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James Pritchard

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Keeping your career options open is key to flexing your career

In a sector where it’s easy to be pigeonholed at a very early stage in one’s career, what can junior lawyers do to keep their options open? We asked legal careers coach Paula McMullan to offer some pearls of wisdom.

With 25 years’ experience as both a lawyer and a coach, (most recently as Head of Recruitment at Slaughter and May and as the internal careers coach at Allen & Overy LLP), Paula now helps dissatisfied lawyers find balance and fulfilment in their career.

Congratulations! You’ve survived your training contract, successfully navigated qualification and your legal career is laid out ahead of you like the Yellow Brick Road. So far, so good.

Now what?

I speak to a lot of mid-level and senior associates who get to 5 or 6 PQE and suddenly realise that their work/life balance isn’t great, and that they’ve fallen out of love with the law, or with the type of law they’re now practising. Maybe they’ve become too specialised, or they’re not getting involved in the type of work they’re really interested in. Or perhaps they’ve already decided that partnership is akin to being the little man in the booth pretending to be the Wizard of Oz.

Often more experienced lawyers find they have painted themselves into a corner and that it’s not as easy to transfer to an in-house role or another firm as they had imagined.

One thing is for sure…the future is uncertain. Whatever plans we may make now, it’s wise to build options for ourselves so that we’re well equipped to deal with change when it comes.

Before you get too far down the line with your legal career, here are three ways to give yourself more professional flexibility.

1. Develop your skills and knowledge with future roles in mind

When I ask lawyers what makes them unique and what they have to offer an employer, many find it difficult to talk about themselves. They give me underwhelming, generic answers, and they clearly have no idea of their value to a business or their ‘unique selling point’. If they can’t articulate this, what hope do they have of persuading a new employer?

It is therefore vital to develop your business skillset with one eye on future roles. For example, if you want to work in-house, what skills will you need to persuade a corporate to hire you out of private practice? How can you develop these while you are still working for a firm?

There are also a lot of flexible working opportunities for lawyers nowadays with outfits offering work on a contract basis. Does your specialism lend itself to working in this way? What skills and attributes do you have/want to develop that will enable you to flourish in that professional environment?

Lawyers tend to be quite detail-focused and they talk about their assets in isolation. Think, for example, about how your ability to analyse complex legal problems will benefit a corporate employer and put your skill into their context. How about saying you are used to assessing risks and advising on appropriate strategies to further your client’s business interests?

And be aware of the opportunities that may or may not be available to you once you are a few years into your legal career. What roles will a 4 PQE pensions lawyer or debt capital market specialist be suitable for?

A top tip from a recruitment consultant: if you’re thinking of a change in career direction, employers will want to see a commitment to that career change. So, if you want to move into learning and development, start designing and delivering seminars, read about learning strategies, find a mentor in L&D.

First steps? Find out what skills and experience will set you apart from the competition when you decide to go for another role. Work out who can help with finding out and then ask them!

2. Develop a sustainable approach to money

It can come as quite a shock to learn just how much of a drop in salary you may need to take to land your dream job outside private practice, or at least a stepping-stone role. The golden handcuffs that restrict many lawyers can seem unbreakable, so you need to change your approach to managing your financial resources.

It’s vital to work out your priorities – what’s most important to you right now? Maybe you are saving to buy your first property and you feel you need to keep going in your private practice role until that’s taken care of. Fair enough. But it’s also important to consider the downside of that strategy. What will the impact be on your mental health? Are you becoming even more specialised? If you get a large mortgage, will this compel you to keep your earnings at their current level?

Consider now the impact of different financial scenarios and develop a plan for tackling them. I knew when I was posted to Singapore, my ex-pat package would only last for a couple of years, so I lived on the same amount as I had in London and put the rest into my pension. When it came to leave, the resulting drop in salary wasn’t a shock. I didn’t need to recalibrate my lifestyle in line with my lower income.

First steps? Devise a sustainable financial plan. Talk to an independent financial adviser who can advise you on different ways to safeguard your assets and how to plan for a secure financial future while keeping your professional options open.

