As I sit here at my desk at home, unable to go outside as there is a torrential downpour, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to commit to writing the things that I often tell to future or current trainees. At Robert Walters, where I worked until recently, we had a great “Classroom to Boardroom” initiative where we went in to speak at the College of Law to students who had training contracts lined up, told them about our experiences of our TCs, and gave them information and tips that we wished we had been given at the time. It’s extremely rare, if it happens at all, that prospective or existing trainees are given the full picture of what their training contract involves. Most people are completely unprepared for the volte-face in the third or fourth seat when previously cordial relationships with fellow trainees can devolve into rabid, strategic office politics in order to secure the most coveted qualification positions.
Just this morning I spoke to a future trainee who will be going to a US firm next year and went through a lot of what I usually talk about, in terms of how to get the most out of their time at the firm, what to think about when choosing seats and how to navigate the qualification process. Now, unrestrained by the fact I am my own boss (not that I ever felt a particular sense of censorship at Robert Walters), I feel it would be good to write down the general bits of advice and information that can make the difference between someone drifting through their training contract and really succeeding.
It’s a long one, so grab a cup of tea and a comfy chair…
The training contract – what’s it like?
Your training contract is many things at once. It will likely be daunting to start with, hard work throughout, stressful at times and also a great deal of fun. You will make friends for life, bonded by bleary-eyed all-nighters spent completing a cutting-edge multi-billion pound transaction or by late nights that started with “one drink” after work, turned into dinner and then a club (assuming we get back to that way of life post-Covid!), and you will unwittingly be defining the direction and success of your chosen career.
What am I doing?
You may find yourself thinking this on a number of occasions during your training contract – sometimes in the context of wondering if you’ve made the right choice, but more often wondering what it actually is you are doing or are supposed to be doing on a given piece of work. Just remember that no-one is expecting you to know everything as soon as you get started, that it’s OK to ask questions and, ultimately, that the partners and associates want to help you work as well as you possibly can because it will make their lives easier in the long run.
Is it time to go home yet?
A training contract can be hard work at times. The legal market is incredibly competitive and even the Magic Circle law firms who have a brand without equal have to keep their clients happy. Partners don’t want to lose clients to their competitors, so they will bend over backwards to keep the clients happy. This often means tight deadlines and low fee estimates, which can result in work being pushed further down the chain to the juniors (who are, by virtue of having less experience, a cheaper resource to use).
If you are in a transactional department like Corporate, Banking and Finance, or Funds, then there will be periods of intense busyness where deals are signing or completing before fixed deadlines such as the end of tax years or budget allocations. If you’re in a contentious seat like Commercial Litigation or Arbitration then there will be court deadlines that must be met. In other teams which are often unfairly termed “Corporate Support” – IP/Commercial, Tax, Employment etc., whilst there will be a steady stream of advisory work for existing clients, there may also be some element of deal rush when the Corporate or Private Equity teams need input on a due diligence report or some other piece of work.
Just when you think you have mastered it, your seat will be up and you’ll be starting almost from scratch again in the next seat rotation!
Dude…where’s my car…eer?
Training contracts are fun – you’re thrown into what is a fairly foreign situation for most (if you’ve just come straight from university via law school) with a group of other people who are probably around the same age as you, you’re given what is often an obscene amount of disposable income, and you feel you’re well on the way to the career you’ve always dreamed of!
Pretty much every firm of a reasonable size will organise numerous networking and social events for their incoming trainees. There will be plenty of opportunities to meet the partners and associates, the graduate recruitment teams and your fellow trainees as well as to enjoy the catering and entertainment.
It’s important to make the most of these opportunities… when meeting the partners and associates, you are not only getting to know them, but you’re also giving them an idea of how you might present in social situations with clients (be it meetings or business development/entertaining etc.). There is often free-flowing alcohol so, if you drink, have a drink but know your limits and don’t go over them. Ask any lawyer and they will have witnessed more than a handful of cringe-worthy events where trainees have had too much to drink, and will know second-hand of many more (trainees throwing up on partners’ shoes etc.). It’s not to say you’ll necessarily end up ruining your career (I know one associate who was found naked, inebriated and asleep under his desk who is now a partner at a good firm!), but it may set you back. First impressions count and your training contract is basically a two year long interview that shapes the rest of your career.
Responsibilities
You may be the most junior person in the team, but that doesn’t mean your role is unimportant – far from it. Associates, partners and ultimately the clients are depending on your work. You need to be diligent and act ethically whilst performing your role.
