclosure and transparency rules and the market abuse regulation. For instance, if a public company is about to sell one of its divisions, the team tackles a range of issues that arise. “We advise the disclosure committee on whether that fact is inside information, whether announcing this to the market can be delayed, record-keeping issues related to this and who can trade in its securities if there are employee share options,” he elaborates.

Low goes on to explain how ESG considerations actually come into play in the M&A context.

“We’re seeing an increasing number of deals that have warranty and indemnity insurance behind them. If you’ve got a clothing manufacturer, the buyer and insurance providers are arguably going to be more focused on the supply chain. So, for these sort of companies we’re considering whether the seller has got their Modern Slavery Act compliance statements ready, whether they’ve diligenced the supply chain to ensure the target is not using forced labour, for instance,” says Low.

He continues: “The governance piece concerns what the deal actually looks like. So, if you’re entering into a joint venture, you need to consider who has a seat at the board table and how decision-making in the joint venture will operate in practice.” Low points out that this is fairly standard and does not seem to be changing very much with the increased emphasis on ESG in recent years. “Where we are seeing change is around continuing obligations; the disclosures that companies have to make in their annual accounts, whether that’s listed or private companies, to ensure compliance with the (largely) environmental regulations that are coming out, but the building blocks of how companies are governed isn’t really changing” he notes.

I also asked Low about the time he spent in-house at a biopharmaceutical company and why he decided to come back to private practice. “It was a fascinating experience. The beauty of it was that absolutely everything came across my desk. I became the health and safety officer, I did the M&A work, I was involved in doing the incentives and rewards and was also responsible for employment throughout Europe,” he says. With such a varied workload, Low was able to use this stint to understand which practice areas he was most suited to, and which didn’t quite align with his strengths and interests.

He explains his decision to come back to private practice was one to do with the differing weights that companies place on the legal function. “When you’re in-house, your role is a cost function of the company. You really have to work with the business to help them understand the value you bring, so that you are not viewed as a roadblock to their plans, but rather as providing a valuable facilitator as well as a risk management role,” Low explains. He contrasts this with the environment in private practice, where engagement is predominantly with other lawyers, as companies have already made the decision to get lawyers involved.

Ultimately, Low stresses the importance of lawyers getting secondment experience during their career, because of the insights into client delivery it offers. “Now, in the Public Company Advisory Team, I essentially offer the same services that I needed as in-house lawyer in a part-listed public company. So, having that perspective from the other side of the table was incredibly helpful,” he explains.

Approaching the end of our conversation, I ask Low about how applicants can best demonstrate their commercial awareness at assessment centres. “If a candidate says they have any sort of work experience, commercial awareness is about showing that they really understand what they’ve been doing. Even if it’s the most mundane administrative task, try and contextualise it by discussing its role in the bigger picture,” he says.

Low also advises against trying to say what you think the interviewer would like to hear and making it flow naturally. “I always say that the best interviews are a conversation. Be prepared with the information you’ve got, but the best candidates are not waiting to drop in a particular fact or piece of information. They have a broad enough knowledge that they can hold their ground wherever the interview goes,” Low notes.

Lachlan Low will be speaking at ‘The growing significance of ESG in the M&A world — with White & Case’ a virtual student event taking place on Tuesday 19 March. Apply now to attend.

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Lauren White secures a 50% discount on BARBRI’s SQE1 Prep Course

Lauren White, a trainee solicitor at Scottish law firm Thorntons, has secured a part-scholarship for BARBRI’s SQE1 Prep Course with her essay on what motivates people to become solicitors in the 21^st century.

Deciding fairly early on that she wanted to study law at university, White chose to complete a Scots and English Law LLB at the University of Dundee. Graduating in June 2022, she went on to do the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice at the University of Glasgow, and is currently doing her traineeship at Scottish law firm Thorntons. White has recently completed her first seat in residential property and will shortly be commencing her second seat in the corporate and commercial team.

Speaking to Legal Cheek about her motivations for completing the SQE and qualifying as a solicitor in England and Wales, White says: “My degree was in both jurisdictions so I think it would be great to see both halves of my degree out to the end. It also broadens my job opportunities in the future which I believe will give me an advantage in an increasingly competitive industry”.

She goes on to add: “A more personal reason is that whilst my dad is Scottish and I have lived in Scotland for most of my life, my mum, who sadly passed away 10 years ago, was English. So, I have always seen myself as half and half and feel it is important to respect both halves and keep both alive. Qualifying in both jurisdictions is a further opportunity to do this. Studying for the SQE alongside my traineeship will also mean I should qualify in both jurisdictions around the same time.”

White’s winning essay explored the topic of what motivates young people to become solicitors in the 21st century, and she gives a sneak peek into its main themes.

“I explored the desire to fight for social justice, the rewarding challenge of a career in law as well as the financial reasons that young people may choose to pursue a career in law. I underpinned all of these reasons by exploring the fact that all areas of law exist to help people, whether they are going through the harder parts of life like divorce or the death of a loved one or something more exciting like starting a new business or purchasing a new home.”

She continues: “Throughout my essay, I explored the need to help people and fight for what is right. This is seen in every area of law from being a human rights lawyer or a corporate lawyer to being an environmental lawyer.”

White notes that it “feels amazing” to have won the scholarship, and that it has gone a long way to mitigating the financial pressure of completing the SQE. “It is unlikely that I would have been able to complete the course so early on in my career without the scholarship”, she explains. Also noting the reflective aspect of writing the essay, White finds that it was nice to go back and consider the reasons why she chose to pursue a career as a solicitor – “It has helped me refocus and reminded me that my main focus is to help people”, she says.

Speaking on White’s win, BARBRI senior tutor Joanne White commented:

“We are delighted to have collaborated again with Legal Cheek on the latest scholarship. It is a key goal of BARBRI to provide students with opportunities to access the legal profession. Our scholarships are a vehicle for this, and we are grateful that Legal Cheek could provide a platform for students to apply. Lauren’s submission stood out and we are excited about her starting her SQE1 Prep journey this spring.”

To find out more about BARBRI’s SQE Prep course and funding opportunities, please visit the website here.

This is not a drill!

TV bigwigs have given the go-ahead for a new Suits series, this time focusing on law firm in LA. It follows a former federal prosecutor from New York named Ted Black, who has reinvented himself by representing LA’s rich and famous.

It’s not known whether Harvey, Donna, Mike, Rachel and other Suits OGs will have much to do with the new series, although Patrick J Adams has previously expressed his openness to reprise his role as wunderkind Mike Ross. The spinoff sees Suits creator Aaron Korsh serving as writer and executive producer alongside others, with NBCUniversal ordering the pilot.

The logline doesn’t give a whole lot away but sounds promising:

“[Ted Black’s] firm is at a crisis point, and in order to survive he must embrace a role he held in contempt his entire career. Ted is surrounded by a stellar group of characters who test their loyalties to both Ted and each other while they can’t help but mix their personal and professional lives. All of this is going on while events from years ago slowly unravel that led Ted to leave behind everything and everyone he loved.”

