Trainee - Insolvency - James Morris

Careers in Law can be very different depending on the type you practice and the size of the firm you join. Solicitors tend to be the first port of call for legal matters whether personal or corporate and they liaise with clients to try and resolve their problems or provide a legal framework for something they want to achieve.

Barristers are called in by solicitors for their expertise in a particular area of the law or to argue a case in court. That said, the distinction between the two is narrowing slightly due to the increasing scope for solicitors to conduct their own litigation.

Like many of the professions, law offers a great deal of flexibility in terms of where you practice so you don’t have to be in the centre of a large city to have a successful career. You can practice in large firms servicing business, within the businesses themselves as an in-house lawyer or at a high street practice overseeing the matters of private individuals.

It’s worth bearing in mind that the type of firm and specialty of law you practice will have a huge impact on what your daily life is like. A private equity solicitor in a magic circle firm is going to be spending a lot more time in the office than a high street solicitor. Commercial barristers were one of the biggest shocks to us. We hadn’t quite grasped just how individual the job is and the huge hours it demands. A 6 day working week appears very standard.

Law is well known as a lucrative industry and many firms seem to have coped with the credit crunch well. As a guide, if you’re a solicitor in a top 50 city firm then on your first rotation expect a salary in the £35-40,000 range. Newly qualified's will be in the sixties and three year post qualified can be anywhere from £80-110K. Salaries in the smaller high-street firms are quite a bit lower. Barristers are self-employed so their income can vary hugely but the industry stars could give David Beckham a run for his money.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is James Morris and I’m a trainee solicitor for Nabarro LLP.

What is The Law?

Difficult question. I’d say to me at Nabarro it’s just cutting through the jargon to get a clear solution really.

What attracted you to this career?

I’ve really had an interest in law from a young age and I’d done some work experience in my first year of university when I started to study law at barristers chambers first and then with a local counsel and really I just enjoyed the legal side of things although I decided the particular areas that they specialised in wasn’t for me and that actually I wanted to become a solicitor. That’s really what drove me into getting into a career in law.

What does your job involve?

It’s varying things. As a trainee you’re quite involved in helping other solicitors and partners in bigger transactions, bigger pieces of litigation and the tasks that you’re given can vary from day to day and from department to department. As you are probably aware we move round in a seat rotation. A seat is basically a 4-month stint in a separate department around the firm and here at Nabarro we do 6 lots of 4-month seats and you are in a different department so the kind of work you are going to do is going to differ depending on which department you are in. At the moment I’m in the insolvency department and I tend to do bits of litigious insolvency but generally acting for administrators when companies have gone into the insolvency process. Day to day work can be anything from drafting key pieces of documentation to do with that, advising the administrators on their responsibilities, attending meetings with partners and the clients. When I was in construction litigation it was completely different. That was attending meetings as well but also going to court and just taking notes at those hearings just pending the judgement given by the judge so it’s really quite a broad range of things that you can do especially as you go throughout your training contract.

What do you do on a typical day?

It varies day to day and in insolvency in particular. I tend to get in at 8.30 but that’s not everyone getting in at that time, it’s just that time that suits me to travel in. I start at 8.30 and get in, check my emails, find out what I’ve got to do for the day, check my calendar, see what meetings I need to attend, what tasks I need to attend to, see if I’ve got any deadlines for that day, any outstanding matters. Probably the majority of my day is spent through receiving emails, replying to them, working on tasks that I’ve been given but I also spend quite a lot of time face to face with partners in the team, assisting them on transactions and sorting any new matters that come in as well and I guess day to day as well you liaise with your secretary who are quite willing to help out with a lot of tasks that you are given and the more administrative side of things you can get some help with.

How did you choose which law firm to go to?

It’s really hard because there’s so much marketing out there and you really have to try and cut through that which is difficult but the best way is to speak to people at the firms and find out what the real picture is because you don’t really get that through marketing. You can get a sense and I certainly did from quite a few marketing brochures that I’d read and websites etc., but when you looked closely you could see certain credentials of what you were looking for and where you think you'd fit in that. I think that’s probably the most important thing is trying to work out where you’d fit into these organisations and do you see yourself as one of a huge intake of trainees – some of the really big firms take on up to 100 in their London offices and some of the smaller firms take in 4. Nabarro for me was somewhere in the middle, it was big but it wasn’t a monolith. For me that was quite important, it was huge but not massive and I think in that sort of size organisation you can retain more of a culture and having done a vacation scheme here for three weeks I saw that. I was quite impressed; I did better work here than I did when I was doing a vacation scheme on any of the other firms so that was really what informed my decision. I would definitely try and cut through some of the marketing, use it as an influence but don’t rely heavily on it because you can sometimes find, as I did, when you went to other firms that the picture that’s painted isn’t always quite true.

