Do you want an all-round training or do you have an eye on particular areas? Where do you want to live (some areas of practice don't really have many lawyers outside London). Do you want to work in-house? I would definitely do 6 months corporate and 6 months commercial. You need to do at least 3 months' contentious so you need to do employment or litigation/dispute resolution. Employment is an interesting seat and it's worth knowing about employment law for your personal life as well. The other areas can be interesting. Don't write anything off and don't be surprised if you find something you liked at law school dull. I liked property law and conveyancing but hated my property law seat. If you think you may want to go in-house, commercial is a key area to obtain experience, though there are plenty of other areas which are needed in-house. Competition law is also very useful.
You haven't even started your professional career, let's put social life and client contact on the backburner for now. You're joing a law firm as the lowest common denominator, not as a senior partner. As for seats, go for derivatives and alternative investment funds and avoid leveraged finance. I don't expect you to understand since you don't know the difference between corporate and commercial, but anyone can remember binomial instructions: DERIVATIVES=YES, LEVFIN=NO.
Investment Banker, I know you've not much to do, but try opening your eyes. I know the difference between corporate and commercial - what I do not know is the difference in the working environment, the nuts and bolts of it, and what it is like in practice. Your attention to detail is very poor, no wonder you couldn't be a lawyer and had to turn to banking.
Too many questions, too much choice and you're going to get some shocking generalisations. For me it became an issue of discovering what seat best suited my personality type, contained sufficient law/practice to make it technically interesting and yet delivered enough contrasts not to bore me. So yes, I'm a corporate lawyer who's happiest working under some pressure to deadlines, either raising equity, reorganising companies or buying and selling them in public and non-public arenas. I'm interested in the other disciplines when they touch on mine or alter a deal's dynamic or structure but, except during articles, I've never wanted to practise any of them. I found in training that employment and matrimonial law were fascinating but limiting and I wasn't too good at handling all the personal stuff day in, day out. Likewise property law - just too dull and always the threat of ending up as a conveyancer with way too many files ticking over in the filing cabinet. Oh and the difference between corporate and commercial - essentially the latter majors heavily on tailoring deals to very specific circumstances, with a more obvious reference to contract law and the commercial wishes and practices of the parties; the former takes a much broader picture for the sake of getting a deal done.
One thing I would say is that the people you work with will greatly influence how you feel about the department you are in, and thus the type of work you are doing. Be careful to remember that you might love your time in the Employment team with Jim, Bob, Edna and Judy but do not let the people have too strong a bearing on your final decision - it's unlikely that you'll be there forever, and the same goes for them.
I agree with City Woman. It is impossible to say what you personally will find interesting (although if you're worried about a social life then corporate may not be the area for you). As a trainee, client contact is also likely to be limited in most areas.
I would suggest that, if possible, you ensure your first seat is in an area that's not too specialised. Once you are in that seat, you are likely to get a feel for what work you enjoy and what you don't. Before embarking on seat 2, you should also assess your strengths and weaknesses in working out what will suit you in the long-term - the feedback of your supervisor will probably also be of assistance. By then, you'll also be in the firm and will be able to speak to people in those teams about precisely what work they do.
When thinking about which seats to go for, you need to focus on getting a good mix of experience. This will help you choose what you want to specialise in and also keep your options open. From your list (assuming you have 4 seats and are doing a course to fulfill the contentious requirement) I would go with Corporate & Commercial (assuming that is one seat), Tax and Competition as my three firm choices and then pick one of the others as a wild card. That should give you a good idea of what the firm does, how it all fits together and what your life will be like on qualification. As for what you can expect in each of those seats, this varies widely from firm to firm and trainee to trainee but see my comments on the IP question for some further thoughts on that.
Indeed, it is impossible for someone else to advise if you will really love corporate culture or whether you are better suited to tackling litigation but as a rule think corporate and mainstream transactional areas = long hours, often tedious work (as a trainee) whereas niche areas like employment, private client = better hours, perhaps more client contact early on but are less transferable and often less pay. Bear in mind that many firms make promises about the variety of seats on offer to woo trainees but often need bums on seats in corporate so don't just pursue the most popular areas as you might find you never get your first choice. Having said that, if you have a burning desire to get into a particular area, get to know HR and the relevant team - the previous question demonstrates that if you don't get the seat you really want, it is near impossible to rectify later.
Just to add some further detail:
I am certain I want to be based outside of London one day and, although I enjoy an intense pressured environment (I worked in business for two years previously), I have no ambition to do that for life. However, I don't necessarily just want to work in-house either. What are the options of private practice outside London - what areas are suited and can you still make decent money?