In addition to Ted, the only other character confirmed is Erica, a Black woman in her thirties who works at the same law firm as Ted, and has ambitions of becoming the head of its entertainment division. Keeping fans’ anticipations high, none of the characters for Suits: LA have been cast yet.

Although Suits ran from 2011-2019, it experienced a massive resurgence in popularity in 2023 after its first eight seasons were added to Netflix. It literally broke streaming records, topping streaming charts for 12 consecutive weeks.

Travers Smith partner Stephanie Lee talks billion-dollar disputes, careers advice and life at the firm

“No one day for me is the same as another — so there isn’t a typical day-to-day. That’s probably true of any disputes lawyer, and it’s part of the fun of it,” says a smiling Stephanie Lee, dispute resolution partner at Travers Smith. She does, however, caution against the common misconception of litigators spending all their days in court. “Firstly, more than 90% of cases settle before they get to trial. Secondly, the work I do is quite varied — for example, I am involved in arbitrations, which are before a tribunal rather than court, and investigations, which are internal-facing or regulatory focused. So, being in court can in fact be a rarity,” Lee explains.

Lee’s day, on the client-facing front, generally sees her focusing on the multitude of legal and factual strands and issues impacting her various cases and investigations. “That may be analysing documents, writing letters to the other side’s lawyers, proofing factual witnesses, liaising on expert evidence, or discussing strategy with the client,” she details. Lee points out that the work of a disputes lawyer is, though, very much team-centric, with everyone playing their part, from paralegals to trainees, to junior and senior associates.

“As a partner, I try to give my team as much free rein to do the work as possible, and my role is really to be on hand as a sounding board for particularly tricky issues or strategic matters,” says Lee. And when she isn’t busy tackling disputes, Lee plays a key role in hiring trainees as co-head of graduate recruitment and is also on the steering committee for the firm’s office move in 2026.

When I ask Lee about the most gratifying case she’s worked on so far, she confesses that it would be a struggle to pick just one. “As a disputes lawyer our matters are quite lengthy — we can live and breathe cases for a year or five years or even more. So, you tend to get really into whatever matters you’re doing at any given moment and often find yourself immersed in a whole new world you’ve never come across before,” she explains. Lee gives me the example of a noise nuisance case she worked on for Alton Towers: “I learnt so much about the technicalities of measuring noise levels,” she says, chuckling.

But Lee’s work on the high-profile HP-Autonomy dispute, a $5 billion fraud case, is nothing short of a career standout — so much so it was billed as the ‘tech trial of the century’. “It’s a case that has absolutely everything,” she says. “We were creating new law (using a particular legal provision and structure for the first time), the facts underlying the fraud were absolutely fascinating, and the case culminated in a ten-month trial.” She tells me that she started working on the case shortly after the firm was instructed in 2013, all the way through to the trial six years later. The firm eventually succeeded on the issue of liability for the client, with a quantum trial scheduled for next month. “As a disputes lawyer, you can grow up in the course of a matter — you might start on something as a junior associate and become a partner while working on it, which is what happened to me!”

While on the topic of long-running matters, I was curious to hear from Lee how juniors coming onto a case can get their head around years of developments and equally, how someone who’s been working on such a dispute can stay engaged over such a lengthy time span.

“I always think it must be difficult for trainees being parachuted into a case in the latter stages, both in terms of getting up to speed and feeling part of a team which has been working on it for perhaps the past four or five years,” she tells me. However, Lee explains that she has always been amazed at their capacity to do just that. The crucial thing is to be enthusiastic and engaged and try meaningfully to contribute to the progression of the matter: “If you’re just observing, it’s much harder to take things in. But, if you’re a trainee who’s actually doing meaningful work – and that’s something we ensure that all our trainees in fact do — it’s incredible how quickly you can get to grips with things.”

As far as staying engaged on a matter goes, Lee tells me that even if a dispute or investigation is long-running, the lawyers will be working on a huge variety of issues and matters within that dispute, which keeps things interesting.

“In the early days, you are essentially presented with a puzzle. The client comes to you with the pieces of a jigsaw, and you need to figure out, often from reviewing relevant documents and interviewing key people, how these all fit together. Fast-forward a couple of years, and you’re perhaps engaged in the disclosure exercise and reviewing the other side’s documents, and in this way, adding more pieces to the puzzle but also allowing it to take shape. Then you move into witness statements and expert evidence. All these phases play their part in bringing the whole picture together and are all very different, so really, no one day is the same,” says Lee.

Lee points out that another aspect that makes disputes work so interesting is the fact that there’s an opponent who is strategising and taking steps you might not be able to predict. “What this means is that you’re constantly having to adapt over the lifespan of the matter because your opponent is often disrupting your plans as you put them into action,” she explains.

With this in mind, I ask Lee about the people management side of a contentious practice and how to navigate tense cross-examinations or client emotions running high. “Disputes are very much a people business because you are often seeing clients at their most vulnerable, embroiled in a contentious situation which they would rather not be in. Even though the majority of our clients are companies, we are taking instructions from individuals within those companies who might themselves have skin in the game,” she notes. This means that disputes lawyers have a key role to play for their clients beyond just providing legal support; they also need to be a truly trusted advisor. As for the dynamic with the other side, Lee points out that the common view of litigators as aggressive and hostile is a misconception. “It doesn’t have to be that way, and indeed, it shouldn’t be, in my view. If you’ve got a good case, you don’t need to resort to dirty tactics or inflammatory language. In fact, the whole point of instructing lawyers is to resolve the dispute for our clients — we are not taking on the dispute and making it our own,” she details.

Approaching the end of our conversation, I ask Lee about her experience at the firm, as a Travers Smith ‘lifer’ (she started out at the firm as a trainee in 2008), and her advice for those seeking out training contracts. “I promise that my decision to stay at the firm all my career is not just a product of lack of imagination,” she says, laughing. Lee chalks it up to the firm being a genuinely happy environment and having had great opportunities to build her career within its growing dispute resolution team. “It’s unusual in the market for people to stick around at one firm for so long, but it’s not so unusual to find that at Travers — we have plenty of partners who trained here,” Lee points out.

Lee’s mantra for aspiring trainees is to ask questions, listen, learn, and absorb. “You can’t fake genuine interest and enthusiasm in a firm or practice area and demonstrating that at interviews or events can really make you stand out. You need to immerse yourself in that world for a while and get a true feel for it, whether that’s talking to relevant people, attending events, or even just walking into a courtroom to observe proceedings,” she advises.

Stephanie Lee will be speaking alongside other Travers Smith lawyers at ‘Demystifying disputes and investigations — with Travers Smith’, a virtual student event taking place tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday 9 January). Apply to attend.

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Julia Salasky living the dream as she turns focus to her second business, a $25 million legal tech start-up

A Linklaters lawyer turned entrepreneur has sold her pioneering crowdfunding business in order to focus on her $25 million legal tech start-up.

CrowdJustice, a legal crowdfunding platform which operates a donation-based funding model to allow public and private funding for legal fees and costs, has been acquired by Crowdfunder.