3. Separate your identity from your job

Have you noticed how, when asked what they do for a living, people often simply say “I’m a lawyer/doctor/architect/designer”? Our belief that “I am” a lawyer can get in the way if we become dissatisfied with our legal career because we can internalise that feeling as dissatisfaction with ourselves and our choices. This, in turn, can make it difficult to imagine ourselves as being able to do anything else, or being worthy of someone taking a chance on us.

Limiting beliefs like this can be quite deeply ingrained. You may have wanted to be a lawyer from an early age, maybe you have relatives who are successful lawyers and therefore feel that you should be too, or perhaps simply being surrounded by other lawyers day-in and day-out reinforces this belief. It served you well once because it got you to where you are today, but if you are no longer wedded to your career in its current form, then believing “I am a lawyer” can hold you back from realising your potential.

Think more in terms of what you do and the benefits you bring to your employer and your clients. Turn “I am a finance lawyer” into: “I help tech start-ups open up opportunities to develop by guiding them through successful negotiations with investors”.

First steps? Start noticing how you think about yourself professionally. How do you introduce yourself and talk about what you do? How can you reframe who you are into what you do?

As you’re reading this, you may think that none of this applies to you because you’re enjoying having reached qualification after so much study and hard work, and you’re looking forward to the challenge of growing into a great technical lawyer. But this brings us back to the start – the future is uncertain so why not make sure you are ready for it?

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Will the Big 4 accounting firms become major players in the UK legal market?

The Big 4 accounting firms are making aggressive inroads into the UK legal market and are committed to changing the sector’s landscape in the years ahead. In this blog, we examine their chances of success.

“The ambition is to be a significant player in the legal market.”

These were the words of Deloitte UK Legal’s new managing partner Michael Castle after he joined Deloitte from Allen & Overy earlier this year. His words echo similar sentiments in recent months from the other Big 4 accountancy firms, PwC, EY and KPMG.

The top law firms are taking the Big 4’s foray into the market seriously. Fieldfisher managing partner Michael Chissick admits “they are a threat to firms in my strata. I wouldn’t underestimate them in any way.” 

Memery Crystal’s managing partner Nick Davis has similar concerns. “They will be very, very serious players in the market,” he says. “They have got such a strong client base and they are so good at integrating business services into their offering.”

Haven’t we been here before?

Back in the 1990s, the then Big 5 (the same four plus Arthur Andersen) were making very similar noises. But their attempts foundered following the Enron scandal and the subsequent disintegration of Arthur Andersen in 2002.

By that time, Andersen Legal had become the world’s ninth largest law firm by revenue. The scandal and subsequent concerns about audit firms offering non-audit services led to the accounting giants pulling back (though not withdrawing totally) from the legal sector. The magic circle and large US firms expanded to fill the void, and it seemed that the rise of the Big 4 in the legal market had been seen off.

Not so, says Professor Wilkins, director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. “The legal profession thought they’d banished [the Big 4] to Middle Earth, but in fact, they reformulated their strategy to take advantage of changing dynamics.”

So, what’s the strategy?

“Our model is not to go head to head with law firms. We offer something different,” says Nick Roome, head of KPMG’s UK legal services business. This is the same for all the Big 4, who seek to combine legal advice with advice across other disciplines such as accounting, tax, compliance and due diligence. It’s a service offering that law firms simply can’t compete with.

Financial muscle and investment in technology

The Big 4 have other enormous advantages over even the largest global law firms. One is financial muscle. The revenue of the world’s two largest law firms, Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins, is around US$3.5bn, a sum that is dwarfed by the Big 4, whose revenues are approximately ten times this amount.

The Big 4 have shown that they are willing to invest all this money is new technology, something law firms have been slow to do in comparison.

EY calls itself as “a leading disruptor of legal industries” and put its money where its mouth is last year when it bought legal innovation company Riverside Law for an undisclosed amount. Riverview is best known for developing an AI programme that can perform legal tasks normally performed by paralegals. It will, says EY, “help clients to increase efficiency, manage risk, improve service transparency and reduce costs of routine legal activities”.