Anatomy of a training contract
Breaking down how most training contracts work, what you might hope to achieve in each seat and why your seat choices are so important:
Timeline
Think back to when you first joined your school… you were one of the youngest, least worldly children in the whole place. You probably looked up at the older children and yearned for some attention from them and had to make friends with the others in your class. Starting a training contract isn’t too dissimilar…
Your first seat will be front-loaded with a load of training… how to work your computer and phone, how to use the business support services, how to comply with the firm’s “house style” for drafting documents and sending correspondence, how to record your time etc. etc. Once you’ve just about got your head around that, you’ll emerge, blinking, into the department you’ll be completing your first seat in. Supervisors have vastly differing styles – some will throw trainees in at the deep end, others will be very diligent about preparing and coaching their trainees in how to do things. Whatever style they adopt, you’ll have to adjust to and make sure you seek help from others if you are struggling.
In your second seat you’ll be more familiar with the firm and the people in it. You’re likely to be in a completely different practice area and you’ll be given more responsibility than in your first seat.
You may go on a secondment in your third seat – to a client or an overseas office. At this point you may have more of an idea of what department you want to qualify into and have more of an understanding of who the decision-makers and influencers are. You’ll also be playing more of a part in firm activities – law fairs, pro bono etc.
Your final seat will be a whirlwind of doing higher level work, making qualification choices and potentially looking at qualification options outside of the firm you are at (if you have other aspirations or if qualification internally looks unlikely). You may also be on secondment in this seat if you haven’t already gone somewhere.
Seat choices – they matter!
I’ve already mentioned that a training contract is like a 2 year interview, but it’s more complicated than that. If you have a traditional 4-seat process, it’s rare that you will be able to qualify into your first or fourth seat. In your first seat you’re still learning the ropes and it’s also the longest time before qualification decisions are made. In your final seat, decisions are made on who to offer jobs to long before you have a chance to prove yourself, so it may only be your second and third seats that you can viably qualify into.
Not complicated enough? You know that secondment I mentioned? That can be great fun and great experience, but it is also potentially one fewer seat to qualify into. Even if you have your secondment in your final seat, this then takes you out of the office whilst decisions are being made. There is the risk of being out of sight and out of mind and, if you’re overseas, makes it that much harder to make your case to the partners.
It’s important to keep an open mind during your rotations – I went into my traineeship convinced I wanted to be an IP lawyer, but then came up to qualification having really enjoyed Corporate and wanting to qualify into Private Equity. Your training contract is likely to be the only time in your career that you can try something different!
Office Politics and how to make yourself indispensable
It’s not always going to be like this stock photo…
You need to be aware of the hierarchy of the firm, but also not get too carried away with it. Partners are going to be the decision-makers as to who qualifies into their team, but that doesn’t mean you can focus exclusively on them. In making their decisions, they will speak to the associates and see what they think of you, and they’ll also probably ask their PA. Be nice to everyone from the back office up – apart from the fact that it’s nice to be nice, if you’re rude to a PA or someone in the print room, someone else might witness it and (rightly) think you don’t share the ethos of the firm or that person might complain to others.
You need to become indispensable… you will be given work to do if you’re not busy, but you should try to seek out the most interesting and best work from the partners. Other trainees will be doing this, so if you sit back and wait to be allocated work, it’s probably going to be the worst bits! If you find a problem, try to think of a solution rather than just reporting the problem.
Always carry a notebook – I’ve bolded, underlined and italicised this because it is so important. You may just be going to the kitchen to get a coffee, but you might bump into a partner or associate that sees you and then suddenly decides to ask you to do something or impart some great wisdom. In the same way that it’s comforting to see a waiter write down your group’s order at a restaurant and absolutely terrifying when they appear to be memorising it, fee earners giving you instructions will be reassured by you writing down their instructions and then repeating back your understanding to them.
Making the most of your training contract
You don’t have to look like this guy (although he is a sharp dresser)… These would be my suggestions for some of the ways you can make the most of your traineeship:
- Be professional – this must pervade everything you do… how you speak, how you dress, how you act and how you treat people. You’re always a representative of the firm and the profession as a whole.
- Be positive when you’re at work – let’s face it, very few people want to be in the office over a weekend or all night, but the fact you are in means you’re likely getting some really good experience that will advance your knowledge and experience of the subject matter. Complaining doesn’t generally do anything but get other people thinking you have a poor attitude.