How did you decide between becoming a solicitor or barrister?

I did a placement with a local barristers chambers close to where I lived so it wasn’t in the city and it was a criminal chambers that I did it with. I was considering that route as well as being a solicitor in the early days of my university degree. I think getting experience is the best way to decide between the two and very quickly having done that experience I realised it wasn’t for me, it was quite a stagnant atmosphere, very individual, very little team work, very intellectually stimulating but at the same time there was no social aspect to it, from what I could see. It was very much for yourself and there wasn’t much social interaction going on around chambers. That was reflected in the fact that you took work home and did it in your own time at whatever hour and that suited some people but for me I much prefer working in an office and I thought the city law firm life sounded much more attractive than working in an old chambers building to be quite honest. But that’s the best way to work out what you want to do. Try and get experience. It’s very easy for people to say that – I remember when I was going through it, thinking it’s all very well saying that but it’s quite hard actually to go out there and get someone to give you the chance to do a bit of experience. You really do have to try all routes and you will get through eventually and it doesn’t matter if you know someone in a local chambers or chambers in the city, and even if you don’t know anyone just write to them and ask them if they would consider just taking you on even for a week. I only did five days but it was enough for me to realise that it wasn’t the route for me.

Describe the process of your work?

A recent example I’ve had when I’ve been in insolvency is that a partner’s come to me and said he’s got a query from the general coroparte department. One of their big clients has come to them and said, we have this agreement, we want this result, can we do this. So he’s come to me and said, can you please research whether this contract is joint & several, several or any other variant. So I’ve gone and done the research for it, done a short note on it, summarised the position as I see it in law and then applied the facts that he’s given me, fed that back to him, attached all the substantiations – everything I’ve summarised. Then gone and sat down with the partner, explained it to him, this is the short answer, these are all the substantiations here for you to look at and to check. Then he said, fantastic, we now need to do X, Y & Z. The partners generally will take the process side of things and think it through and we do the work underneath that if you like. From there, he fed that back to general corporate partners who were acting for the client because this was a discreet, insolvency issue, so I went along with him and explained it to the other partner and from thereon he would advise the client in laymans terms, that this is what you can and can’t do and the risks are X, Y & Z. You are involved in different stages of the process.

What are the speicialisms within your industry?

Banking and finance, corporate generally which is merger and acquisitions, general advice on company contracts, insolvency, construction, property, technology, media and telecommunications, intellectual property, construction property, human rights, international trade, immigration, family, energy, projects.

What are the best bits about your job?

I’d say it’s the unexpected things really because it can get competitive in terms of routine day-to-day although the work isn’t repetitive, you come to work and you work whatever hours that day brings. But when something unique comes up or something where you have to think or there’s a particular problem that you’ve not thought of before and a partner comes to you and asks your advice on researching a point and relay to him the key points, I think that’s the most interesting thing about what I do. The times when you get drafted in when you feel like you’re very useful and when they then relay the advice to the client and you’re there in the meeting it’s quite satisfying to know that the research you’ve done has gone into help them solve their problem so I’d say that’s the most interesting part.

What are the worst bits about your job?

It’s quite well documented in the professional world that generally hours can tend to be up and down and that has been my experience throughout my training contract. Although they’ve not been unmanageable, there have been times when they’ve been fairly long and I’d say on a day to day basis my hours are probably around 9/8.30 to 6.30. That’s sort of a standard day but they can range from a lot longer to occasionally a lot shorter when there’s something happening or there’s a client event they can be significantly shorter and mixed with drinks so that’s a plus side.

What has been your greatest achievement?

I can’t really identify anything in particular but I remember starting my training contract and probably the second month in being asked to carry out a bit of research and discussing it with a fee earner who liked as though they were taking on board what I was saying, considering my views and I thought then that was what the work had been for and I felt valued which sounds corny but was satisfying.

