Partner - Real Estate/Commercial Property - Marie Scott

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 Marie Scott. I am a partner in a law firm called Nabarro and I work in the real estate/commercial property department.

What is The Law?

It is not really in terms of the law I practice, what you see on the telly. It’s not Ally McBeal and it’s not all about court rooms and barristers and people going around in funny wigs and gowns. That is certainly an element of the law, that’s not my involvement with the law. My involvement, and what the law is for me is really about applying legal principles and a legal framework to facilitating a business transaction or a business deal or helping in a business context your client, whether it’s an individual or a company or a public body, achieving a business aim, problem solving for them or helping them address challenges or problems that have arisen in the running of their business whatever that might be.

What attracted you to this career?

I think the idea of being involved in something where there is an analytical process, gathering information, working through it logically, that appeals to me and problem solving, and being able to think laterally.

How did you decide between becoming a solicitor or a barrister?

I think probably very early on. I’ve never been a great one for public speaking. It’s a skill as a solicitor you do need to acquire because you may be required to do a marketing event or give training and that is part of your job, you can’t just hide away in your office. You do need to be able to communicate in lots of different forums. But being a barrister and standing up in court which is the initial perception you have of being a barrister, being an advocate wasn’t something that appealed to me and I think you have to be quite confident in your public speaking skills because that is certainly an element of being a barrister.

What does your job involve?

Facilitating business deals probably most of the time, occasionally problem solving outside of that as well. But a client will come and they might want to do something very straightforward, buy a piece of land or buy a building. It could be an office block that is already let to tenants and that’s quite mainstream straightforward work so they will come to you. You will then contact the solicitors on the other side. There is a process you go through of negotiating the documents, looking at the title to the property in question, you negotiate the contract, there will be a form of transfer for transferring the property and it’s a standard process you go through really. It takes however long, sometimes you can get these things done very quickly and sometimes they take a lot longer. There’s a whole variety of work I do, I do some banking work as well with property finance where you are acting for a bank who will be lending acquisition finance for it’s borrower to purchase land, buildings, sometimes it’s for development, sometimes its for investment so that’s slightly different as well.

What do you do on a typical day?

A normal day would be in the office at 9. Some people come in much earlier – I’m not an early bird and I tend to work the other end of the day. Some people do both so I’m normally in by 9 and a normal day would be that my computer is constantly on as are everybody's unfortunately. Emails are always pinging up so a lot of work these days is done by email. There is very little actual hard copy correspondence that goes on and that varies from department to department. I know in our corporate department they have very little hard copy correspondence at all so most of the correspondence is via email. You do spend a lot of time on the telephone with clients, with agents, with people on the other side. There are always lots of meetings – the more senior you get the more meetings you end up having to go to – and that again could be negotiation meetings or with your own clients or solicitors on the other side. In real estate we get to do site visits as well so occasionally you get to wander around the field that you are buying for development or the office building so occasionally you get to leave the office and that’s normally for meetings if you do, and that’s pretty much a standard day.

Describe the process of your work?

A client comes to me and wants to buy a building that is let to some retail tenants on the ground floor and offices above. I get hold of the other side, so the solicitor acting for the seller. They send me across a draft contract which will be a fairly standard form but there is always some negotiation - it will be drafted from their client’s perspective – so the point of the negotiation is to reach a compromise so we push for what we want as the best position for our client and we normally meet somewhere in the middle. They also send me what we call the “due diligence” or sales pack which is a package of documents. Most properties these days are registered so they will be registered title, which are print outs of title registers you obtain from the land registry which give you the details to the building, who owns it, what it’s address is and all the matters that actually affect title. Your job is to go through that and carry out the due diligence. You check the title, you make sure there are no problems with it and you prepare a report on title for your client. Each firm will have their own pro forma report and a lot of it is filling in the blanks so that’s to report to your client, to make them aware of what exactly it is they are buying, to ensure what they intend to do with the building they can do. It’s all very well buying a building to keep the tenants in there but if actually they want to get the tenants out, knock it down and redevelop it, there may be some things that restrict them from doing that so your job is to make sure they can do what they want to do with it. Then you conclude your due diligence and your negotiations on the contract. You would then do, what we call, exchange contracts which is where the contract is entered into and there is normally a period of time between exchange and completion so the contract may be entered into at the beginning of the month and normally within about 28 days you complete and at that point in time the title to the property is transferred and again there is some paperwork to deal with and after that there is the registration process – you have to send certain documents off to the Land Registry – and then your client becomes the registered owner of that property and has its own title.