If you want a social life, do litigation. You will be very busy most of the time but, to an extent, you can manage your time. For example, you know when hearings are coming up, whereas in transactional seats, the use of your time is dictated by the needs of your clients.
There's a big difference between corporate and commercial, though many firms try to combine the two.
Corporate is company administration and mergers and acquisitions etc. Commercial is general commercial contracts such as agency and distribution agreements, and advisory work such as data protection advice, advertising law and possibly IP and consumer issues as well. Commercial issues are often dealt with by the CMT or TMT team in a firm. There are few firms with a dedicated commercial team and it's likely that if you are in a mixed company commercial team your time will be swallowed up by the corporate work so you may need to shout a bit for the commercial stuff. If there are separate teams in your firm, try to do both.
So you want to earn good money outside of London and unwilling to deal with work pressure and not go in-house? I suggest you go rob a bank. My reply is not half as ridiculous as your demands.
Well, a motley selection (weird firm you work for):
Company and/or Commercial - no law but can be quite interesting depending on the deal. The orthopedic surgeons of the legal world (Capable, nice chaps; but thick which is why they don't do anything too legal)
Tax. Brilliant subject. I enjoyed my tax seat so much I would have qualified into it if the people in the department hadn't been so weird. Very good intellectual law. Sadly you'll be mixing with people with bad breath/skin who wear cheap green suits and clarks shoes.
Employment. Everyone else wants to do this so unless you are really interested it'll be difficult. As a GC I have the misfortune of having to do employment law. I totally fail to understand why it's so popular (basically sacking people, making them redundant and disciplinary processes - ie all horrible things to do) but horses for courses and all that.
Private Client. If you get to do interesting trust work it's quite rewarding but otherwise dull and tedious (very rich, demanding clients who want to discuss very tedious things).
Construction. You'll probably end up doing PFI/PPP deals, which have to be the most tedious documents in the world. People in construction had their tonka toys taken off them when they were children and have never recovered.
Energy. You don't say whether it's upstream or downstream (it makes a big difference).
Transport and infrastructure. See comment on Construction (above).
Shipping. I've only done a tiny bit of ship finance so can't really advise but it's terribly specialist with no real crossover value elsewhere so unless you think you might want to qualify into it I wouldn't bother.
Hope this helps.
I forgot another choice: Funds and financial services, including hedge funds, private equity and financial services regulation. GC, thanks very much for that enlightening post.
I said in my original post go for alternative investment funds i.e. HEDGE FUNDS!! I guess even binomial instructions are too much to ask for
Well I'm biased but I'd definitely do a financial seat. Interesting law, interesting product and great people!!!
Downside of finance is you get to do the worst hours of anyone in the firm and the regulatory part of it is like watching paint dry.
Having said which, I wouldn't do anything else but that's rather the point, you see..... it all depends on what you are interested in (oh and I almost forgot to mention - we earn more than anyone else as well).
Lots of negative comments here about employment law as a seat - there's a reason it's popular with trainees; in most firms you will have good opportunities to get stuck in with substantive work. Admittedly, it's worth avoiding if your employment dept is heavily geared towards corporate support, but otherwise it's an excellent way of learning useful skills (dealing directly with clients, drafting, anticipating disputes, dealing with the litigation process). As another plus, it's one of the areas of work which really booms in a recession (mass redundancies = plenty of advisory work) and if you want to work outside of London, you will have skills which don't restrict you to one sort of firm. It also gives you good opportunities to do pro bono work and work for individuals, which is often incredibly satisfying. One further advantage: I've never in my life heard an employment lawyer use the word 'binominal'; having a people-orientated practice area seems to improve one's social skills a little.
Just out of curiousity, why does it matter for Energy whether it is upstream or downstream?
Investment Banker did not use the word "binomial" either, isn't that a mis-spelling of "binomial" I guess IB is a polymath (sigh!) For the poster - the people who seem to have most fun where I work are in the Insolvency Department (strange but true).
I've used the word "binomial" multiple times in this thread and still it is spelt wrong by the employment lawyer, I guess attention to detail is not one of the attributes of an employment lawyer. I suggest you avoid employment law as a seat if don't want to add carelessness to your CV
To revise my earlier comment, if you have that option, you should definitely do the finance seat instead of competition.
If you want to leave London and work decent hours and still make good money, then commerical property is your best bet. If you think that's too boring (I would) then in terms of leaving London you need to go for areas that aren't too specialised and which a range of firms practice e.g. general banking, employment, general commercial litigation, corporate/commercial etc. Each will have a different mix of money, hours and, depending on what you like, interest. Avoid things like funds, derivatives, capital markets, international arbitration etc as these practice areas don't travel well outside London. Leaving London in itself will improve your hours a little (but not as much as you'd think in areas like corporate) but will make it easier to live well due to lower living expenses - the lawyer with the most disposal income I know does corporate in Manchester - she has more cash than I do!
