A change in direction

‘I felt unable to realise my full potential while practising law. I simply could not see myself remaining at the Bar for another 20 years, nor did I have any ambition or desire to pursue a career on the bench. I wished to pursue a business in my own right and indulge my entrepreneurial spirit. This desire was entirely at odds with a 35 to 40 year career in the law.’ This is Heidi Cotton’s explanation of why she left the legal profession – a terrifying prospect for qualified lawyers, who are often financially stable but dissatisfied. She now runs a coffee shop in Nottinghamshire. Cotton, along with a film producer, a sports law blogger, a careers coach, and a careers consultant discuss how they’ve transferred their legal skills away from the law into a brave new world of job possibilities.

Why are graduates turning to alternative career paths?

COTTON: I have no idea why graduates choose alternative career paths. Nor do I think it’s particularly difficult to become a lawyer. The law undoubtedly provides excellent career prospects for some – we will always need good quality lawyers and advocates with a strong sense of justice and the need to maintain and enforce society’s standards.

ISMAIL: The main reason for turning to an alternative career path would most likely be difficulties in obtaining a training contract, due to the glut of graduates and a shortage of places. Another reason is that in high street firms and some medium-sized firms the pay is not substantial. Further, the wages probably won’t rise substantially for several years after qualification and therefore it might be worth applying for graduate training schemes in other more lucrative fields, where you could possibly still use your legal skills.

BIRKETT: First, there are innate reasons: people think, ‘I want to be a lawyer’ to sound good without really knowing what it involves. Other innate reasons are: it’s oversubscribed, always has been for as long as I can remember; it’s very competitive; and, for that reason and others, it’s just not for every personality.

ISMAIL: Another reason for some people employed as paralegals or perhaps trainee solicitors may be the long hours, and the possible lack of benefits and perhaps respect in the workplace.

COTTON: The turn-off for some will probably be when they discover that it’s very hard work with huge responsibility and the remuneration does not necessarily live up to that which the popular press would have the lay man believe.

BIRKETT: And then there’s disillusionment – you get there and find out what the job involves, and there are things that play on your psychology. Good lawyers need to be pessimists. It’s hard when you’ve got a slightly negative outlook in your working life to separate that from other aspects of your life. What in the industry acts as the biggest deterrent to aspiring lawyers?

ISMAIL: The main problem is that several existing deterrents are not being made abundantly clear by law schools and firms to aspiring lawyers when they apply to courses. Attempts are not made to prevent shortages of training contract places by making the competitive nature of the career clear. The initial law application process should be very competitive in a way similar to the medical profession. At the moment the competition comes too far down the line.

BIRKETT: There is an associate surplus, in that the traditional pyramid models of firms aren’t necessarily going to work any more. There was an assumption that if you toed the line, promotion would happen, it was just a matter of when. At best, there’s a sense of being trapped and stuck in the middle with nowhere to go.

BROOMER: What [young lawyers] are seeing is a very long and rather uncertain route to partnership. What’s happening in a lot of the bigger firms is that, say 15 to 20 years ago, you could be sure that within five years you’d be a partner. Now that’s getting much longer – you get associates, you get senior associates, and people are saying, ‘I’ve got to go through quite a few years of grind and I’m not even sure, when I look at what the partners are doing and the lifestyle they lead, whether I want that’. They can see the very high rewards but they don’t like the fact that these people are basically married to their jobs and it’s very demanding.

BIRKETT: My sister and I came up with the Leaving Law website. She worked for a Magic Circle law firm for many years and got increasingly miserable – I don’t know if this is a theme you come across, but she felt leaving a Magic Circle firm would be some kind of admission of defeat or failure, so she was slightly brainwashed – as tends to happen – into being strapped to the treadmill, but when she eventually summoned the courage to do something about it and left law, she realised how much happier she was for it.

How are the skills you acquired while studying law being put to use now?

COTTON: An ability to communicate effectively with a broad range of people on all levels places me at a massive advantage in a customer-facing industry. As a lawyer you have to hold your nerve, have a clear view of where you need to end up, and have faith in your own abilities and judgement. All of these are required in running your own business. I have an ever-increasing team who work with me, and my abilities as an advocate, a leader, and a persuader are invaluable in assisting them in their development.

COTTRELL: I use my legal knowledge on a daily basis when reviewing articles and interviewing leading legal figures in sport and developing my business.

ISMAIL: Studying and working in law are two completely different things. After you finish studying, your employment is like further practical education. In some ways it’s a reeducation. This is obviously not only the case in law alone, but also for many other professional qualifications. So it’s difficult to state accurately which skills learnt in education you utilise directly or indirectly in the course of your employment.

How should law schools go about curbing the surplus number of law graduates?