Why commercial property Law?

I’m not sure really, I absolutely real estate, property and land law at university. I did a combined Law and Anthropology degree and property law was just awful, I hated it. I found it so academic, so historical, so dry and I really struggled to see how there could be a practical application of what I was learning. I then accepted a training contract at Nabarro which back then was traditionally very real estate (it is renowned as a pre-eminent firm in real estate) and there was very little emphasis on all the other services that we provide which is slightly different now. I thought, what am I doing? I’ve joined a firm that just focuses on real estate without really understanding what else the firm did. But I went to law school after my degree and everything is a lot more practical at law school, and that suits some people but not others, but I think most people actually enjoy the practical side of law. I studied property there and thought how different it was from university and so much more interesting for me because it allowed you to apply your knowledge logically and practically and to think laterally in problem solving. I really enjoyed it at law school so was a bit more positive. I then did what we call “seats”. During your training contract you spend a period of time in different departments and they’re referred to as seats and so my first six months was in property and I absolutely loved it. I think it appeals to how my brain works I suppose and it’s just as well that everyone’s brain works in different ways otherwise we’d all end up doing the same thing but I like being able to go and look at a building, to see what it is I am buying/selling, developing, draw a red line around it on a plan and that’s just the way my brain works I suppose.

What are the speicialisms within your industry?

Real estate, and within real estate there are different areas so some people specialise in real estate finance, real estate funds. There’s more mainstream banking, corporate commercial work, planning, litigation, construction, property litigation, pensions, environment, employment, health & safety, tax. There are other practice areas that this firm doesn’t cover for example private client. We don’t have a private client team anymore but we used to and a lot of firms do, also media and criminal law – as a commercial firm we don’t get involved in criminal law but there are criminal law practices too.

What are the best bits about your job?

The diversity of work that I do and the fact that it’s always challenging. There’s a lot of stuff that you do that is processed, there’s always that and after a while some element of it may become mundane but as you progress through your career you are constantly facing new challenges, clients looking for new ways to do deals, you have to move with the market and see how the law is changing, so there’s always things to keep up with and new challenges, and I think that’s probably the most interesting thing in that it does keep your brain ticking over and if you want to accept those challenges it very hard to stagnate and get bored.

What are the worst bits about your job?

Probably the hours. You have to accept that comes with the job. It’s a very well paid job relative to a lot of other professions and you have to accept it’s never going to be a 9-5 job in a large commercial practice. There are some law firms where it is possible to work better hours but the remuneration will relatively be a lot lower and there are some practice areas such as corporate that are a lot more demanding than others. Real estate these days is very demanding and the hours can be pretty long and it’s tough when you have a family as well, but it’s a personal choice you make so you only have yourself to blame really.

What has been your greatest achievement?

I think being made a partner. I was made a partner this year on the 1st May 2008 and I trained at this firm, did a summer placement at this firm, started in 1998, spent two years training and I then worked my way up through the firm and in between all of that I had 9 months maternity leave and then worked part-time for a year and it was what I pushed for but to the firm’s credit they very much accommodated that and allowed me to come back. It was my choice to come back full time and I made it quite clear I wanted to progress my career if I came back full time and they allowed me to do that. So I’m 32 years old and I’m a partner, and I’m quite proud of that.

Any regrets?

I think it’s all panned out very well for me actually which may be slightly by design and slightly by default but I think that working somewhere where you are happy, where you can show that you’re loyal and that you really feel like you are part of the business you will get loyalty back from your employer so that when you do go on maternity and you want to come back part-time and want to have flexible working, yes every employer is legally obliged to consider whether that’s possible but the bottom line is that they really need and want to make it work and if you show that you’re loyal and a safe pair of hands then they will do that for you.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

This firm pays competitively in terms of where it is in the market. There are some firms which are called the “magic circle” firms which are the top 5 or so law firms in the city and they pay a lot more than we do at certain levels but they demand a lot more and the lifestyle is different. I think a first year trainee will get £36k and newly qualified, after your 2 years of training you qualify on to £64/65k so it’s a pretty big jump, one minute you’re a trainee on £36k and the next minute your salary is almost doubled so that’s pretty good and it does rise year after year. There are annual pay rises and the firms will keep an eye out on what the other firms are doing and what the market is doing and try to peg themselves competitively. The other perks are and this is similar in similar firms, we have a pension scheme the firm contributes to for its employees, there’s a subsidised gym membership, there’s health and medical cover and maternity pay as well above the statutory minimum.