KMPG meanwhile employs nearly 200 software developers whose sole job is to develop digital software. And PwC has a joint innovation lab with Google in Belfast whose goal is to develop new global client solutions. Even the largest law firms can’t come close to competing with this.

A client base to die for

Another key advantage the Big 4 have is the fact that between them they control 60% of the accounting sector and their clients include 95% of  FTSE 350 companies. In other words, they already act for most of the clients the leading law firms are fighting over.

They have a geographic advantage too. The Big 4 have a presence in more than 80 legal markets around the world, whereas the top 10 law firms are only represented in 31. Not satisfied with this, in recent years the Big 4 have made a sustained push into the legal sectors of emerging economies, with EY and PwC, in particular, recruiting heavily in Asian jurisdictions.

So, should junior lawyers think about joining a Big 4 firm? They would be wise to consider it. PwC currently employers 2,500 lawyers worldwide, a similar number to Clifford Chance. KPMG employs 2,200, EY 2,100 and Deloitte 1,800. And numbers are rising. The Big 4 are starting to poach lawyers from leading firms and have made lateral hires in recent years from several top UK firms including Allen & Overy, Addleshaw Goddard and Clifford Chance.

Deloitte’s Michael Castle said following his appointment as managing partner in March that the firm is in sustained hiring mode. The firm is seeking lawyers across its corporate, employment and tax litigation practices, all areas where the firm is already strong and getting stronger.

“The immediate plan is to build the legal capability,” says Castle, “and to tie that up with other aspects of Deloitte Legal like the consulting, the alternative legal services and the technology products to deliver legal solutions to clients.”

Traditional firms have been warned. It will be interesting to see if the Big 4 get it right this time around and, if they do, how the world’s leading law firms react.


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What they don’t teach newly qualified solicitors at law school

Starting your first job as a newly qualified solicitor is an exciting time, but it can be an anxious one too. In this blog, we offer some practical tips you didn’t learn at law school that can help you get off to the best possible start to your legal career.

Mark Twain had some advice for anyone starting a new job: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” Unfortunately, ignorance won’t get you far in the law and it’s fair to assume you have a bit of legal knowledge if you have reached this far.

But that doesn’t mean you are expected to be the finished article on day one. The best lawyers are the ones who accept that they don’t know everything and never stop learning. You may have ‘Associate’ written on your business card, but you still have a long way to go.

If your chosen area of law is one you covered in an earlier seat, get up to date with changes to the law that have taken place in the meantime.

Help!

Above all, don’t be afraid to ask colleagues and partners for help. The temptation is not to do this for fear of showing yourself up. But it is far better to ask than give the client the wrong advice and make a costly mistake.

Context

Not being scared also goes for clarifying instructions you receive from one of the partners or one of your superiors. One of the biggest challenges for newly qualifieds, especially when joining transactions or cases after they have started, is to understand the background.

What may be obvious to the person asking you to carry out a task may mean nothing to you. Don’t be timid about asking them to explain what the client is trying to achieve and the context of what you are doing. Context can relate to any number of things: where your task fits into the transaction or case as a whole, how time critical it is and how important this task is compared to others you have at hand.

This links to another crucial point. You should be trying to make a positive impression by being hungry to take on new work and making yourself available to help out anyone who asks (even if, or especially if, this may seem menial to someone of your newly elevated status).

Too many masters

The danger is you take on too much. As Homer said: “If you serve too many masters, you’ll soon suffer.” Be cautious about taking on too much as you don’t want to have so much on your plate that you end up doing it poorly or too slowly. Make sure you are organised, clear about deadlines and do the most critical work first even if this isn’t necessarily for the person who shouts the loudest.

Explain it as if to your Nan

Above all, be practical. If someone asks you to do research or you need to write to a client with some advice, don’t present it like a law school essay. As Katherine Cousins said in her blog, The top 5 mistakes to avoid as a junior lawyer, “think about it like you’re trying to explain the problem and the solution to your Nan (unless your Nan is a Supreme Court judge)”.

