Associate - Private Equity - Shahab Uddin

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 Shahab and I'm a lawyer here at Freshfields.

What attracted you to this career?

I didn’t get here the conventional way. I did a broadcasting and law degree and worked in TV for a while but it was very much the law element of what I had done at university which stayed at the back of my mind. After university I went to Japan for 2 years and it gave me the chance to think about what I wanted to do and when I came back I decided I wanted to pursue law as a career or at least find out if it was something I was actually going to be interested in. So I did the conversion course and then carried on with the LPC and it was really then, half way through doing the LPC that I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer so it was actually quite a drawn out process. I hadn’t actually made up my mind that I was going to be a lawyer even when I started the conversion course. I wanted to do the conversion course and see where it led and if I enjoyed it sufficiently to actually then progress that.

What does your job involve?

On a day to day basis, there’s no real pattern for what I do. We as lawyers give commercial advice to our clients but based on and around the law. We will draft contracts for them, give them a steer towards which way they should do a particular deal, based on certain legal principles, also based on economic principles as well so that they get the best deal. A lot of what we do is actually give commercial advice but the framework of that legal advice is around legal principles.

Why did you choose to work in the private equity department?

I like deals. With corporate and private equity you do deals. They are short deals. You work for 5/6 weeks, really intense period of time and at the end you sign and announce the deal. I like the buzz of announcing the deal. I’m not a litigator; I couldn’t work on something for 2 or 3 years. I couldn’t work on a case that’s going to last that long, it’s just not in my nature. I like short intense deals and then moving onto the next deal. The adrenaline buzz you get from doing that is much more exciting to me than a long case that’s going to lead to the House of Lords.

What is private equity?

The way that they do deals is that they get debts from the debt markets, from the banks, and they put in a little bit of their own money and then they try to finance deals. They find companies that aren’t performing so well sometimes and they see where they can get the value out of those companies, how they can change the way those companies perform. Private equity is about realising value that isn’t being realised in the way the company is being run on a day to day basis and so they try and buy in and change the structure or change how it’s run to try and realise some of the value.

What do you do on a typical day?

Your day can be shaped by one call in the morning, and your client asks you to do a particular thing that you haven’t envisaged doing that day. The most typical it gets is that if you are working on a particular transaction there will be a lot of meetings, usually conference calls rather than physical meetings, spending a lot of time on the phone to the client, getting instructions, feeding them with information you have got be it at the diligence process or what other questions they’ve asked you. Once you’ve got off the phone you’re actually able to do some drafting. What you find is that you spend a lot of the day in meetings and on the phone so actually the time you get to do the real drafting work is probably in the evening when the phone stops ringing.

Describe the process of your work?

A client comes to you and says, we’re looking into buying this company. Then you go away and think about structure and what’s the best way to buy it. Because we have private equity clients, it’s very rare that they will buy the company directly. You set up a new company which will then make the bid for this company they want to buy, for whatever reasons, tax or whatever else. First stage is that you do the due diligence on that company, which is basically delving into the history of that company, if there are any liabilities in that company, if the company is worth what they think it’s worth. So you are looking into all aspects of the company, if it has pension liabilities, if it’s contracts are actually worth anything, any onerous provisions in its contracts, for example, there may be key contracts that the company has under which if it has a change of control, if someone buys it, then that allows the other party to that contract to get out of that contract. So therefore automatically that raises alarm bells for our client because if they think of that contract as material and that’s why they want to buy the business, they are going to be less interested. So due diligence process is the first process you go through and that’s really to make sure that our client is going to buy something that’s worth what they think its worth. So we will do the legal due diligence and in our corporate team we would coordinate the legal due diligence so we look at the company and company structure. Our specialist teams here for employment, competitions team, real estate team, they would look at the other areas, so they would look at the property portfolio if the company had a property portfolio to see what the nature of those properties are – freehold, leasehold, how long the leases are, how much the properties are worth. Our employment guys will look at whether there are redundancies that would have to be payable, if the employees are members of trade unions and we then collate all of that information together into one report which we will then deliver to our client and they will then proceed on the basis of that report.

Why Freshfields?

When I picked the law firms I wanted to go to I had a very small number of firms in mind and it was based on the sort of work that they did and how they were regarded in the industry generally and I came to an open day at Freshfields and it just felt right. It’s one of those things; you can’t really explain why you work somewhere. I came here, I met some people and it just felt right to me and it made sense and I’m still here 3.5 years later so obviously I made the right decision there.