Pay? I thought the top firms paid the same to associates, regardless of what dept they were in?
In response to "another trainee" the difference is huge. To use the oil sector as an example:
Upstream is exploration and production of oil (ie getting it out of the ground). Downstream is everything from processing the oil (refineries) right down to flogging it to you as you fill your car with petrol.
As you can imagine the two are very dissimilar both in fact and legally!
In response to "not rich enough" you are having a complete laugh aren't you? Admittedly, I left private practice some years ago but, by way of example, I know I was earning over 20% more as a banking lawyer than an identically qualified litigation friend (we were trainees together at the firm in question so it really was an exact comparison)
Funds and financial services will give you an interesting mix of work and is one of the few departments which will combine a mixture of transactional work with black-letter lawyer advisory work. Contrary to what previous posters advise, there are established funds practices outside of London, but the type of funds you'll work on will vary as a consequence. Whether to do it or not will depend to an extent on whether your firm takes a broad approach or just focuses in on one type of funds e.g. hedge funds over private equity. Whatever Investment Banker says, hedge funds are towards the less interesting end of the scale as the client tends to just want a tax transparent box for the cash, without any fancy structuring / choice of vehicle / structuring round illiquid assets that you might get with, say, PE or RE funds. All this said, I'd recommend a seat there anyway even if you don't qualify there as you'll cover a lot of ground which will serve you well in other areas - e.g. you'll cover restraint of trade and other employment law issues when structuring a fund for the manager, and the whole thing of course is going to be heavily influenced by tax treatment.
P.S. your initial slapdown of Investment Banker's comments above suggests that you already have some of the skills required, so well done and good luck!
I think funds lawyer comes from, as he/she would call it, a broad funds practice as it demonstrates his/her broad but lack of in-depth knowledge of funds, which is a shame because the interesting bit comes after the vehicles are set up and the HF are tapping into the capital markets for financing and complex derivatives. There will be the mind-numbingly boring drafting and documentation, but quote me on this, high finance is the future. Unfortunately for you, unless you are working at A&O or Links, you won't be working with the big investment banks that deal with the big HF of this world like GLG, Rennaisance, Lansdowne etc. If you are working for a non-MC law firm, skip the financial services seat because it won't be worthwhile dealing with small-time banks and HF.
I read this thread with interest being in a similar position myself. I am going to Macfarlanes - is it worth doing a funds seat there? They seem to do good quality work.
I disagree with 'highly biased funds lawyer' - the only decent funds/fs practices outside London are in Edinburgh. If by leaving London you plan to go anywhere else (including practising outside a major city) then funds won't be useful to you. The funds lawyer is right that the seat will offer a mix of drafting and advising on law so it is probably a good seat in itself to take. All the funds lawyers I know love their work.
I am seriously thinking about doing some sort of energy/projects seat. The practical nature of engineering, projects etc appeal to me. Is it interesting, or am I being too idealistic?
Macfar-who?
Ah, the long-ago joys of training contracts (or articles, in my day...). I did competition/EC (in Brussels)corporate, tax and litigation. All were an absolute blast except tax, which was deadly and far too mathematical for a trainee who had to learn the tax bit of Finals by rote in order to pass. I reckon corporate or banking/finance offers most opportunity to move around (although it's right that specialising in funds limits you to London or another capital city). The main thing is to get your face known in as many departments as possible so that if you haven't done the seat you think you'd like by the end of training, you can perhaps persuade them to give you a try anyway. Most of all, give it all you've got, and have fun doing it - before you get the mortgage and kids!
What planet does IP squat on? He would kill for Macfarlane's profitability and client base! For the trainee who's going there, you should certainly try for a funds seat - it's one of the highlights of their practice
I agree. Investment Banker, if you were taking home over a million a year I am sure you would not spend so much time on here - you'd be too busy spending/earning it!
Ah, but (pace Hannibal Lecter) Career Clinic is a much more interesting place with Investment Banker in it.....
In response to MC lawyer - you could for example go to Bristol or Leeds with funds experience. Plus you could switch into a more mainstream corporate or finance department relatively easily.
In response to Investment Banker. Have you worked at a law firm? If you fancy a challenge, please name me a law firm where the same lawyer will do the set up work for a hedge fund, and then do its derivatives and capital markets work. Plus, please define interesting in the context of knocking out a few ISDA Master Schedules or a GMRA.
In my experience as a fee earner paralegal in a top 20 London law firm, it is not which training seat to do, it is which supervising partner to avoid. Try Advocacy Unit first if needs must.
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