Virtual work experience and online internships were never really considered to be necessary. That was until Covid-19 put a halt on all physical work experience placements. At this moment, many law students began to fret about how they would obtain both legal and non-legal work experience and the opportunities available seemed limited.
In this blog post, I explore how I obtained a two-week virtual work experience placement with a law firm, how the placement fully functioned virtually, what I got up to and the skills I acquired. I hope this shows that there are still plenty of legal work experience opportunities out there from the comfort of your own home.
The Power of Networking
I have had copious questions asking how I obtained my placement and the simple
answer is: NETWORKING.
I have spent the past couple of years expanding my professional network across the country. I have been able to do this via social media, attending events and webinars and generally making the most of every opportunity presented to me. I highly encourage every aspiring lawyer to do the same.
I have a good relationship with a recruitment firm down in London (particularly its managing director), with whom I recorded a podcast with and frequently engage with on social media. When I lost my job, I posted on social media as to any opportunities. The firm’s MD reached out to me to say he had discussed my situation with the Senior Partner of a law firm in Kent and he would be happy to discuss potential roles.
A Zoom call was arranged for a few weeks later with the Senior Partner. This was my chance to discuss my skills and experience, what I was looking for and how I could assist the firm virtually. I explained that I had experience within commercial property, family law and also marketing skills. We agreed dates and initially assisting the marketing team and property department.
Fully Functioning
Most law firms are working from home at the moment, unless it is imperative to go into the office. In any event, I wouldn’t have logistically been able to travel to Kent and so I was WFH for this placement.
I had already been working from home for three months in my previous role so I didn’t feel I needed to adapt to virtual work experience; I already had an office set up and a work from home routine. But if you have never WFH before, it’s advisable to have a quiet space set up, plenty of paper and write out your daily structure so the lines between work and home don’t become blurred.
The firm’s IT department called me the week before to install their software onto my laptop so that I could access their intranet. This would have functioned fine if my laptop had more memory (but luckily we had a spare).
I was also set up with an email address so I could email internally and externally; this was useful as it meant I also had access to the internal directory.
I shared my mobile number with the partners and marketing team and I had at least a couple of calls a day; either to receive instructions or to provide an update.
Since I wasn’t in the office or with members of the team, I always responded to emails (even just to confirm receipt) because otherwise there could have been gaps in communication and tasks. I would highly recommend this, even in an office, just to ensure smooth communication.
So despite working from home and not having the office environment, the placement still functioned well.
A Wide Variety
During the original call with the partner, we agreed that I would be helping the property team and marketing department; which are the areas my experience are most applicable to.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to be helping all the departments, which provided me with exposure to a wide variety of different legal areas and tasks.
I would say that my tasks were split into two main categories; legal research and business development (BD) but I was also able to sit in on team and client calls too!
Legal research
I received legal research tasks from the following departments: family, litigation and commercial. Despite having worked in a commercial law firm, I haven’t actually had much exposure to actual commercial law or any litigation and so it was great to be able to explore new areas of law. The legal research primarily involved a specific legal issue that I had to explore and a question about this legal issue to answer and then present this information to the lawyer.
Legal research is a task that trainees will often be required to undertake so I thought I would share with you a few examples of the research tasks:
Litigation: I researched in what circumstances you can make an application to the court for freezing order over assets. For clarity, a freezing order is often made during proceedings where there is a real concern that the defendant will dispose of his assets (eg property/shares) so that they are unable to satisfy a monetary judgment. I had briefly covered freezing orders on my LPC but I couldn’t recall the requirements and so I used LexisNexis and my LPC books to carry out my research. I set out the requirements set out by the relevant legislation and applied these to the facts. I also researched the actual procedure for applying for a freezing order for example the name of the application; as I often think these important aspects are omitted.