ISMAIL: It’s not really in the interests of law schools to curb the surplus of applicants and students as this is how they earn their money. No business would want to publicise the fact that the product it’s selling may possibly not be worth the price. However, ethically they could be said to have a duty (as they do to train students to act ethically in practice) to inform students in brochures and in online material that they may find it very difficult to obtain training as a solicitor after completing their education.

COTTRELL: What [law schools] do not appear to be doing particularly well is actually explaining to aspiring lawyers the risks involved in what they’re doing. I get a lot of calls from aspiring lawyers and a number of them don’t actually understand the position they’re getting themselves into. Of course many do, but there also are many who are funding themselves through their graduate diploma in law, LPC, or bar professional training course, and they do not have strong academic grades and are not aware that this alone presents a significant barrier for them. There should be a responsibility of academic providers to make sure they are doing everything they can to upskill the people who are enrolled on their courses, because often it’s the people who have been failed lower down the education system who are still encouraged to go into law, knowing full well that firms discriminate between applicants on an academic basis due to the skill set required to be a good lawyer.

Are you glad you left law?

COTTON: I look back at my previous profession with fondness and I am immensely proud of the success I had in those 14 years. However, none of that can hold the slightest flicker of a flame to the sense of achievement I feel having opened my business. The concept is entirely mine, I have ultimate responsibility and accountability for every decision I make, and I have the opportunity to affect every outcome and significantly improve upon my emotional and financial wealth. I never, ever dread, or even mildly dislike, the prospect of coming to work and, what’s more, wrangling the egos and temperaments of unreasonable members of the judiciary is a thing of the past. So yes, I’m glad I left the law.

ISMAIL: It would possibly be nice to return to law at some point in order to learn more in the areas of property law and wills and probate/tax as I had an interest in these subjects while on the LPC. So I wouldn’t say that I have definitely left law.

What is the biggest change the legal industry faces at present?

ISMAIL: The massive and unreasonable cuts to legal aid. These will force large numbers of criminal lawyers to at least consider changing the area of law in which they specialise. The cuts have also increasingly restricted access to legal help to only those who can afford it. Legal aid has been cut back continuously over the past few years, slowly restricting middle income earners’ access to the law. Sadly, even the poorest in society now also appear to be having their access restricted.

COTTON: The biggest challenge faced by the criminal Bar presently is the misconception that the quality of representation and advocacy is secondary to the cost.

BIRKETT: Market forces at any one time. At the moment you’d definitely say it’s a significantly changing landscape in the legal industry, and the tangible result is less potential revenue for the traditional law firm model. That’s because of alternative business structures; virtual firms; legal services being offered by local authorities; supermarkets; legal process outsourcing; all the grunt work that was done by associates is sent to India – actually, there’s probably been a bit of backlash on that, but there is a proportion of legal process outsourcing, so firms can no longer justify their associate costs.

COTTRELL: Having to overcome legacy problems that stem from their business structures. Once [firms] have adapted their business structures, it will allow them to remunerate their employees more effectively; it will allow them to get the right people out in front of clients and those technically capable lawyers applying the law. Once they’ve got that right, they can work out how to effectively value the work, move away from the chargeable hour model, and create a model that rewards building strong, meaningful relationships with their clients – one where their clients can clearly see where their lawyers are adding value to their business or them personally. I think some firms are starting to do this, particularly some of the smaller niche firms.

BROOMER: I’m going to leave the big firms out of it, but the small to medium-sized practices are struggling because a lot of the legal aid and conveyancing work that used to produce a reasonable income is slipping away, and lawyers in small to medium-sized practices are therefore going to be under more pressure.

BIRKETT: Every market is supply and demand, essentially, and there’s less demand for too much supply. SJ

 

Simon Broomer is managing director of CareerBalance. Broomer went to law school when he was 30 after originally doing a law degree. He took up a training role at Herbert Smith, then, after leaving, worked for a training consultancy catering for lawyers and accountants. Twelve years ago, Broomer undertook a postgraduate qualification and became a career coach.         Sean Cottrell is founder and CEO of www.lawinsport.com. After finishing studying law in 2009 during the economic depression, Cottrell weighed up his options while working as a marketing executive for an international City law firm, and pursued other careers where the remuneration for the hours worked would be more rewarding, and where he could progress to the top quicker.       Robert Birkett runs www.leavinglaw.com, a community portal offering guidance to lawyers looking to quit the profession.           Omar Ismail is a producer/director. After studying for a mathematics BSc at UCL, a GLD at BPP, and an LPC at the University of Law, Ismail ran payrolls in inner London. He is now directing A Reasonably Good Bloke, a dark comedy about paralegals in the City.               Heidi Cotton runs the Broomwagon Velo Cafe, Nottinghamshire. Cotton started a pupillage in 1999 and went on to practise as a barrister at Bank House Chambers. In July 2013, she left a career in the publicly funded criminal Bar.

 

Laura Clenshaw is managing editor of Solicitors Journal

@L_Clenshaw