Founder Julia Salasky, an Oxford and LSE graduate, came to pursue her access to justice ambitions after having spent four years as a litigation and arbitration associate at Linklaters, as well as a stint as a lawyer at the United Nations. In the eight years since its founding, the platform has facilitated more than £35 million in donations to go towards the funding of legal services, with an impressive 14 cases backed by such funding reaching the Supreme Court. Notable cases include People’s Challenge to the Government on Article 50 and a successful high court battle to prevent a road project near Stonehenge.

Discussing CrowdJustice’s acquisition by Crowdfunder, Salasky praised it as a “truly socially-driven platform, funded by its own community, with mission driven people at its helm, with real expertise in grassroots fundraising, campaigning and technology”. She went on to explain that the acquisition would allow the platform to expand further, providing it with more resources and the chance to have a greater impact. She confirmed to Legal Cheek that the “main motivation [here] was for CrowdJustice to find a great home with a mission-aligned organisation”.

Meanwhile, Salasky continues to work on a newer and growing legal tech business venture, Legl, which seeks to improve legal services from an operational and regulatory angle. It pulled in a $7m investment in 2021 and an additional $18m last year and now employs 60 staff.

Pinsent Masons technical lead talks all things AI

“I studied engineering at university and decided I didn’t want to be an engineer – but I liked being a student, so I went back and did a Master’s degree. This was all around the time that the internet showed up on the scene, so I knew I wanted to do something related to technology”, recounts Jason Barnes, low code development technical lead at Pinsent Masons.

Barnes joined the firm before it became Pinsent Masons, originally planning to work for a year or two as he thought up an idea for a PhD. But starting off in a general IT position, he was soon able to get involved in designing databases, often for niche legal work, something he found to be “quite good fun”. Subsequently, web applications came along, and that provided another avenue of interest. “I knew straightaway that this was what interested me, so I effectively became a web application developer. We started building web applications for clients and lawyers, and were met with a good degree of success, so we did more work and our team grew”, says Barnes.

Re-evaluating his career trajectory some years later, Barnes decided to move away from a full-on development role to explore the product management side of things. “In short, this involved looking at how software solutions can be implemented to make things easier for people and businesses”. But missing the creativity of being a developer, Barnes started to get involved with no code/low code tools, such as the Microsoft Power platforms, which came on to the market in a big way a couple of years ago. “I got quite excited with these and was convinced that this was a significant technology direction for us as a firm. Nobody else was spearheading this within Pinsent Masons, so I decided to — now I head up our low code team and am back to being a developer!”

Responding to a question about his day-to-day, Barnes chuckles, saying, “most of the time I have to be stopped — I really do like my job!” He explains that low code tools are designed for non-developers to use and build applications.

“At professional firms, you’ve got, say, a large mass of lawyers who are lawyering and need solutions to help them do this. Now, you can go out to the market to buy these solutions, but for bigger, innovative firms, you want to do this yourself, so you can build exactly what you want. Now, a law firm will only have a certain number of developers, and even they can only do so much when everyone at the firm has an idea they want to see developed. Low code tools can step in and help those people with the ideas to do the development themselves, without having to wait for the developers to do it. So essentially, we’ve got lawyers building robots, although they might not always realise that that’s what they’re doing”.

Barnes sees this as a form of empowerment — with low code tools allowing lawyers to take charge of automating processes and eliminating the frustration of having to wait around for developers to take charge. He does point out, however, that while one can achieve quite a lot with these tools, there’s still some elements that are difficult to navigate, which is where his job steps in, as technical lead of low code development. “We’re there to help the people who have the ideas turn their ideas into solutions”, he summarises.

What’s the typical process through which AI is developed at a law firm like Pinsent Masons? “Despite having worked in technology my whole life, I still always start things off with a pen and paper. If you can’t draw what you want you want to build, then you’re not going to be able to build it”, he responds. Barnes also notes that while lawyers are usually great at articulating what it is they want to build, representing this in a diagrammatic form is often challenging. However, this is at the core of the developer mindset, so we can help with that”, he explains.

Barnes also speaks about the main challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal industry, and he points out that “very few people have a clear understanding of what we mean when we talk about AI”. With the vast majority of people building their views on what they see in the media, most exposure is to generative AI, such as ChatGPT — but that’s only one part of what AI actually is. When I talked earlier about a lawyer having an idea to automate a process, that’s also AI. It’s a computer system doing what a human would normally do. So, one of the challenges is really understanding what it is we’re talking about in the first place”, he explains.

“One of the things at the forefront of everyone’s mind is the protection of client data”, Barnes continues, on the topic of challenges associated with AI in law. “As law firms, nothing matters more than the integrity of our clients’ data — everybody is conscious of the risk of having large language models trained on data sets comprised of client data without prior client agreement”, he notes. On the flipside, Barnes notes that the greatest opportunity for AI in the legal industry is in reimagining the everyday, and taking the monotonous tasks off lawyers hands, so that they are freed up to tap into their human intelligence, to provide better legal services for clients. He offers up document extraction as a tangible example of where AI can have application.

Approaching the end of our conversation, Barnes offers his views on the ‘are lawyers going to be replaced by robots’ debate. “Part of me thinks, well yeah”, he laughs. “A lot of the work I do is around innovation, driving up quality and lowering the cost base. So, taking that to its logical conclusion, we could be looking at a world where we do things artificially across all industries and save a lot of money. But I don’t think anyone wants that”, observes Barnes. While quantifying things in terms of processes and diagrams is easy, and might foretell an automated future, he notes that this ignores the human element of interpersonal relationships which is crucial in the legal space. “I don’t think legal work can be reduced to a collection of ones and zeros”, he concludes.

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Bar disciplinary shows mercy

A barrister who, as a fresh graduate, told his manager and supervising solicitor that he had made court applications for success fee deductions which had been rejected by the court, while knowing he had not made such an application, has been reprimanded for his actions.

The misconduct occurred on one or more occasions between December 2019 and June 2020, shortly after Jasraj Singh Sanghera had been called to the Bar. At the time, he was working as an advocate for LPC Law while awaiting pupillage, having passed the Bar training course. Many of LPC Law’s agents start appearing for hearings when they are in a similar stage of their career.

Sanghera admitted that on “at least a couple of occasions” he submitted attendance notes falsely stating that he had made an application for a success fee which the court had not approved, when in fact, he had not made such an application. He went on to say that the reason for this was that he was aware of experienced judges criticising solicitors for seeking success fee deductions from the damages payable to children. Believing the application to likely be refused and feeling intimated by this prospect, Sanghera went on to mislead those who instructed him.

The tribunal was sympathetic to the fact that Sanghera had disclosed his actions to professional colleagues at the outset, explained the reasons for these and expressed regret. It also acknowledged that his actions were borne of a lack of experience and guidance and the level of harm caused was low. His misconduct did not result in the solicitors not being able to recover success fees entirely, but only deprived them of a chance to do so. Moreover, there has been no subsequent misconduct and Sanghera now practises as a barrister in London, as a “well-regarded member of the profession”.