Any regrets?

I can’t think of anything specifically that I would change but I think it is important to be generally enthusiastic throughout the whole process both in terms of applying for jobs and when you are at university, getting involved in things, not just doing your degree, doing the LPC (the Legal Practice Course you have to do after you’ve done your three years at university in order to be a solicitor). Get involved in things throughout those periods. I know it’s hard because there’s a lot of studying to do, exams and things like that but if you can take a few spare moments to get involved in things I think the firm particularly look very favourably upon candidates who have done that and I think looking back that’s probably one of the big selling points for me when I was going for interviews and I'd say that’s a good piece of advice for people who are still going through the academic stages.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

At the moment a graduate starting at Nabarro, first year trainee would get £36k in their first year, moving up to £40k in their second year and on qualification I believe it’s somewhere in the region of £62.5k so I would say the pay is definitely a motivating factor and one of the perks of the job. Along with that there are quite a few client events that you get invited along to as a trainee which is nice, so you are not just involved at the lower level of the work that you do but you’re also brought in on things and made to feel part of the team that has solved the client’s problem essentially. I’ve been on a number of away days with different departments which have been good fun, different client events, parties celebrating deals that have been closed and equally litigations that have been won so I would say they are the perks of the job as well.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

I’ve never come in on a weekend in the 8/9 months that I’ve been here and generally as a rule it’s not something the firm encourages at all. I know people that have but it’s generally only when there’s been a big deal and say, the deadline has been Tuesday and they’ve had to work throughout the weekend but they are one-off occasions generally. That’s not to say you won’t ever do one but I’ve not done one and I don’t think it’s necessary unless there’s a big deadline coming up. If you’ve got too much work that you need to be doing a weekend and there’s not a big deadline coming up then I think there are capacity issues there and you should be taking it up with your supervisor. Weekends aren’t standard at all. My standard working day is from about 8.30 to 6.30/7. I have regularly worked later than that to about 8/8.30 on occasions, or for weeks and I’ve never worked any later than 11.30 and the occasions I have I can count on my hand so it’s not a massive amount.

Is there much in the way of travel?

Not massively, not outside London anyway. I’ve been on a few away days where they have been outside of London. I think there are opportunities if you wanted to take up a seat or secondment abroad there’s one in Brussels that Nabarro do so certainly if you wanted to do international work outside of London there is the opportunity to go to Brussels to do that. Other than that I’ve not travelled outside of London so far but that’s a decision I’ve made because of where I live and not anything else.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

There are lot of big and good firms that are in the regions. My own personal preference when I was looking for jobs was to work in the city, partly because of the work that you do and the clients that you work for, but I think now with the clamping down of legal costs, businesses are keen to spend as little as possible but equally get good quality and I know that there are quite a few big regional law firms that have got a good reputation so you don’t necessarily have to come to the city to get good work. I still think there’s quite a difference in terms of pay and attitude and I think you would still probably get the best training working for a city firm than anywhere in the regions, but that’s just my view.

What is the working environment like?

I think generally across the firm it’s quite even in terms of male and female, however, amongst trainees it’s skewed in favour of females. The female to male ration is quite high. I’d say in my intake when I was taken on with about 14 people there were only 4 boys and 10 were female. But across the firm I’d say there is generally equality. As you go higher up through the firm, the partnership ratios aren’t as equal, but generally further down it is. With regards to the working environment I’d say it’s very nice to work in. You’ve got a lot of amiable people, people are willing to help and generally it’s quite a social firm. They’re always trying to get you involved as a trainee and obviously it depends which department you’re in again, the supervisors and how the team works but generally it’s a very sociable firm and nice environment to work in. You don’t feel like you can’t ask people questions at all, the majority of people are very willing to help you if you get stuck and you get a good level of supervision, so certainly as a trainee you don’t feel swamped with things, that you can’t go and ask somebody a question or say to the partner, sorry I don’t understand, can you please explain it. Everyone’s very busy but you can always negotiate a time to speak to somebody about something so that makes a very comfortable environment and suits me.

How did you get into your job?

