Name: Charlotte Wright Firm: Walker Morris LLP Location: Leeds University: University of Durham Undergraduate degree: Law
to get involved with the planning then there is nothing to stop you from doing that.”
as there will always be a need for complex legal knowledge, delicate negotiations and fine tuning of drafted documents. It will be very interesting over the next five to 10 years to see how this will shape contract drafting. I think this will affect all areas of law. Firms will be able to harness contract automisation to reduce man hours for certain standard documents. It might have an effect on the amount or type of instructions we get.” Explore your options Charlotte advises budding lawyers not to “feel trapped” by the traditional route of A levels and law degrees when there are numerous opportunities to train on the job or try a non- law degree: “At my school in particular, there weren’t many people that went to university or stayed for sixth form, so I was in a minority of students applying to university and career advice wasn’t great at the time. Looking back, I really enjoyed English and writing, which is really useful and helps me in my day- to-day job – now, if I’d have had better career advice at the time, I may have chosen an English degree and done a GDL conversion. I don’t think I had realised that there were different routes to the qualification.” Charlotte is keen to promote on-the-job experience: “If you get the opportunity, do a secondment. And if you don’t get the opportunity to do a secondment, or if people are graduating without a training contract to go straight into, get experience within a commercial environment. It means that when you do qualify in commercial law, you understand the business drivers that the clients are facing and what is important to them. So, working in a law firm, sometimes it can feel that you are in a bit of a vacuum if you don’t appreciate and understand your clients’ needs – they are asking you to do the work and you are just doing it. But you can add a lot more value if you appreciate where they are coming from, then you can suggest other things that they might not have thought about.”
Milestones A career highlight was acting for a client launching a new product with a major bank. She was running it herself, with support where required, and working through the night liaising with City partners, drafting documents and handling client calls at 1:00am: “Completing this deal was a milestone in my career. Having the responsibility for getting a deal completed is scary at the time, but you know you have to do it and you will get it finished. It gives you a real sense of satisfaction. The recognition that you get from the team, the sense of accomplishment in yourself – it’s a proud moment!” When it comes to what Charlotte enjoys least, she struggles for an answer – she enjoys her job and turns the negatives into positive advice: “When you get bogged down, you might be in the middle of a three- week period when it’s been really busy, and you are getting in at 7:00am and not leaving until 10:00pm and it can just seem a bit relentless. I compare it to when you are doing exams, and when you are in the middle of those exams you just can’t see a way out, but you just have to keep going. In those periods it can be hard, but you have to learn your own coping mechanisms. So even if I know I’m going to be working to 11:00pm, I’ll try and get out to the gym around the corner to get some time back for myself.” Automated future? Charlotte has many friends in commercial law and they often discuss their legal future. Technology and contract automisation are the big changes that Charlotte sees affecting commercial law: “If clients continue to instruct firms to come in and automise documents and fast-draft paperwork themselves, then this could really start to change how lawyers work. There will always be a need for lawyers,
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