In light of the above, the tribunal concluded that a reprimand, rather than disbarment, was sufficient to maintain public trust and confidence in the profession. Sanghera was also ordered to pay costs of £2,670.

Law firm’s dismissal of trainee solicitor who forwarded client comms to private email address upheld

An Employment Tribunal has ruled that a trainee solicitor who sent a “significant number of confidential and client sensitive communications to a private email address”, which she controlled, justified summary dismissal.

Wing Sze Siu had commenced her training contract at Sterling Law in July 2021, a London-based boutique law firm, around a year prior to her dismissal last autumn.

Siu’s claim was that the principal reasons for her dismissal were that she had made protected disclosures regarding alleged misconduct at the firm to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Legal Ombudsman, and/or because of her pregnancy. Conversely, Sterling Law sought to argue that Siu had fundamentally breached her training contract by committing gross misconduct for a variety of reasons – including forwarding 106 emails from her work email account to her private email address.

While the Tribunal was critical of the firm’s approach to its investigation, describing it as “seriously deficient and unsatisfactory”, it found that Siu’s forwarding of emails to a private address was a significant enough standalone issue to dismiss the complaint of wrongful dismissal.

Employment Judge Sutton KC concluded:

“As to the other instances of alleged misconduct on the Claimant’s part, the Tribunal felt that the evidence was either too sketchy or insufficiently cogent to satisfy it to the requisite standard of proof. But the Claimant’s breach arising out of the dissemination of emails to a private address was sufficient, viewed as a discrete issue, to rebut the complaint of wrongful dismissal.”

Firms Most List ranks firms on training, work quality, support and more

If you’re on the hunt for a training contract, you’ve likely spent numerous hours scouring law firm websites for a convincing response to the question: “why does working at [insert firm name] appeal to you?”. No doubt this has left your list of target firms blurring into one and leaving you more confused than when you started.

So, it’s no secret that there’s a multitude of things you need to consider when you’re applying for a TC — quality of work and training, salary, work-life balance, diversity and more. It’s also no secret that it can often be challenging (and time-consuming) to get a comprehensive idea of these factors when deciding on which firms you want to apply to.

Enter Legal Cheek‘s 2024 Firms Most List. Featuring a record 102 law firm profiles — including all the Magic and Silver Circle, the top US outfits in London, UK-based international elite players as well as leading mid-tier and specialist firms — over 2,000 trainee and junior lawyers rank their firms on a sliding scale across 10 key categories.

We then crunch the data and grade the firms from A* to D, accordingly. Below is a list of our scorecard categories.

Scorecard categories

Training
Quality of work
Peer support
Partner approachability
Work/life balance
Legal tech
Perks
Office
WFH
Eco-friendliness

That’s not all, though. In addition to these 10 categories, we also extract exclusive data on other key metrics. What the working hours are like, trainee and NQ salaries, secondment opportunities (both client and international) and, of course, the number of UK TCs on offer at each firm.

Survey respondents also submit anonymous comments to supplement the scores they give, providing valuable context, insight and brutal honesty into what the work and culture at the firm is actually like. Below is a snapshot of some of these:

How stimulating is the work you are given?

“There have been ample opportunities to work on highly interesting matters, from the commercially eye catching to technical legal concepts. It is largely a testament to the quality of our clients.”

How advanced is your firm’s legal tech?

“Terrible.”

How do you rate the training you have received?

“The firm has a great training program and the training you receive in each seat is unparalleled. Partners talk through topical issues and there are seminars given by external speakers. Trainees are given a lot of responsibility very early on – for example, first seat trainees can run calls/processes and take ownership of workstreams. Whilst daunting, this is a great experience for trainees and helps to provide a level of understanding and improve one’s confidence very early on.”

How good are your firm’s perks?

“Private healthcare, dental and free in-house gym. But no free snacks in the office except fruit.”

How approachable are your superiors?

“All of my partners and supervisors have been very approachable and willing to give up their time to answer any queries or concerns.”

How is your work/life balance?

“Balance? Sorry mate, never heard of him.”

Those graded A* in one or more categories are shortlisted for an award at The Legal Cheek Awards 2024, taking place this year at the Battlebridge Suite of Kings Place London on the evening of Thursday 16 May 2024.

Noble Iheanacho secures a 50% discount on BARBRI’s SQE1 Prep course

Noble Iheanacho, a Nigeria-qualified lawyer, has secured a part scholarship for BARBRI’s SQE1 Prep course for an essay on his vision of the 21st century solicitor.

Having completed his schooling and LLB degree in Lagos, Nigeria, Iheanacho also acquired the Nigerian bar qualifying and practicing certificates, a diploma in management in law practice as well as a business analysis certification. This educational background allows him to bring “a holistic perspective that combines legal acumen with a keen understanding of management and business analysis,” he says.

In his 1,000-word essay, Iheanacho discussed his vision of the 21st century solicitor, where he sought to examine the evolution of legal practice over time, highlighting the changes in legal systems and methods vis-à-vis client needs.

“As such, the solicitor of the future, like I concluded in my piece, must be multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional in approach, adopting and adapting to advanced strategies and techniques for better proficiency, expertise and significance.”

The scholarship will help further Iheanacho’s aspiration of being an international lawyer. With his experience of heading up the legal department of a multi-national management consultancy in Nigeria and setting up his own private practice, Iheanacho has been particularly attuned to the potential limitations of international transactions and their effect on cross-border business relationships.

Speaking to Legal Cheek, Iheanacho said:

“I am very excited to have won the BARBRI-Legal Cheek Scholarship Essay Competition. This is not only because of the scholarship award – which immensely assists with the achievement of my goal of dual-qualification, but also for the reason that it affords me with the necessary exposure and international visibility that I need to take my practice to the next level.”

Iheanacho further explains that it is the increasing pace of globalisation and technological advance which have fuelled his desire for multi-jurisdictional qualification, with England and Wales’ common law emerging as the most relevant option — and the SQE being the easiest route to pursue this ambition.

Speaking on Iheanacho’s win, Chris Howard, BARBRI’s University Partnership Director, commented:

“It has been a pleasure for BARBRI to once again collaborate with Legal Cheek on our SQE1 scholarship prize. BARBRI’s goal is to be an enabler of our students’ career ambitions and this scholarship is one example of that mission in action. This year’s competition was of a typically high standard. In the end, Noble’s fascinating blend of professional historical context and a nuanced conclusion, recognising the multifaceted role of a 21st Century solicitor, just edged the other entries.”

To find out more about how to prepare for qualifying via the SQE, check out BARBRI’s website.

HSF corporate associate Yusra Jafar discusses cross-border work, staying balanced and applications advice

“Day-to-day, we’re going into the office a lot more, so I’m in about three days a week. In the mornings I’ll try to map out what my day looks like and get through the chunkier tasks — you learn with time what your work habits are, and I’ve realised that I’m more of an early bird,” says Yusra Jafar, an associate in the corporate team at Herbert Smith Freehills.