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

It varies from department to department and it varies according to your level of seniority and probably how self-controlled you are at making yourself go home and how well you manage your work. But I find I go through phases and there are some times when I'm probably in the office at least 12 hours a day and that’s not always sat at my desk for 12 hours a day – you manage to escape for lunch now and again, or you might have client meetings, client marketing event or training session to go to so you’re not always sat on your bottom at your desk staring at your computer screen. Sometimes it is more than 12 hours, not very often but occasionally. I am very rarely out of the office before 6/6.30 as an absolute earliest and I do have a Blackberry, most people do and they are slightly addictive, so always checking my emails and some people exercise a little willpower and turn them off, unfortunately I don’t. But I think that also comes with the level of seniority, you are expected to keep an eye out for what is going on. I do work from home, if I can work from home in the evening, I’ll take work home, see my children before bedtime and do my work on my computer at home. I do occasionally work weekends, I would never come into the office at the weekend - I would work from home. So there is that element of flexibility that you can work outside of the office, but the hours are pretty long.

Is there much in the way of travel?

I don’t really get to travel much in my job. Most of my meetings are in London anyway. I guess if I had a client who was buying a site somewhere outside of London there might be site visits and meetings out and about. So I've never really travelled an awful lot in my job. Although having said that I was in Munich a few weeks ago seeing a client. We went out to run a training seminar for some clients in Munich so I was there for a couple of days but that’s quite unusual, I don’t normally travel that much. We do have an office in Brussels and there is a secondment that some of our trainees get to do where they get to spend one of their seats in the Brussels office. So travel comes in to that extent. It depends on who your clients are. If you happen to have overseas clients there might be trips abroad depending on where the clients are but it’s probably not a profession that is renowned for travel.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

I think it depends on what type of work you want to do. The big cities have the larger law firms, the bigger commercial practices and that’ really where the money is on the whole and clients to a certain extent will always be drawn to the larger cities if they want a good name as a good law firm. But you can practice law anywhere really, especially these days you can remote access your computer system, you’ve got Blackberry’s, everybody has mobile phones and a lot of the time the clients might expect the office to be in a certain location but they really don’t mind where their lawyers are as long as they can get hold of them and they can get the job done, and they can make meetings wherever they’re needed. So I think the answer is that if you want a job in a large commercial firm and you want the salary that goes with that then you are going to have to look to the big cities but that’s not to say that there aren’t some very good law firms and practices outside in the more regional areas.

What is the working environment like?

It’s probably quite a formal environment. I’ve not worked in another law firm but I expect they’re all very similar. It’s quite a formal environment. The secretaries have open-plan desks and seating arrangements and then around the outside and inside of the building there are separate offices and partners on the whole have their own offices. Some partners will share with another fee earner but in most departments and in real estate at the moment partners have their own offices. Fee earners will normally share two to a room or there could be a trainee in with somebody more senior. We all wear suits, obviously it’s bit easier to get away with not wearing quite so formal a suit as a woman but we’re all expected to be smart and presentable and business like and the men all wear shirts, ties and suits. We have a dress-down policy on a Friday which is smart-casual so no jeans - you can’t turn up to work looking like you’re off to the beach unfortunately, even when it’s really hot - no flip flops. The demographics of the firm – I don’t know the actual statistics – but there are a lot more female trainees coming through these days than male, so the younger end of the firm is tipped slightly in favour of the women. As you get more senior that does tail off slightly. I think inevitably there will be more women who maybe want to work part-time, go somewhere else, they leave to have children and choose not come back or they maybe want to do something else and I think that inevitably will happen more with women than it will with men but that’s not because the environment forces them to do that, I think that’s maybe just a natural choice that will occur in a lot of professions. But it’s fairly well balanced between male and female. There are more male partners than female but I think we have quite a good number of female partners so you don’t feel like you are completely on your own. There are quite a lot of fairly young partners as well as a lot more senior partners who have been partners for years so there’s quite a good mix there. There’s a very good mix of ages anyway because people are at every different level, trainees, newly qualified, 1, 2, 3, 4 year qualified all the way through and you need a mix of different levels of people within your team to be able carry out the work , so there will always be a mix of ages in every team.

How did you get into your job?