I did a law degree at Essex University and got a first. I definitely wouldn’t say that you need a first to get into law at all. A 2.1 is advisable I think and that’s probably the same across all the graduate jobs but having said that I do know people who are doing very well and are further along in their career and didn’t get a 2.1. There are people who have got 2.2’s and have got on but they are in the minority so it is advisable to get that 2.1. When I was in my second year at university I decided that I wanted to get some experience in a corporate firm of solicitors in the city so I found out as much I could about them. I knew from my first year and some presentations that had taken place at the university that firms offered vacation schemes over the summer months in your second year or your final year if you’re a non-law graduate so I spent a lot of my second year doing research and making the applications basically and then I did a vacation scheme with Nabarro which was one of four that I did over the summer and then the offers came in September and I chose to go with Nabarro and then in my last year I studied, then I went to law school and then I started here. There are a number of ways that you can become a solicitor without having to do the training contract or to go around it if you like, or if you’ve come from another career for example. Firstly you can become a para-legal. Traditionally its people who’ve done a law degree and usually the LPC as well – the Legal Practice course - which is the course you do after your law degree. They are really just a support member of staff. When they come here they are probably equivalent to trainees, they probably do a little bit more documentation work than a trainee would do and they’re just used on transactions, litigation, just to help out with whatever it is that comes up and I think probably the role you have as a para-legal would largely depend on how good you show yourself to be. The other point I’d say about a para-legal is that they don’t always have to have done a law degree or the LPC. There are people who have done other qualifications through, I think one of the institutions is ILEX which is the Institute of Legal Executives and that’s another route. I know some people in certain departments of the firm have done that route, certainly some of the older people are legal executives but are now very well respected solicitors and actually a lot of them are more pin-point on the law and are a point of contact for legal queries. So it’s definitely not a one track process although it’s often presented like that and I think probably the traditional way of doing it is like that but there are other ways into it so I would encourage people to research them if they were interested in doing it in that way. I think it’s still probably better to get a traineeship if you can but certainly people have come into firms as para-legals, made an impression and then been offered a traineeship or alternatively done ILEX qualifications, worked at other firms and then been brought into Nabarro to do various roles. So it’s not a closed shop at all.

What's the application process like?

Here at Nabarro, it’s quite a good thing to apply for your summer scheme first because by doing the summer scheme for three weeks you are automatically considered for a training contract and I think the figure are somewhere in the regions of 90% of our trainees come from the vacation scheme. So if you get onto the vacation scheme you have more of a chance of getting a training contract than if you come for an interview. I think it works out at about 2 or 3 trainees out of every intake of 25 who have not been on a summer scheme so it really is worth your while trying to get onto the summer scheme and I know that’s easier said than done because they are quite difficult to get through. The process starts basically by submitting an application form. I remember the frustration of filling those out when I was in my second year. A lot of the questions are quite repetitive from different firms but they are all asking you to differentiate between them, which is quite hard when you see the surface level marketing because you don’t really know what goes on behind the doors, but you do have to make that effort and submit the application form as best you can. Based on that the graduate recruitment team will invite you in for an interview or an assessment day, depending on different firms. At Nabarro it’s an assessment day which is made up of a written exercise, an interview with a partner and an associate and a group exercise, where they get four of you that they’ve invited to an interview into a room, give you a situation, ask you to solve it and then you’re being watched by various members of the graduate recruitment team, partners etc to see how you would react in a certain situation and how you work together as a team. I think that was a good thing because although it felt quite intense on the first day and more intense than quite a few other interviews I went to I felt like they had more of an opportunity to see what skills I had rather than quiz you on the spot and then ask awkward questions. Some of the other firms I went to it felt like they were trying to trip you up in places which I didn’t feel was a good way to go about things because I thought it would be better to be nice and see how you come out of yourself rather than trying to trip you up and I think Nabarro definitely took that attitude so it made you be able to be the best for yourself.

What are the key skills required for your job?