What are the specialisms within your industry?

There are several areas, corporate, which I do, IPIT – information technology and intellectual property, real estate, employment, pensions, anti-trust which is competition law, finance which is split into structured finance and debt finance.

How did you decide between becoming a solicitor or barrister?

It didn’t even cross my mind to be a barrister. One of my best friends went down that route. I don’t want to do litigious work, I don’t want to stand up in court and argue a case. I like what I do; I like transactional law so I knew that’s always the way I would go.

What are the best bits about your job?

I work on deals and for me that’s really exciting, 6 weeks intense deals, and then at the end of it you announce it, it’s in the FT or the newspapers or legal press and that’s exciting and I think for a private equity lawyer that’s the real buzz.

What are the worst bits about your job?

The hours. Inevitably because of the timescales we work to we often work long hours. I’ve been known for working very long hours sometimes so you lose your work-life balance at times and that can be really difficult.

Any regrets?

I don’t think I would have done anything differently. I’ve been very lucky in the sense that I’ve got here very much the long way round but I’ve had a really good time getting here. After university I went to Japan for 2 years, I worked in TV, and I wouldn’t change any of that because it’s made me what I am now. I think I offer something different and as a lawyer I’ve made a conscious choice to be here. I haven’t got here because I’ve done a law degree and therefore felt like it was just the natural route to go and be a lawyer. I’ve come here because I’ve thought about it, it’s a real conscious choice and so therefore I think I’m more likely to stick with this career for longer than someone else who’s just sort of gone through the process.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

The pay is good and it’s public knowledge so anyone can go to the legal press or Roll on Friday and work out how much we get paid. I think we get rewarded sufficiently for the kind of work that we do and the sacrifices that we make in terms of hours and the training that we go through to get here. The perks are the client entertaining functions. I went to the Queen’s Club to watch the tennis last week and that was really good fun. You go out to restaurants that you wouldn’t normally pay perhaps yourself to go to, so those are really good perks.

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

There’s no real pattern which I think is the probably the most frustrating part – because there’s no real pattern you can’t really make plans. If you are working on a deal you could end up working very late hours, 2 or 3 in the morning, maybe even later and give up some of your weekends but it’s very rare that is continuous for a long period of time. That only happens towards the end of a deal or at a crucial point of the deal. The payoff is that people acknowledge you’ve worked hard so you get a couple of days off at the end of it. But there’s no real pattern for the hours you work. It depends on how much work you have to do. I’ve done all-nighters, several all-nighters in a row but it depends where you have to get to within a certain timeframe but they’re not that frequent. They’re fairly rare. The support we have is excellent so you’re not here all night in the office by yourself and you’re not feeling unsupported. There are a lot of people around you supporting you and actually understanding that you’re working really hard.

Is there much in the way of travel?

I was lucky. As a trainee at Freshfields you often have the opportunity to go abroad for your last six months and for my last 6 months I spent in our Tokyo office which was awesome. On a day to day basis, most of our clients are based around London. Because we negotiate with other law firms you end up going to other law firms rather than anything else. General travel, no, there is opportunity for travel but if people are looking to law as a career where they want to travel a lot I’m not sure that’s necessarily the right thing. The most glamorous place I’ve been to on a work trip is Blackpool!

What different types of Law firm are there?

The way our profession is structured is you have the big law firms which do the big corporate MNE work, they represent the FTSE 100 companies and then you have the medium sized companies and they will do similar kind of work but often for smaller clients and then you have the high street law firms just representing different people. They will do for example, conveyance work if you want to buy a house. That’s the kind of thing we just wouldn’t do because it’s not cost effective for us to do that. But the high street firms will do your probate, conveyancing and look at Joe Bloggs and his employment contract whereas it’s not cost effective for a magic circle firm to do that kind of work.

What is the working environment like?

Our dress code is fairly formal. More and more, people don’t wear ties but you are expected to wear a suit. I think it’s the same probably for most English law firms in that we have offices which we share with one other person and most offices have two people in them, a junior and a senior if there are enough juniors and seniors in a team – that’s how you would usually structure it or the senior associates will often have a trainee. At the moment, having said that, I’m in quite a big office with 3 people, myself and 2 other girls in the office.

How did you get into your job?