No schoolboy/schoolgirl errors

Being practical also means avoiding silly mistakes such as typos or forgetting enclosures or attachments. If you’ve worked hard on a thorny legal issue you may be so pleased with yourself you forget to spell check a piece of advice or a note for a partner. Sadly (and possibly unfairly), sloppiness can overshadow good work and a reputation for it can be hard to shake off.

Make friends and try to find a mentor

Make friends. You’re going to spend a long time at work, and it will be so much more enjoyable if you are surrounded by people you like and who like you. You can help each other out and share your good and bad experiences. In the first few weeks, it’s a good idea to clear your diary so that you are available for drinks after work, firm events or networking with clients so that you can get to know people in a more relaxed environment.

Also, try to find a mentor, someone senior in your department you look up to and respect. Some firms have formal mentor programmes but if they don’t, try to find your own. It’s invaluable having the ear of someone who has seen and done it all having been in your shoes not so long ago.

Above all, enjoy it.

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How tech-savvy do junior lawyers need to be?

Hardly a week goes by without someone warning that technology is changing the legal sector so fast that law firms must “adapt or die”. Given that legal tech is here to stay, what does this mean for today’s junior lawyers and the skills they need to survive in a changing profession?

“The UK legal market is on average ahead of the curve when it comes to the use and implementation of legal technology,” according to a recent insight article by Thomson Reuters.

The reasons given for this include the business structure of UK law firms, pressures exerted by the Big Four accountancy firms’ (re)entry into the legal market, and the link ups between law firms and academic bodies. The article concludes that the innovative strategic plans of the UK’s leading firms “are pushing them further, faster”.

This is confirmed in an interview in August in The Lawyer with the Innovations Manager of Irish firm Matheson, Tom Connor, who said: “I think we’re going to see big law firms investing in legal technology and specialist legal engineering talent to advance the delivery of their legal services. Those who don’t are at risk of losing market share to fiercely competitive alternative legal service providers.”

If technology and “specialist legal engineering talent” are so crucial, what does this mean for today’s junior lawyers working in and, in due course, leading our law firms? To what extent do they need specialist skills over and above traditional legal skills?

How practical coding skills would be once you are in the office is open to debate. But there is no doubt a sea change is taking place in the minds of recruiters when it comes to identifying candidates. “We have started to see law firms… seeking a more diverse pool of new entrants, STEM students for example who have different ways of thinking from the typical law graduate,” says Adam Curphey, Head of Innovation Technology at BPP Law School.

BPP is one of the legal training providers that have been quick to pick up on this trend. It now offers a tech module to aspiring lawyers that Cuphey says will “equip students not only with the digital skills the legal practice of the future will need, but also the ability to use and design technology to respond to problems”.

The University of Law goes one better, offering a three-year “Law with Legal Innovation and Technology” degree from its London, Leeds and Nottingham campuses. The course covers artificial intelligence, blockchain, marketing, business psychology and process analysis.

So, will the law firm of the future be staffed only by tech-savvy lawyers using AI and the latest legal software?

This seems unlikely says Mayer Brown partner Andrew Block: “People go to lawyers for a solution to a problem and lawyers apply their judgement to solve that problem. AI helps lawyers do that but there is no substitute for the human lawyer – you can look at a textbook and understand what the law is. Clients come to lawyers because they want their judgement, their understanding and their experience.”

This view is shared by White & Case associate Ralph Goodchild who says: “AI can never substitute your relationship with a client.”

Somewhat surprisingly given the hype surrounding law tech, more traditional traits and know-how still trump tech and digital skills when firms identify what they require from junior lawyers. This was confirmed in a survey of law firm graduate recruitment and legal educators last year who put “resilience and flexibility” at the top of the list followed by “written communication” and “commerciality”. “Tech and digital skills” ranked fifth behind “time management”.