I got a degree in Law & Anthropology, a BA from the London School of Economics. I got a 2-1 in that. I chose to do a law degree comined with something else that I thought would intersetd me as well as I was advised maybe to steer away from doing straight law. I think that suits a lot of people and I think that probably depends where you study it. That’s not to say you shouldn't do straight law but you don’t need just to do a law degree to get into becoming a lawyer. You don’t have to do a law degree at all, you can do any degree you like, you just have an additional year after your degree where you do what’s called the conversion course, the GDL, on top of your other year at law school so I was advised to mix it and to do it with something I would be interested as well as law, just to temper it slightly in case it became too dry. I think that was probably good advice and that suited me. Other people it depends on what you are intersetd in and what you enjoy studying. So I did law and anthropology and there are quite a lot of people here who don’t have law degrees at all and who have done the conversion course, we have people here who have done psychology, science, history, maths, engineering degrees, a whole range and that’s certainly not frowned upon. It makes for a much more interesting mix of people and it’s human nature that we’re all different and we all have different interests. Our common theme is that we are all lawyers; it doesn’t mean that we’re all clones of each other. This firm as well as I’m sure a lot of firms welcome graduates who are non-law just because it gives them a bit of a different background.

What's the application process like?

We run a 3-week summer scheme which, if you are a law student its traditional to do the summer scheme in the summer after your second year at law school. You would do it later on if you were a non-law student because you’ve got an additional year before you start work of doing the conversion course. This firm recruits very heavily from the summer scheme so I would always recommend to anybody to try to get a summer vacation placement. Most firms, some more so than others will recruit from their summer placement students. You don’t have to do that and you can still apply to the firm for a training contract as a trainee even if you haven’t done a summer placement here or anywhere else. The application process for both the summer placement and the training contract is quite similar. I believe there’s an online application form which is what I think all the firms have these days. When I was applying it was just 2 sides of A4 and you just had to tell them about yourself. Now it’s a lot more structured. There are very pointed questions that ask you why you have an interest in law, to describe a situation you have been in that’s been challenging or you've had to work as a team, so the form will guide you as to what we’re looking form. Our HR graduate recruitment team will look through the applications. They will then select the ones they want to put forward for interview and then there is a whole panel of laywers here, partners and fee earners, who work in pairs and will actually interview on interview days. As well as the interview there is also a group exercise which involves a bit of a “Dragons Den” situation which I’ve not been party to but I think is quite good fun. Probably slightly daunting I imagine working in a group of people you’ve met only 5 minutes before but that’s watched by the people from HR so they get a feel for how you work in a team. Then there’s also a written exercise which is normally marked by one of the people who’s interviewed you. Then HR ask for additional feedback and input what they think as well and that’s how that the selection process is gone through and so they collate all the results of all the different elements of the day and decide whether to select you for either the summer placement or direct training contract.

What are the key skills required for your job?

I think you have to have an attention for detail. That’s the key thing. If you’re not the sort of person who has an attention for detail it’s probably not the right career because you will probably drive yourself and everyone else around mad. You need to enjoy lateral thinking, problem solving, being able to apply the information that you have to hand to a specific situation and adapt that and to be able to give clear advice, to be able to communicate well, which is a skill that can be acquired and honed but you have to have a willingness to do that. Its essential – time is money, more so now than ever before and clients don’t want to be bamboozled by gobbledy-gook. They want clear and effective communication. When they ask a question they want a direct answer and it’s not always easy to give it in short form but they want to be able to understand what it is you are communicating to them so that’s very important.

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

Do some work placements or even just one – I only did one and I got offered the job here and I’m still here. Other people I know spent their entire summer holiday doing 4 or 5 and cramming in as many as possible. I think most people on average do two, but it’s great because it really gives you an insight. It’s very easy maybe to watch video clips like this or to read articles or to look in student guides or if you know somebody who is a lawyer just to talk to them, but until you actually spend 2, 3 or 4 weeks in the office environment, actually seeing what other people do and being given work to do yourself then only then can you really understand how exactly you might fit into that grand scheme and whether it would be worthwhile for you. This firm in particular and many other firms recruit very heavily. So it’s not a complete bar to getting a training contract if you haven’t but if you’ve done a summer placement here and you’ve done well then chances are you’ll be offered a training contract and that’s the best way in really.