Smiling, she continues: “Now, it’s really important to work out what motivates you throughout the day. For me, I make sure to prioritise a mid-morning walk and coffee run every day. It forces me to step away from my desk and get some fresh air, and it can be a really great opportunity to bond with colleagues,” Jafar explains. Energised post-coffee and walk, Jafar attends client calls in the morning and afternoon as well as internal team meetings, and the occasional evening social. ”What’s really nice about coming back into the office is that you’re never doing just one thing for an extended period of time. You’re always moving around, speaking to people, and I find that means you manage your day more productively,” she notes.

Two and a half years qualified, Jafar tells me that she doesn’t have a particular sector focus within the corporate team yet. “Partners are always asking the more junior members of the team if they have particular interests so that they can align them with relevant matters and clients, but so far I’ve maintained a more generalist approach,” she explains. Sitting in general corporate, Jafar is part of the firm’s team that handles private and public M&A, joint ventures and corporate governance advice. “Ultimately, you don’t know what you’re interested in until you try it, it’s a trial and improvement process. So, being more generalist allows me to explore different sectors and types of work within the team to see what I enjoy,” she summarises.

I then asked Jafar about what’s been the most interesting matter she’s worked on so far, and she goes on to tell me about the public takeover of transport group Stagecoach Group plc. “We acted for Stagecoach, who were initially approached by National Express in relation to a takeover offer in summer 2021. Then just as we announced that takeover publicly, a private equity company came on the scene and made a competing offer. This added element was very interesting. Public takeovers are already very dynamic — they’re in the news because they involve listed companies, you can track the share prices and see how the market is moving based on the deal you’re working on,” she explains.

Jafar goes on to explain that a competing bid, which is quite rare, adds an additional strategic element into the mix. You really must be mindful of the individuals who are working at these companies, and after all, being taken over by another company is a big deal, she notes. “You get to see that human side, and I found that particularly interesting”.

Staying on the topic of navigating the people element of work, we chatted about what it’s like to work on cross-border matters. Jafar tells me that from the outset, finding a law firm that had a strong global presence and international clients was a top priority to her, having grown up in Dubai. And happily, HSF was her top choice when she was applying for training contracts. “I recently worked on a deal which involved multiple jurisdictions. We had to instruct local counsel in Poland, Ireland and Switzerland and engaged our own local offices in Germany, Italy and South Africa. I really enjoyed this experience,” she says.

Jafar also notes that it is easy to underestimate the challenges that come with working on such multi-jurisdictional matters.

“You’re coordinating with people who speak different languages, are in different time zones and have different work practices — trying to streamline that and be the central repository for information is not easy,” she says. “But it’s this same aspect that makes cross-border work so rewarding and enjoyable. The most important thing is making sure you have good communication, a clear plan of action and being receptive and flexible to spanners being thrown in the works.”

I went on to ask Jafar about the commercial awareness issues that students should be keeping an eye out for, if they find themselves being interviewed by a corporate associate or partner at an assessment centre. She starts off with some helpful advice to allay fears about the elusiveness of commercial awareness. “You don’t necessarily need to know about the exact commercial implications of rising interest rates, climate change and all the buzzwords. Rather, it’s about understanding what a client’s priorities are within the sector they are operating in and tailoring your advice accordingly. Knowing what’s going on in the market theoretically is good, but it can only get you so far. What’s more important is to demonstrate curiosity and to show you are able to engage with what you read on the news by thinking actively about what it might mean from a legal standpoint,” Jafar reassures.

She emphasises cybersecurity and technology as key considerations to keep an eye out for, both from the perspective of security threats affecting clients, as well as the internal running of law firm’s systems and software. “I think that really feeds into the wider ongoing discussion about profitability and the legal business model. Firms are coming under increasing pressure to deliver great client service as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, which is an ongoing balancing act,” Jafar points out.

Approaching the end of our conversation, I was keen to ask Jafar about how she manages the simultaneously rewarding and stressful aspects of being a City lawyer, and her advice in relation to setting boundaries to maintain a work-life balance. “Firstly, I think it’s so important that people actually talk about this — the more that we discuss this, the more we realise that people have lives and other priorities to manage outside of work,” she says.

Jafar cautions that it can be slightly more challenging to establish a balance when one is at the more junior end of the spectrum because you naturally have less control over how your work day pans out. That said, it’s key to be as structured as possible with your work day, and crucial to that is being productive, so that you don’t sell yourself short on both ends. “Know what your priorities and non-negotiables are. Set yourself off on a good foot at the outset – show you are a hard worker and will get the job done. Once that rapport is established, nobody will mind if you go home early or have other commitments, even if it means you have to log back on later to complete tasks,” she explains.

Lastly, and perhaps, most importantly, are communication and trust. “If you have a really good work ethic, and people can see that you’ve got an amazing attitude and you’re a hard worker, you’ll have that groundwork of trust to then communicate your deadlines and priorities. If you learn to communicate effectively both professionally and personally with your team, they will know what your crunch points are, will be more alive to your commitments outside of work, and will want to be as accommodating as possible,” she advises.

Yusra Jafar will be speaking at ‘Life as a City lawyer at an international law firm – with Herbert Smith Freehills’, a virtual student event taking place TODAY (Thursday 23 November). Apply now to attend.

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AstraZeneca graduate solicitor apprentice talks SQE1&2, balancing work and study and revision tips

Starting off our conversation, I asked Emily Ross, a graduate solicitor apprentice at AstraZeneca, about her day-to-day. “It’s hugely varied and every day is very different. But saying that, my role within the company is to help mitigate legal risk. I work for the marketing company – we market, in the UK, the pharmaceutical products that come from the pipeline. So, I undertake a lot of contract review of digital campaigns, market access agreements and marketing strategies, for instance,” she explains.

Emily tells me that she also works quite closely on NHS partnerships, and in particular, the collaborative and joint workings that AstraZeneca partners with the NHS on. “Although I can’t speak about ongoing litigation, of course, I play an active role in facilitating meetings with external counsel and help to review witness statements”, she says.

The Manchester Uni law and politics grad started her graduate solicitor apprenticeship in September 2021 and is due to complete it in February 2024. She’s on a 30-month programme, working four days a week at AstraZeneca, with one day allocated as a ‘study day’. “On that day, I attend lectures at BPP, and so, as part of my graduate solicitor apprenticeship, I gain a Level 7 qualification (the equivalent of a Master’s degree), with SQE1&2 prep also integrated into my BPP course”, she explains.

It’s fair to say that it’s been a busy few months for Emily, given that she sat the SQE1&2 in July and October this year. I was curious to know what her three biggest challenges were when it came to studying and preparing for the SQE1 assessments. “Firstly, juggling work and study was a big one. I love to give 100% to my work, so I found it quite challenging to completely detach on that one study day and not get distracted by emails coming through or what was going on at work”, she notes.

Secondly, Emily points out the content-heavy nature of the exam. It’s understandably quite a jump to go from the undergraduate learning experience of writing long-form essays to preparing for multiple choice questions (MCQs) which test a vast amount of content. “My third challenge, very genuinely, was trying not to burn out. In my case, I’d just moved to London, had lots of friends here, a very busy job and the SQE demands a lot. So, managing my social, work and study life was certainly a challenge”, Emily explains.