This should be a comfort to junior lawyers worried that a lack of tech and digital expertise will leave them behind. They should also take heed of the words of Norton Rose Fulbright Learning and Development Manager Julie Manson, who said: “When you come to law school, don’t be distracted by tech. It’s important to have a thorough understanding of case and statutory law and how this will impact your future clients. The tech will help in your delivery of that and of course, some understanding of how that will work in practice will be useful to you as a student and then as a trainee.”

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Will the SQE lead to a more diverse profession and drive up standards?

Two of the SRA’s aims for the new Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) are to create a more diverse profession and drive up standards. In this blog, we examine whether the SRA will succeed in its quest or whether it will have the opposite effect as some critics are predicting. 

The legal profession has a diversity problem. A report published by the SRA in 2017 found that partnerships remain dominated by white males. “Females, and BAME females especially, appear disadvantaged when it comes to career progression in the solicitors’ profession,” it said.

A strong, diverse profession

The new SQE examination forms part of the SRA’s commitment to creating a strong, diverse and effective profession reflecting the communities it serves, however, many in the profession doubt the SQE will help the SRA meet this goal.

A “devastating effect” on individuals?

The junior lawyers division (JLD) of the Law Society has been vociferous in its criticism of the new exam. Its chair, Amy Clowry, believes the cost of taking the exam of around £3,000 to £4,500 will have “a negative social mobility impact”.

Similarly, two university academics claim that the new exam will have “a devastating effect” on many individuals.

University academics Dr Jessica Guth of Leeds Beckett University and Dr Kathryn Dutton of York St John University wrote about the exam in The Law Teacher journal and said: “For many, equality of opportunity remains a distant dream… The inequalities inherent in the higher education system – the route which most still take to becoming a solicitor – are perpetuated in the profession.”

They laud the SRA for its aims but say unless firms change their recruitment practices they are excluding “very talented young minds” due to where they are born and who their parents are. One suggestion they make to overcome this problem is to introduce genuinely blind recruitment practices.

Revolutionising access to the profession

Others take the opposite view about the potential effect of the SQE. Susan Pearlman is a former head of legal knowledge at Herbert Smith Freehills and a tutor at the University of Law. In an article in The Lawyer she says she was initially sceptical about the new exam but says she “realised that to truly consider the merits of the SQE, you have to look beyond the exams themselves”.

“Allowing candidates to gain qualifying work experience in a far wider range of settings will be revolutionary in opening up access to the profession,” she says. Not so argues Clowly, who contends that this will simply move the current training contract bottleneck to those seeking newly qualified positions.

One thing seems inevitable, and this is that more solicitors will qualify each year. If so, is this necessarily a bad thing?

Not according to Mark Edwards, senior vice-president of online legal services provider Rocket Lawyer. He thinks that in a few years there will probably be four times as many qualified solicitors and that this is a positive as these new lawyers “are going to be able to help all those people currently not able to access justice”.

A wider talent pool

Susan Pearlman also sees the upside of more lawyers qualifying. She says that teaching at the University of Law has shown her that many “bright and committed students” were being lost to the profession as a result of failure to secure a training contract.

“Not only will [the SQE] mean a career in law becomes a realistic ambition for a far more diverse range of people, but it will widen the pool of talent of new joiners, which will result in benefits to the legal profession and therefore the clients, the people and the communities lawyers work with,” she says.

No one can argue against the benefits of diversity and the SRA is to be applauded for this assuming the concerns about the cost of the exam and recruitment mentioned above are overcome.

Improved standards

What about the SRA’s goal of driving up standards?

On this, there is also some disquiet with the JLD saying the removal of the requirement to study academic law and the inclusion of multiple-choice questions in the exam “will lead to a lowering of professional standards”.

This is echoed by the House of Commons Justice Select Committee, who have written to the Legal Services Board saying that it has “significant concerns” about the new exam. In particular, it said it is “unconvinced that enough attention has been paid to the potential long-term impact of removing the requirement for academic study of law”.

Are the JLD and select committee right? Will the new exam lower standards rather than raise them? This is something we will examine further in a future blog.

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Should you consider taking a legal job abroad as an NQ?

