Become a better lawyer: running a case, doing a deal, moving in-house and other tips from the top

I’d wanted to be a barrister all along. So it’s slightly strange that I ended up working as a solicitor in Linklaters’ non-contentious banking team. But due to a shortage of associates in London during the early part of the decade — and a resultant recruitment drive in South Africa, where I qualified — that’s the way it worked out.

I didn’t really feel like I was a lawyer at Linklaters. I certainly wasn’t practising law in any sense. My job basically involved co-ordinating very small parts of huge deals: in other words, going through a whole lot of documents and making sure that the figures were correct. Anybody with any sort of training and an ability to work relatively quickly and efficiently could have done it.

The hours were, frankly, quite ridiculous. I’d be in the office after midnight — often much later — at least two days a week. Even on a quiet day I wouldn’t finish before eight.

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Having a life became virtually impossible. There was a kind of implied understanding that you’d drop everything if something came up at work. And things were constantly coming up. One of my colleagues actually had to cancel her 30th birthday party a few hours before it was scheduled to start after being drafted onto a deal.

After a few years in the City, I started thinking about the Bar. I did a couple of mini-pupillages and found that I liked the atmosphere and way of working of chambers. So I put in some applications to sets with banking law specialisations and after an interview at 3 Verulam Buildings, I was offered a pupillage. Linklaters were okay about it. At least I wasn’t joining Freshfields or Clifford Chance.

My background as a solicitor definitely helped me get my foot in the door. There are some chambers that want pupils who’ve followed the direct route to the Bar. But 3VB, which has several ex-solicitors among its members, looked on the time I’d spent at Linklaters quite favourably. Being a solicitor also exempted me from the Bar Vocational Course, although I did have to sit the Bar Council aptitude test — quite a challenge given my lack of advocacy experience and the fact that I’d never studied English civil procedure before.

Be prepared to go from multi-million pound transactions to claims worth barely £1,000. For people who are into business and big deals, I can see that might be a problem. However, I was so pleased to have ownership of what I was working on that the drop in value really didn’t bother me. And I must say that it was a relief not to have to worry about all those billing targets and timesheets anymore.

Keep in mind that life at the Bar can be quite solitary. You’re very much on your own during the preparation stage of a case. So if you’re the kind of person who really enjoys an office environment, loves team building weekends and can’t bear the thought of sitting in a room by yourself for an entire day, then being a barrister probably isn’t for you.

Although barristers would have you believe that they don’t lead a leisurely life, the reality is I work nine to five Monday to Thursday and a half day on Friday. It involves going pretty much flat out all day with just a quickly eaten sandwich at my desk for lunch, but it means that I’m home by six to look after my daughter. There was simply no way I could have done my job at Linklaters and been a mother.

Admittedly, I do miss some things about being a solicitor. To be honest, I enjoyed the perks of working in a big institution: taxis, brilliant secretaries, five star hotels. In my second week of pupillage, my pupil master invited me to come along with him to a big three-day trial in Manchester. Great, I thought. The day before we left, he asked where I was going to be staying, and I realised that neither he nor the client would be paying for my hotel. Welcome to being self-employed! I ended up sleeping on a couch at the digs of a friend of a friend.

Of course, it isn’t a completely irreversible decision. Not that I’m thinking of ditching my career at the Bar: I don’t miss the corporate freebies that much. But if the work dried up for any reason, I think that the experience I’ve gained as a barrister would put me in a decent position for a move to a litigation role in the City.

Lisa Lacob is a barrister at 3 Verulam Buildings

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