We then chatted a bit about Emily’s assessment experience, and whether there was anything that caught her off-guard. After all, we’ve all been in that position of having prepared meticulously for an exam, and something going wrong at just the wrong moment. “With the SQE1, I would say that the BPP preparation helped me massively and put me in a very good place to sit the exam. Nonetheless, there were still a few surprising questions in there which you couldn’t have foreseen from the specification, as it’s quite broad in scope. Some of the questions were also extremely long — so when you come across that, try not to get flustered and remind yourself that all you have to do is read it thoroughly”, Emily advises.

As for the SQE2, Emily explains that there’s two components to the exams, oral and written, and her views on them are starkly different. The oral aspect tests interview and advocacy skills and Emily said she had a good experience with these. “I quite enjoyed being able to showcase my flair, something which you don’t get the opportunity to do with the MCQs on the SQE1 — that was quite rewarding. Moreover, having done numerous client interviews during my time at AstraZeneca, it was definitely the more relatable component; I didn’t have any experience with advocacy”, she details.

The written component of the SQE2 exam was not such a pleasant experience — Emily was part of the Chiswick cohort, which experienced major delays to the exam as the server went down. “We waited for about four hours, without access to revision notes. After being released on a one-hour lunch break, one floor of the centre, including myself, was allowed to sit the exam, starting after 2pm. I got back home at half-seven that evening, and had to set off early the next morning to get to my test centre for the next day”, she recounts.

With her experience of the exam logistics being far from ideal, Emily points out that the exam content is also fairly challenging. Spread out over three days, each written assessment on the SQE2 has four different components — writing, research, drafting and case and matter analysis. “Overall, these are quite long, you’re spending about 4 hours each day writing, and that’s labour-intensive”, she points out.

Offering her tips on bridging the gap between the very different formats of the SQE1&2, Emily points out that fundamentally, you need to carry forward what you’ve learnt on the Functioning Legal Knowledge components (FLK 1&2) tested on the SQE1. What you need to build up, however, is learning how to apply that knowledge on a skills basis — Emily says that the reigning mantra to master this is “practise, practise, practise”. “I found myself (really uncomfortably!) recording myself speaking, and asking colleagues at work to pretend to be clients to practise the exercises in the past papers”, she tells me.

I also asked Emily about how she tackled particular topics that she struggled with — given the breadth of knowledge covered in the FLK 1&2, there’s bound to be subjects that you just can’t seem to get your head around. She notes that working in a legal field for the past two years was very valuable, and she found topics that she doesn’t encounter on daily basis, like property, land and trusts, to be particularly challenging. “On study days,  I tackled these early on in the day when my mind was fresh. My attention span is generally better in the morning, and it’s quite nice to be able to say that by lunchtime, you’ve done the hard work for the day. I also reached out to BPP tutors and attended any extra study sessions that were running for my problem topics,” she says.

Approaching the end of our chat, I asked Emily for her advice on how students should be revising in the weeks leading up to the exams. “For the SQE1, most of the hard work’s already been done by the time you approach the exam — so what’s important is to keep calm and go over the things that you don’t know too well. You’ll be surprised at how much your brain can hold and recall during  the exam, even if it’s been a few weeks since you last revised that topic”, she reassures. Having downtime for yourself, even if that’s taking a morning off work using annual leave, is also incredibly helpful, Ross Emily.

“For SQE2, practise was the most important thing — with BPP, we sat a lot of mocks in the weeks leading up to the exams. The key on this exam is being confident in the skills tested. Even if, on the day, you blank on the law, having those skills down will help get your mark up”, she advises. “In the days before the exams, when you’re feeling tired, just remind yourself that it’s the final stretch, and push through — you’re so close!”

Emily Ross will be speaking at ‘The SQE assessments: a deep dive — with BPP University Law School’, a virtual student event taking place TODAY. Apply now to attend.

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TLT senior associate Jayne Adair talks financing deals, renewables and the key skills required to work in the real estate sector

“A few years ago, we completed a high-profile large disposal of a wind turbine development for a client in Northern Ireland. We’ve now been instructed to do another development for the same client, which is significant because it’s their first new project in quite some time”, says Jayne Adair, senior associate in TLT’s Northern Ireland (NI) real estate team, when I ask her about what she’s currently working on.

She goes on to tell me that as they delve into the development, they’re realising that the title may not be straightforward and there are a large number of landowners involved — so there are plenty of moving parts for the team and client to review when it comes to drafting the precedent documentation.

Adair then discusses another aspect of this matter, which highlights the need for being commercially-minded and forward-thinking when working with companies in the real estate sector.

“Although it was not in their plans at the outset, the client may be looking to be further involved in solar. So, we have to factor this into future plans, such as whether they might be looking to include solar technologies, or even battery storage or hydrogen at the site if technologies improve”, she explains. Navigating such up-and-coming developments, and making sure clients are flexible and aren’t tied into one technology is a feature of her job that Adair finds “very interesting and rewarding” — not just that, she points out that these skills are something that all clients will be looking for going forward.

I took this opportunity to ask Adair what she enjoys most about her practice. “I find real estate quite methodical, although this doesn’t mean it’s always straightforward. As a result, you really have the opportunity to apply problem-solving skills and work with both sides to achieve a common goal, since it’s not generally supposed to be contentious,” she says. Another feature, she notes, is the gratifying feeling of being able to map out and see the end of a deal when you get started — something that differs from her colleagues working in litigation, a practice which sometimes could have longer completion timescales.

“Moreover, real estate also touches other practice areas in the firm, so there’s always an opportunity to work with colleagues in other disciplines. You’ll probably need tax and planning advice, maybe (but hopefully not!) litigation advice, for instance, and I really enjoy the collaborative aspect of the work”, Adair said. She goes on to tell me that given the high-calibre of clients that TLT works with, such collaboration has an added cross-border dimension to it, so she often works with her counterparts in England or Scotland.

We also touch on Northern Ireland (NI) as a legal hub. Adair explains that she is exposed to the same high-profile clients usually associated with London, often public limited company (PLC) developers. She also points out that “Belfast is quite exciting at the moment because we’re doing a lot of work in the Republic of Ireland. That cross-jurisdictional work is great experience to have under your belt and it’s something we’re all dual qualified to be able to deal with in the real estate team in Belfast”.

I was quite interested in the breadth of Adair’s practice — in addition to working on future energy matters, she also advises on transactions involving retail property. I asked her how client demand, and by extension, her work, differs between these two sectors. “It might be that there are tighter deadlines in retail if a tenant or landlord wants to move in by a certain date. At the minute, a common deadline for many is to complete contracts in time for parties to trade by Christmas. To meet these deadlines, things have to be completed now. So there’s been a concerted push since the summer,” Adair explains.