If you shudder at the prospect of beginning your life as a newly qualified solicitor in the UK and getting trapped in the rat race, you do have options. Why not move overseas straight after qualifying? Not only does it promise an exciting experience, it will add gloss to your CV if and when you decide to return. 

It was Hans Christian Andersen who said: “To travel is to live.” After the long slog of university, the LPC and your training contract you may feel you haven’t been doing much living at all. It could be the perfect time then to consider taking your first steps as a fledgling lawyer outside the UK.

What are your options? Broadly, these fall into three categories.

1. Work for a UK firm overseas

Between them, the magic circle and larger City law firms have their tentacles all over the globe. As you would expect, there are satellite offices in most of the major European cities with Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid and Milan particularly strongly represented. You will probably need excellent language skills to land a job in one of these offices, though.

This won’t be a problem in the US or Commonwealth countries and there are a vast number of UK outposts in the US, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Much will depend on where you trained and what experience you gained if you are to land a job at one of these top firms.

2. Work for an overseas firm that doesn’t practice English law

Luckily for you, common law forms the basis of many jurisdictions’ legal systems and this opens up a number of opportunities. The Commonwealth countries are obvious examples as are the traditional offshore jurisdictions such as the Channel Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

Another bonus is that all sorts of international business agreements entered into worldwide are governed by English law and state that the courts of England and Wales shall have jurisdiction to hear disputes. This is due to the long-standing reputation of the English courts for impartiality and fairness. As a consequence, English qualified lawyers are in demand in many foreign countries. As well as the jurisdictions mentioned above, the Middle East (and Dubai in particular) are flourishing legal centres where English law plays a big part.

3. Requalify overseas

If the thought of more studying doesn’t put you off, this is an excellent way to advance your career and enhance your future job prospects. We live in an increasingly connected world and more cross-border transactions are being entered into than ever. Being dual-qualified and having a knowledge of more than one legal system will give you a head start against (non-dual qualified) lawyers competing for the same job. It will also help you build a niche as your career progresses.

How long it takes to qualify and what it involves would depend on where you are planning to do it. Be warned through – it may be a significant commitment.

What you probably won’t want to do is move abroad and spend so much time working and studying that you don’t get the full benefit of the experience.

The advantages of working abroad

You would open yourself up to a different lifestyle and may enjoy a better work/life balance. I can’t imagine how the commute to work in Bermuda, for example, compares to South West trains followed by the full sardine experience on the Northern Line.

The local tax regime may also work in your favour. In some jurisdictions, such as Dubai and the Cayman Islands, you may not pay any tax at all and in others, Asia and the Channel Islands, your tax may be lower than it is in the UK.

The weather, the affordability of accommodation, the commute and working practices are all potential advantages.

Plus, you will have plenty to add to your CV if you come back.

The disadvantages

Against this, however, you will need to weigh up the possible disadvantages. Will your stint abroad be seen as stalling your growth as a solicitor and set you back on the career ladder? Much will depend on who you work for and where, but this is a risk.

Salary is another factor. Unless you are heading to the US (and to a lesser extent Australia or the Far East), you may find that overseas salaries don’t compare with those at home (although you would need to take into account any tax advantages, as mentioned above).

Then there are the costs of relocation (and moving back, if you do) unless the firm you work for is willing to chip in for these.

Finally, you need to consider personal issues such as missing family and friends. These can be mitigated to some extent by the likes of WhatsApp and video calls, but nothing compares to being with someone in the flesh.  

The hail Mary option

It can be hard to land a role overseas as a newly qualified lawyer and it may be best to grit your teeth for a short time while you gain more experience and think through your options.

Last year, The Telegraph wrote about a former Latham & Watkins lawyer who took a sabbatical to work as a chalet manager during a ski season in Verbier. She loved it there and wanted to stay but missed the law. She ended up setting herself up as a lawyer in Verbier working for clients in the UK and Switzerland. As a result, she has managed to combine the best of both worlds.

If that is the type of lifestyle you aspire to it is worth thinking about how you set yourself up for this with your first NQ role.

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