- Be aware – think about where you can add value, think about what things might need to be done but haven’t yet been asked of you, and be aware of where the greatest chances of you qualifying internally may lie (hint: it probably isn’t in the department with one partner who’s a few years off retirement that has one senior associate and no-one else.
- Be commercial – this is the magic formula – clients instruct law firms and it’s generally a given that they will get full and accurate legal advice. What adds value for clients (and therefore also for partners) is where the lawyers are commercially aware. It’s all very well spending hundreds of hours producing a 500 page due diligence report for a transaction, but if it’s only worth £5m and the risks to your client are relatively small, no-one is going to thank you for recording that much time. Beyond a simplistic example such as that, being commercial is about understanding what makes your clients tick and how you can help them most effectively.
- Get involved – be the person that people want on their team – you want to be willing, reliable and the one to volunteer.
- Always have your passport with you – you never know when there may be a need for someone to jump on a plane to attend a meeting or deliver documents etc. If you’re there with your passport in hand, you’re most likely to be able to take advantage of that. One week at Allen & Overy I was working a bit late on a Wednesday about 2 months before Christmas having just got a deal signing through the previous night, a partner wandered into my office, and by Saturday I was on a business class flight to Japan for a deal that kept me out there in a serviced apartment for 6 weeks.
- Delegate where you can – your time (even as a trainee) is expensive, so get paralegals or PAs to help with things where possible. That frees you up to concentrate on other, more important work.
- Don’t slack on the admin – the partners aren’t going to be able to bill the client accurately if you haven’t recorded your time, or worse still you won’t get credit for the work you’ve done. You also need to prepare for your appraisals and make sure all documents are dealt with properly (you don’t want to be the next cautionary tale of a trainee who forgot to file documents at Companies House in time!).
- Take notes – use that notebook you keep with you at all times! Also keep a record of everything you’ve worked on – even keep a running CV whilst you go along, else you may find yourself having to try to remember everything you’ve done towards the end of your training contract and struggle to do so.
Qualification
You’ve done it! You’re in your final seat and you feel like the woman in this very strange stock photo. That job is within reach! Yet… have you got enough forward momentum to reach that quite steep mound that the large JOB is sitting on, and is your impractically large handbag going to create too much drag?
Enough with the metaphors – the things you will need to think about are as follows:
Which practice area?
After you’ve started your final seat, the internal qualification process will begin in earnest. You will be asked to put down your choices of department for qualification. Often you’ll have a list of jobs that are available and, to your impending sense of dread, you may count up fewer jobs than there are trainees in your cohort.
In fact, the informal qualification process will probably have started long before – you need to talk to the partners in the department you are interested in, demonstrate your strong interest in qualifying there and try to get a feel for how likely that might be. If they start avoiding eye contact and ducking into offices when they see you coming then you might want to think about a different team or looking externally.
You need to also be aware of unwritten rules – for example at KWM (the incarnation that was SJ Berwin and went bust, not the current one), if you put down any other choice in addition to disputes, then you would not be offered disputes. They demanded complete and utter devotion on that front. Less extreme variations would be teams that don’t like being second choice.
You should also have been planning ahead if you’re going on secondment for your final seat – have those meaningful conversations before you go.
Internal or External?
This is potentially where someone like me would come in. You may decide you want or need to look at qualification options outside your firm – perhaps you want to move to a firm that pays more, has a better name in the area you are interested in, or there just aren’t enough positions where you are.
You need to have a CV together (remember what I said about keeping a record of what you’ve done as you go along? This is where it comes in very handy!).
Another tip is to save up some holiday for your final seat – if you do decide to look externally, you may want or need to book a half or full day off here and there to attend interviews without being too obvious about it – wearing a suit on dress-down Friday? Everyone knows exactly where that slightly longer-than-usual lunch is…
Get some help – talk to your friends at other firms, talk to people you trust who are more senior to you, and get recommendations from other people of recruiters that they trust. It’s a difficult-enough time as it is – you don’t want to find that you’ve sent your CV to someone random who then sends it on to every firm in town based on you having spoken to them once and saying that you’re interested in finding out about qualification positions!
Conclusion
If you’ve stuck with me thus far, congratulations – the fact you have done so means you’re taking things seriously and want to get the most out of your time as a trainee. I’m always happy to give ad hoc advice to trainees or future trainees, so drop me a line.