She cautions, however, against making generalisations on timescales based on a client’s sector. What’s ultimately important, is meeting each client’s specific demands. “The future energy matter we’re currently working on, for instance, has fairly tight deadlines because our client wants to move the development into planning at the earliest opportunity, since the planning process itself can be time-consuming. So, the quicker we’re able to get all the documentation lined up and landowner agreements finalised, the quicker our client’s project can be up and running.  At the end of the day, it’s all about prioritising, and each client’s needs are different,” she summarises.

Given that Adair spent a few months on secondment to a bank, I asked her about what lender priorities are in relation to real estate finance, and what the role of a lawyer is in managing these. “Speed is definitely a top priority,” she notes. What this means, in practice, is going through the title documents as soon as they come in and promptly making the client aware of any red flags — so attention to detail and good communication are vital.

“You have to be commercial as well, thinking about what will impact the bank’s security. Ultimately, as a real estate lawyer, you’ve been tasked with investigating whether the title is good and marketable for the bank to then take charge over that property. In the unlikely scenario that the bank has to enforce the mortgage and has to sell, you have to think about whether another solicitor looking at the title will be happy for their client to buy the property. So, while speed is a priority, everything also needs to be right”, explains Adair.

She continues: “You’re also working closely with agents valuing the property, and seeing what is and isn’t an issue from their perspective. This helps to see the bigger picture and build a sense of commerciality.” This added element of collaboration with lenders and agents highlights the importance of maintaining long-standing relationships — so people skills are key to being successful in a real estate practice.

We also chatted about Adair’s career journey. She tells me she joined the graduate programme at a Big Four accounting firm after finishing her law degree. While she didn’t complete the scheme, instead taking up a paralegal role at a firm she really wanted to work at, she says that her time there was “an invaluable experience”. She goes on to explain — “it was my first full-time job and I learnt a lot, working for FTSE 100 clients and travelling all over the UK. Just being in that environment and seeing how your senior colleagues are managing staff and client relationships is vital to learning by osmosis.”

Approaching the end of our interview, I asked Adair for her tips for those on the hunt for training contracts. She highlights how much she learnt working as a paralegal., Whilst it helped her secure training at the same firm, it also gave her the opportunity to observe senior lawyers in practice. “Knowing what your clients want, and going about securing what’s best for them, while managing their expectations, is crucial. I learnt a lot of that from my time as a paralegal”, she notes.

Adair points out that it can often be a big culture shock to go straight from university to full-time work, and what benefitted her massively, was having a few years of real-life working experience before starting as a trainee. “If you can’t get a training contract right away, don’t get disheartened by the possibility of taking up a paralegal role. It’s not lost time, and it’s one of the best decisions I made”, she assures.

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Gowling WLG principle associate Sushil Kuner discusses cross-border work, ESG and her unique value add for clients

Starting off our conversation, I ask Sushil Kuner, a principal associate at Gowling WLG, about life in the firm’s financial services regulation practice. “My day-to-day is very varied, and that’s partly due to the small size of our team. What this means is that we deal with a broad range of issues individually. So, rather than having sector specialists within the team, we do a dual role of supporting other practice groups within the firm, as well as working with our own diverse client base,” she tells me.

Kuner goes on to explain that the clients she works with include financial institutions (such as banks and insurers) and asset managers, as well as those who aren’t in financial services themselves, but offer financial products, like large auto manufacturers. “This comes about because during the consumer journey these businesses increasingly offer finance options to customers and are often regulated for consumer-credit related activities. We also act for a range of housing developers where regulatory considerations around things like shared ownership schemes, help to buy and second charge mortgages are often required,” she details.

The benefit of this structure is that it allows a good deal of diversity in terms of the issues Kuner’s able to deal with each day, so things are kept interesting and challenging. “It keeps us on our toes, especially because regulatory is constantly evolving in any case. Think crypto assets, for example, around which there is a fairly new and ever-developing regime,” she points out.

I took Kuner’s mention of crypto as an opportunity to ask for her perspective on the issues that students should keep an eye out for around artificial intelligence (AI), the metaverse and cryptocurrencies. She cautions, “each one of these aspects is a huge area, and moreover, I look at them largely from a financial services regulatory angle. So, keep in mind that you can consider each from a range of perspectives. With AI, for instance, aside from financial services regulatory, two very different, but equally interesting, legal issues surround intellectual property (IP) rights and data privacy,” Kuner notes. Meanwhile, you could be using crypto assets to make purchases in the metaverse, but once again, the financial services regulation is just one facet in a whole array of legal issues that could arise, for example, tax considerations, she points out.

Kuner also went on to speak about her experience of working with the firm’s US and India-based clients and the skills needed to work on matters with a strong cross-border dimension. “Sticking with the theme of crypto assets, the nature of the sector is that businesses operating in this space can be based anywhere in world. Now, if they want to do business with UK consumers, they come to us to ask for perimeter guidance”, she explains. This entails assessing their business model to see if they are conducting activities regulated within the UK, and if so, helping them navigate this process to establish themselves in the UK.

While Kuner acknowledges that a large majority of clients do speak English, the language barrier is, however, not completely eliminated when working with international clients. “The trickiness comes in because you have to be much clearer and more articulate – for instance, when you’re having to break down complex terms that you might be familiar with, but a client isn’t, particularly in other jurisdictions,” she tells me. Understandably, this is a key skill to ensure alignment of interests and objectives, as well as managing client expectations.

Kuner also draws my attention to an additional dimension of cross-border client work at a global law firm — project management. “We’ll sometimes have a US-based client that wants to start doing business in Europe. Now, we make it clear at the outset that we only advise on English law, but the client can then ask us if we can project manage their enterprise. So, once we produce an initial memo based on English law, we would share that with our counterparts in other jurisdictions and seek their legal opinion,” she details. “This enables the client to see how the positions differ between different jurisdictions.”

We then chatted about Kuner’s career journey, she urged the next generation of lawyers not to “pigeonhole themselves early on” and “be open to possibilities”. She qualified as a corporate lawyer in 2007 pre-credit crash; “the wrong time to qualify into corporate,” she tells me. After two years of buoyant activity, with back-to-back completions, she was faced with dwindling work and law firms across the board making redundancies. Kuner decided to move to Canada on a one-year working visa where she joined a Big Four firm’s Vancouver office.

“If there’s one thing I would tell students, it’s to not have tunnel vision and think ‘I’m a lawyer, I can only do a legal job at a law firm’. Seeing the events of the crash unfold really opened up my eyes to financial services — so when I came back after the one-year working visa expired, I applied for a role at the Financial Services Authority, as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was then called,” she details.

While Kuner started off on a six-month placement, she ended up staying for 8 years, moving around various teams. “I wrote key external industry-facing documents in the FCA’s Supervision division, and also spent four years as a case lawyer and lead investigator in its Enforcement division”, Kuner explains. Unsurprisingly, these experiences are now invaluable to her career at Gowling WLG, as her insights into the FCA’s processes give her a unique value-add when it comes to advising clients. “If you haven’t worked at the FCA before, and you’re regulated by it, it can be a scary beast. But because I’ve got that understanding of its strategic priorities and how it makes its decisions, I’m able to bring that added perspective, and it’s certainly something that clients appreciate”, she tells me.