I went down a slightly unconventional route. I went to Leeds University and got a 2.1 in Broadcasting and Law and then did the conversion course a way later. I think 2.1 is pretty essential if you want to work in a magic circle or city firm. They’re not fussy about what degree you do as long as you’ve got the right grades and I think that’ comparable. There are a lot of people here who have been to Oxbridge and a lot of people who have been to other universities round the country. It’s a very international law firm so there are actually graduates from around the world, so we’ve also got Kiwi, Canadian, US, Australian qualified lawyers here but there’s no magic path to here really. Each person is judged on their own different methods but I think it’s essential to have good grades – it doesn’t matter what school or university you’ve been to.

What's the application process like?

I think it’s changed slightly since I applied actually because when I applied you had to hand-write your application form, you got this blank page and you just had to write about yourself. Now I think you’re allowed to type it so it’s changed slightly. When I applied there was just a one interview process. You did a written exercise and then you had an interview with two partners. I think they’ve split that now into a 2-stage process where you have a first round interview with an associate and a partner and then another interview with an associate and a partner and you also have psychometric testing as well.

What are the key skills required for your job?

You can learn a lot of the skills on the job. You have to have common sense. If you’re somebody who doesn’t have any common sense to start with, you can’t teach common sense, it’s just something you have. That’s an essential skill. Also attention to detail. If you’re someone who’s focused in on detail then you’re very suitable for this kind of job because on a day to day basis you are reading detailed contracts. If you can extract the key information straight away then you’re ideal for this sort of job.

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

Work hard, the grades are really important. For someone who’s an A-Level student thinking, oh, I’ll just get through A-levels and then work really hard for my degree, that’s not the approach you should take. You have to show you’ve been consistent throughout. I don’t know that Freshfields look at your GSCEs but a lot of law firms do. So you have to have good GSCEs, good A-levels, good degree, do well in the conversion course, the LPC, so you have to be consistent throughout. That’s really important to remember because you may get a first in your degree but then if you’ve got three C’s at A-levels there is a disconnect somewhere. I think it’s really important to be consistent, work hard and show that you have that ability.

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

You start as a trainee and spend two years as a trainee and you qualify to an associate or lawyer. Really, around the 5 year mark, if you are still here you would expect to be a senior associate and then around 8 or 9 years qualify you would expect to be on the partnership path or become a partner around about that time. I always said I would re-evaluate where I was when I was 2 years qualified, so that’s coming up in 6 months time so I will think about my progression then.

How does the role change over time?

As you progress in seniority you do get more responsibility. You are expected to lead and take on deals and management client relationships yourself which you wouldn’t be expected to do when you were a trainee or newly qualified lawyer.

Where do you see the industry going?

There’s a credit crunch at the moment so everyone is expecting a bit of downturn but we’re lucky in the respect that if the big MNA work isn’t there any longer it’s going to be a different type of work that evolves so there’s going to be more restructuring work as companies realise that they need to restructure because they’re so highly leveraged, i.e. they’ve got so much debt, they need to start a restructuring process. We can assist with that process instead. What we’re seeing now is less MNA work but we’re seeing more restructuring work so actually lawyers can evolve with the economy and so the kind of work we do changes slightly to suit what is happening with the economy.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

I think as a lawyer you develop the core skills which are transferable anywhere pretty much. If you wanted to stay as a lawyer and go in-house to a company and be their in-house lawyer, that’s very easy to do. I think it’s more difficult to do more commercial roles because a) they’re more difficult to find and b) everyone thinks of you as a lawyer so you’re going to be useful to them as a lawyer. It’s very difficult I think if you trained at a high street firm to move to a city firm. However I think it’s easier if you trained at a city firm to then move down to a smaller firm. But I think the core skills you learn as a lawyer are pretty much transferable anywhere really.

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

Most people get the FT in the offices but also we get The Lawyer and the Legal Week in our offices as well. They get delivered to our offices. There are various legal magazines which update us on certain companies acts, what’s changed in the company act. The new companies act came into force recently so there’s been quite a lot of change with company law so that is evolving constantly so we get updates on that regularly. Actually working in a big firm like Freshfields the in-house training is amazing so we have sessions pretty much every week where we get updates as to what’s happening in company law and other areas of law.

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

A writer or something like that. I feel lucky I’ve got here the long way round so I really have picked the law instead of accidently landing here, but maybe something creative.