Allen & Overy

News from a "PQE"

14 March, 2008

Last time I wrote, I had just done A&O's "University of Banking".  Now I have passed another minor milestone: one year's post-qualification experience ("PQE" in the jargon).  If you're reading this with a view to applying for a training contract or vacation scheme, that might seem quite a long way off, but from my own perspective, the time has gone really quickly, and I can assure you, you still feel pretty junior at my stage!

That's not to say things haven't moved on for me, or that I feel out of my depth.  It's more just an indication of how stretching the job is and how far you can go in it.  There's something particularly challenging about being a solicitor in a firm like A&O: you really have to be an excellent all-rounder.  Obviously, a big element of the job is legal, technical and drafting skills, which in themselves take years to develop and hone.  But a good solicitor also needs to be energetic and organised, a good team-player, negotiator, educator, public speaker, and as he becomes more senior, a good manager, marketer, businessman and strategist.  He will always need sound common sense and judgement.  Integrity is vital.

And unlike many other professions, your work is constantly and openly scrutinised and challenged by your peers (usually some other big City law firm).  For instance, if my client is a bank, the bank won't be the only one looking at my draft loan agreement; the borrower and the borrower's solicitors will also be poring over my legal work, challenging it and picking holes in it.  Ask yourself:  how many surgeons have their every operation scrutinised by a surgeon from a rival hospital and criticised in front of the patient?!

I think it must have a lot to do with these elements of the job (the fact that there are so many merit-based parameters to be judged by, and so little room to hide) that A&O doesn't feel at all political an organisation to work for.  When I think of conversations with friends in certain other careers, I am sometimes struck at the apparent favouritism, pettiness and back-stabbing that goes on.  When I hear stories like this, I wonder if it has anything to do with the less open nature of their work and the fact that there are fewer, and less objective, yardsticks of performance.  In other words, when no-one quite knows how anyone else operates, and when success is easier to achieve and harder to measure, perhaps politicisation of the workplace is an inevitable consequence.

That's not a big problem here.  But don't be put off!  The demands of the job are not something that the firm doesn't recognise, and of course it is in your seniors' interests that you develop and improve.  And so, apart from the everyday opportunities to discuss your work, and the technical training on offer, the firm even lays on courses designed to help you cope with the demands of the job generally.  For instance, there is a series of offsite, residential "Associate Development" (or "AD") courses, tailored to your PQE.  A little while ago, I attended AD1, which is for junior lawyers.  It is centred on efficiency, time-management and the like.  It was quite cathartic to see that other people share all the same problems and to discuss with them how they cope.  Moreover, it was an interesting and really fun few days, in large part because of the great bunch of people in attendance from the London offices and elsewhere around the world.

The firm's international network is something you will be exposed to all the time: given the nature of our clients (big, multi-national), there will commonly be an international element to the work you'll find yourself doing in London.  The firm's international network also provides opportunities for overseas secondments, and a natural hedge against fluctuating business performance in any given jurisdiction or sector.  For instance, talk about "sub prime" and the "credit crunch" probably won't have escaped your attention.  While this inevitably has had an impact on the level of some of our work here, other parts of the world are forging full steam ahead and picking up the slack in (and poaching lawyers from!) London.  It's great to be in an organisation that is so versatile: exposed to the excitement of the private sector, but enjoying a great deal of natural protection from its ups and downs.

In my own work, one recent example of drawing on our internation expertise was how we helped a banking client who was anticipating difficulty selling its interest in a loan on to other banks in the London market.  As you may know, currently a lot of American and European banks in particular have a reduced appetite and/or ability to lend.  However, in the Middle East, where by contrast the banking markets are cash-rich (principally because of high oil prices), there is no such problem.  To take advantage of this, we teamed up with lawyers form our Middle East offices, and "converted" the loan in question into a shariah-compliant facility, as a result of which our client was able successfully to interest banks from the Middle East in the loan (in fact, no longer a "loan" at all, because shariah law doesn't permit interest!).

In my last blog, as well as to the credit crunch, I made a forward-looking reference to the battle against the waistline.  It's not going badly, but my tip would be: get used to doing regular exercise as young as you can...