Approaching the end of the interview, I was also curious to get Kuner’s insights on the role played by financial services in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations, given the increasing emphasis on these in recent years.

“The regulatory angle on ESG in financial services is huge,” she says. “The UK government has been making it clear since around 2018 that financial services are a key driver in the net zero transition — after all, they help determine where capital is deployed.

Kuner continues: “With that in mind, the regulators have put in place a number of initiatives with respect to disclosure, addressing listed issuers, large asset management firms and big capital owners. This is effectively a whole new disclosure regime which requires these players to report on their climate-related metrics and policies. With investors and consumers being more interested in firms’ ESG policies to ensure that their capital is being steered in a meaningful direction, the role of financial services regulation in relation to ESG is significant.”

Gowling WLG’s Sushil Kuner will be speaking at ‘The Big Commercial Awareness Themes of 2023-24 — with DWF, Goodwin Procter, Gowling WLG, Lewis Silkin, Squire Patton Boggs and ULaw’, a virtual student event taking place THIS AFTERNOON (6 November). Apply now to attend.

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Irwin Mitchell’s Padma Tadi-Booth talks key skills and flexible working

“One of my career highlights would be acting for a large public company in successfully defending claims by individuals who were challenging their employment status,” says Irwin Mitchell employment partner Padma Tadi-Booth, when I ask her about a particularly interesting matter she’s worked on. The case had a years-long journey traversing the country as it progressed through various tribunals and eventually concluding in the Court of Appeal. “The claim’s success would have impacted nearly 2,000 individuals and would have entailed ramifications amounting to millions of pounds for my client,” explains Tadi-Booth.

She goes on to reveal that the chance to deal with, what was at the time, an area which was evolving, made the case particularly rewarding. “Not only did we succeed in getting a favourable result for our client, but the case actually clarified some legal tests which applied  — these have then gone on to be considered and used in other cases when considering employment status,” Tadi-Booth says.

Speaking more generally about her practice, she tells me that some of her other work involves supporting Irwin Mitchell’s corporate team with M&A transactions, and that this can also be very satisfying. “You have the opportunity to work with clients who may have acquired a company, for instance. It’s about working with them to complete due diligence into what they are acquiring and how then to merge the cultures and develop their people and operations to maximise the potential of what they’ve acquired,” Tadi-Booth explains.

I was curious to hear Tadi-Booth’s perspective on flexible working – something that’s rocketed in popularity in the wake of the pandemic. Despite a host of law firms mandating a four day in-office week, she explains that Irwin Mitchell’s ‘flexible by choice’ offers something a bit different. “What this means is that flexibility is not just about working at home or in the office, but also in relation to hours. We recognise that some people might need to start and finish a bit earlier, or later, depending on other responsibilities they have,” she says. “Our approach is focused around delivering for our clients, so as long as that is met, we are quite agile when it comes to working.” While coming into the office is certainly beneficial when it comes to supervision and team building, the firm steers away from a prescriptive approach to this and leaves it up to what works best for individuals and their team, explains Tadi-Booth.

“In terms of where I see the future of flexible working across industries more generally, I think it will need to be a hybrid approach, where the role allows. You’re going to have a certain element, for which you need to be physically present, whether that’s meeting clients, team building or developing goals and strategies,” she says. “But ultimately, the focus needs to be on what you are there to deliver and how best to do that given what works best for you and the company. This is something the pandemic really shone a light on.” With Tadi-Booth herself juggling nursery runs and pickups every day alongside her role as partner at Irwin Mitchell, her perspective is informed by a valuable personal angle, having recently returned from maternity leave.

On her transition from senior associate to partner, Tadi-Booth tells me that her journey was slightly unconventional. “I got made partner, and then also went off to have a baby,” she says chuckling. “In most law firms, for any promotion, you have to show that you’re already operating at that higher level to a certain degree. There’s certainly not an overnight shift, but over time, there’s gradually more expectations around team management and finances, business development (BD) and future pipelines. So, it’s that people management, BD and involvement in the firm’s overall strategy that marks the difference,” she explains.

I went on to ask Tadi-Booth about how she managed her new partner role and motherhood, simultaneously. She notes that while it sounds daunting to start off with, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in practice. She refers again to the benefits of the firm’s ‘flexible by choice’ policy and advises that it’s all about being organised, having a strong group around you personally and professionally on whom you can rely and understanding your boundaries. “You need to know what’s when, so that you know what you can move if needed, and what is an absolute must-do. That way you can navigate those priorities and deliver client and personal needs.” Communication is also key: “making sure your team know where you are and when they can reach you, and equally, having that dialogue with your clients, is crucial, “she explains.

Discussing the particularly people-centric focus of employment law, and the possibility of navigating emotionally-charged situations, Tadi-Booth also discussed some of the key skills needed to be successful as an employment lawyer. “The main skills are around empathy and adaptability. When you’re dealing with individuals, you will often have two cases that are exactly the same, but you’ll need to give different advice, because you’re dealing with different characters. So, you need to be flexible and think outside the box, looking beyond just the technical legal knowledge — taking into account a particular person’s situation, the company they’re in and any background personal circumstances triggering their reactions, for instance.” To summarise, it’s about drawing together commercial awareness and people awareness, she tells me.

On the topic of commercial awareness, I asked Tadi-Booth on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in employment law, and whether it has applications in procedural aspects like due diligence. “With AI as it currently is, probably not. For instance, there’s a case where a company used AI to sift through CVs — it was heavily biased on account of how it was programmed. So, it was filtering out people who probably wouldn’t have been if the process was done through human interaction”, she explains. While she notes that with development of these technologies, she can foresee employment lawyers and their clients looking to incorporate them, for now, the people-focused nature of employment law necessitates a human element.

Tadi-Booth also spoke about her time at Irwin Mitchell over the past 14 years and why she decided to build her career in Leeds. She tells me that the stand-out features of the firm are its people and its agility.

“The firm is not afraid to test boundaries and is always looking to progress, learn and develop,” she says. “For instance, when we became an Alternative Business Structure (ABS) a few years ago, we were one of the first few firms in the market to do that — the firm is very forward-thinking in how it wants to develop as a business. There’s a lot of investment into the firm so that we can grow and develop, and that’s not just for us, but so that we can serve our clients better.”

Finishing up our interview, Tadi-Booth explains that Leeds is a fantastic legal hub – in fact, more so now more than when she began her career. “Leeds is home, so I always wanted to come back here after uni. But it’s also a market that’s receiving a lot of investment, from top law firms, who are all seeking to establish their presence here, so you’re not compromising on the quality of work you can get — the kind of work that is traditionally associated with London, blue-chip clients, for example.”

Padma Tadi-Booth of Irwin Mitchell LLP will be speaking at ‘The Big Commercial Awareness Themes of 2023-24 — with DWF, Goodwin Procter, Gowling WLG, Lewis Silkin, Squire Patton Boggs and ULaw’, a virtual student event taking place on 6 November. Apply now to attend.

The application deadline for Irwin Mitchell’s Legal Work Placement 2024 is 2 January 2024

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