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

You start off as a trainee and you spend two years as a trainee, that’s standard across the industry. The training process I’ve referred to as seats – our trainees spend 6 lots of four months in five or six different departments and we have core departments that everybody is required to spend some time in, litigation – it doesn’t have to be straightforward litigation, it could be another department that has a contentious element to it, so for example it could be contentious construction or employment or even intellectual property if you get to do some contentious work there. Everybody at this firm is required to do a real estate seat. That’s not the case in all commercial firms but we do have a big focus on real estate here so you are required to do a real estate seat and a corporate seat. We have a whole host of other departments, planning, property litigation, health & safety, employment, pensions, you name it, there’s a whole raft and you can choose to work in those seats as well. Whilst you are going through that process you then select where it is you would like to qualify once your two years is up and if there is space for you which on the whole there normally is then they will offer you a job in that department. Occasionally people do leave. It’s not frowned upon if you are moving firms upon qualification. Some people may find that actually they want to work in a different environment, bigger, smaller or they are moving out of London. Or occasionally sometimes you just can’t accommodate. If there are 4 people wanting to work in the same department and there are only 3 jobs then someone is going to be let down unfortunately, so there is a market at qualification level for newly qualifieds moving. That’s quite normal. You then qualify as a solicitor so 31st August you are a trainee and the 1st September normally you are suddenly a qualified solicitor which is quite daunting and then you progress each year and we have what is called PQE, which is Post Qualification Experience and you are marked out by your PQE so your 1yr PQE, your 2yr PQE etc and when you actually look at job adverts for qualified lawyers they tend to be by reference to the level or range of PQE required. As you move up through that the idea is that every department will need a certain number of people at certain levels so they’ll need two trainees, they’ll need 4 newly qualfieds, they’ll need 3 3yr qualifieds etc so you want to make sure you have a range of people because there is a range of work that can be done either with 4 or 5 different people on a team at different levels working on one transaction each chipping in and doing their own bit or just certain transactions only require people at certain levels and so you progress that way and your salary is reviewed. To begin with there tends to be fixed salary bands that you will automatically move up and then after a couple of years it becomes more merit based so there’s an appraisal system and you’re rewarded on merit.

Where do you see the industry going?

That’s really hard to answer. I think there are so many different possibilities within the industry, so many different practice areas and there are some firms which are very specialist and niche practices and others that are full service like this firm and a lot of other firms in the city. It’s whatever interests you. I think technology and media has been for some time a big deal and continues to be so and that wasn’t necessarily the case ten or fifteen years ago so there are things that emerge that become more interesting or more sought after. There’s just such a diversity that I think graduates need to read up generally on the law. It’s very hard before you do your training contract to say, right I have a specific interest in property or corporate. It’s good to have an idea but I don’t think you should close down to other ideas because when you do your training contract you might discover all your preconceptions were completely wrong. We often get quite a lot of people who turn up for training of summer student interviews and they say, oh I have an interest in media law. Now we as a firm don’t actually do media law, there are a lot of specialist firms out there who do and you ask why and they say “I really like music,” and that’s great and it’s really good to have an interest and to try to channel that and focus it but actually maybe doing media law may have very little to do with actually the fact that you’re interested in music so it’s not a bad thing to have something in mind but just be open to having that challenged and having your preconceptions changed.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

I think there are generally transferable skills and I don’t think I know many people who change industries or professions. People tend to stay in the law. They might move to a different type of firm, smaller or larger firm, to a more regional practice or even to work abroad, or they might move in-house so they become legal counsel, an in-house lawyer for a large company for example. I don’t know many people who’ve changed professions completely, some people at the end of their career want to retire early to sail around the world or write a book. Generally, it’s not to say that you can’t and I think the skills you acquire as a lawyer in terms of attention to detail and the ability to communicate effectively, all of those skills are necessary for running or being involved in any kind of business and any business in the service industry where you’re client facing, those skills are very valuable so I think they are transferable to that extent.

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

There are some trade magazines, e.g. Lawyer, Legal Week, Legal Business and they get circulated once a week or once a month, and once you become a qualified lawyer you get to subscribe to them for free but you can purchase them as well. There is a website “Roll on Friday” which is kind of aimed at students or trainees, newly qualifieds and it is a bit of a gossip website but it does also have actually some factual information for example about all of the big London City firms so it is quite a good resource, a) for just general gossip and b) for some proper information. There is also the Chamber Student Guide which has a summary of each firm and some statistics about how big that firm is, and maybe even the salary, what type of work they cover, how their competitors perceive them in the market, whether they are a friendly firm or a ferocious firm or what the environment is so I think those are all pretty good resources.

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

I don’t know, I think I’ll probably always be doing this career. If I win the lottery, enough money not to have to worry about working and I decide I don't want to do law any more then I would like to be a florist.