I think you definitely have to have good analytical skills and attention to detail is very important as well, and also enthusiasm certainly as a trainee, just because the nature of the work at times can get repetitive and there are things you will be asked to do things that you won’t necessarily be the most enthusiastic about doing, but if you do show that willingness and you’re helping somebody out on something they will show their appreciation and when they do and you’re recognised for the work that you’ve done and it’s very much appreciated. If you take a long term view of things that’s quite important.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

Again, I’d say enthusiasm, dogged determination because it is so competitive. But not to lose sight of the aspects of team work because I think that’s where people go wrong on assessment days is by being too competitive. Because they know it’s competitive they do it at the expense of team work and start trying to trip each other up which is not looked upon favourably by most law firms, I would say.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

I think in law its quite a set career progression which is probably different to other professional routes, I m not sure, but for us it’s 2 years as a trainee, of which there’s no escape, you have to do those two years. Once you’ve done those two years you’re qualified and classes as an associate or a solicitor, associate is the corporate title they give you. Then you’re an associate until 6 years when you can become a senior associate and then from thereon you have the potential to make partnership and I think some people have even made partnership before the five years qualified mark but generally, probably the average for partnership is between 7 and 11 years qualified and some is even longer. Really past associate, there isn’t at the moment an between level. Some of the bigger firms are starting to introduce something called a managing associate which is supposed to be an alternative career to partnership, but generally in law it’s quite fixed, your progression throughout that. When you qualify, you’re 0-2 years PQE which is post qualification experience so if someone says you’re 1 year qualified you’ve got 1 year PQE and throughout the yearly progress your money and your responsibility develops and you start getting more involved in deals, transactions, litigations, whichever department you’ve qualified into all with a view to getting enough experience to be able to become partner one day if that’s on your agenda.

Where do you see the industry going?

In relation to financial markets in particular, there’s a lot of FSA compliance that’s now starting to become prevalent and I know for a fact that at Nabarro, our department in the FSA regulation area is certainly growing. With the regulation that’s growing so too lawyers need to be on top of that and informing the finance industry of their obligations to be able to comply with those and certainly for insolvency, where I am at the moment, there’s a lot of cross-border insolvency where groups are going under and they’ve all got subsidiaries in different countries. It’s becoming increasingly important to understand the law in different jurisdictions and to be able to collaborate with lawyers in different countries and that’s only going to increase as the years go on and certainly in the wake of the credit crunch it’s probably likely to get more prevalent.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

I think definitely certainly in some industries it would be very useful to have the skills that you learn as a lawyer, particularly company secretaries in big blue chip companies tend to be ex-lawyers, not always, but a large majority of them are and I think knowing the regulation behind a lot of business is important and therefore people like to have people who have trained as lawyers in their organisation so they can spot issues and raise issues as they come up and make sure they get appropriate advice. But I think generally having the office experience you get in a law firm is going to be useful in any job so I don’t think it’s a massive problem transferring from a legal background to anything else because as I’ve said before it’s a competitive industry and it’s quite a well-recognised industry as well. A lot of people would be quite happy to have a trained lawyer doing another role, even though I suppose you’ve missed out on the years of industry experience in which you’re going but I guess that depends on the area in which you’ve trained as a lawyer, certainly if you’re in the property or the construction world for example they’ve all got their own industry knowledge and being a lawyer in that industry you do need to know some of the background to what your clients are up to and how that industry is going so over the years you will have definitely built up the knowledge of how things work so I’m sure that’s transferable.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

Definitely for law, The Lawyer, for undergraduates specifically they do The Lawyer to Be which was something I read when I was at university. It’s very good around interview time to be reading those as well as the legal pages, The Times does a legal supplement on Thursdays that I read when I was at university just to be kept abreast of things because if you are asked a question at interview and you can come back with an answer on something like that it is quite impressive that somebody has been keeping up to date with things. As well there is the Legal Week which is similar to the Lawyer. Also the Training Contract Handbook and that was something I looked into when I was choosing firms when I was at university level. Also LEX I think it’s called. That’s another brochure that sets out different things about firms. We all get interviewed as trainees from different firms about what we think about the firm, strictly confidentially. They ring you up and ask for the low down so you should find more honest reviews in there than what you would get if you ask someone standing in front of the recruitment group partner, so they’re quite useful and I certainly used those when I was making my decision.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

I think I would be broadly in the area of business finance. What exactly I would have chosen to do I’m not sure, probably not accounting as I’m not amazing with numbers, possibly investment banking or management consultancy. But to be honest I was fairly fixed on doing law from the outset and whilst I have an interest in what’s going on in the business world and how that relates to the legal world, I think I'm best suited to where I am to be honest.