Similarly in litigation, I was asked to research the civil remedies for harassment after a client was unable to pursue any criminal remedies. Again, I had touched on these in my LPC and undergraduate degree but I needed to remind myself of these and also apply the law to the facts of the case. I knew about a piece of legislation called the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (HPA) which offers a civil injunction and financial remedies for victims of harassment that may be unable to pursue a criminal investigation. Because of the facts of the case, I actually started going down the wrong research direction with the HPA. I then explored the tort of nuisance, in particular private nuisance and located two important pieces of case law that had similar facts to my scenario. I learned a lot from this research and it was interesting to learn more about how the law distinguishes between different types of harassment. From this research, I learned that research in the wrong direction is sometimes really important to be able to eliminate that particular direction (but I also learned to apply the facts of the case more carefully)!
Family: I was asked to research pension sharing orders upon divorce and when the court would consider an income or capital split and the advantages/disadvantages of each (honestly this was actually the hardest task) !!! In a divorce, pensions are included in the assets that will be spit between the parties, but their values are often difficult to calculate and involve an actuary to do this. Annoyingly, I had thrown away my family law text book from university so I used LexisNexis to find the relevant case law and precedents. Because pensions are such a complex area of family law, the case law I needed for the above was very very specific, so it took me a fair while to analyse each case and locate the relevant one. What I did learn however, is to have your financial affairs in order before you get married!
Commercial: My commercial task was a little less legal but still equally as interesting. I was asked to research the existence of the Saudi Arabian equivalent of Companies House so that I could conduct initial due diligence on a Saudi Arabian company. We are lucky in the UK that we have free access to Companies House where we can usually see the paper history of a company since incorporation. From my research I learned that Saudi Arabia do not have the same platform. I located a government run website that required you to subscribe and pay a small fee if you wanted to obtain any information about a Saudi Arabian company. It was intriguing to compare the transparency of company information in two different countries and the time consequences this could have for any cross-border transactions.
Business Development
My time was also spent assisting the Senior Partner and marketing team with business development tasks.
Some of you may not be aware of what business development is (I didn’t really understand until I started working in a law firm, and it’s not something you will learn at university or on the LPC)! From my experience of BD, I would describe it as activities that enable lawyers to consolidate their business relationships with other lawyers and professionals with the main aim of receiving work. These could be simply attending a networking event to hosting seminars at your office.
I think business development is a concept that is so important for aspiring lawyers to understand and it will be really impressive if you are able to show a law firm you understand BD and how it operates. A lawyer needs to understand the law but they also need to be able to form business relationships, attract new clients and receive new instructions; this is ultimately how you will hit financial targets. This is why having interpersonal skills and being able to network is a really good quality to have as an aspiring lawyer and is one of the reasons I am an avid networker.
Here are a few examples of the business development tasks I carried out to give you more of an idea of the work a business development manager or marketing team may do:
Estate agents: Since the firm has a residential conveyancing department, establishing relationships with estate agents is so important for work referrals in property transactions (or otherwise)! I was responsible for researching local estate agents in and around Kent and to phone them asking how business was and whether they were interested in collaborating with the firm. Most of the firms already had specific lawyers they used but I managed to locate some agents that didn’t have lawyers in a certain area and they were interested in collaborating. In a large commercial law firm, it is likely that property lawyers will have connections in large agency firms and they will cross refer work when applicable.
Specialist law firms: Whilst we know most firms to be multi-service law firms, there are certain firms who are particularly strong in one area and those that specialise in purely family, property or employment for example. In this scenario, a law firm will seek to establish a relationship with a law firm that specialises in their weakest area for example with the hope that the specialist law firm could refer work to them in their strongest area. In relation to this, my task was to research specialist law firms in and around Kent and obtained the details of their Senior Partner/Managing Partner. Ironically, we can often consider law firms to rivals but as a law firm, its important to recognise your strongest area and the ways in which you can improve this by also assisting another firm- mutual benefit is often key.
Networking groups- I cannot reiterate enough how important networking is as both an aspiring and qualified lawyer! Even if you have an established network, it is always useful to seek out any other networks you can join. For this task, I was asked to research networking groups in Essex. Since ‘networking groups’ is a pretty vast category, I split this into legal, property and general business network groups. It was interesting to see the opportunities available; of which there were many! Most networking groups required a membership fee that would predominantly go towards any venues for events/merchandise. I also found lots of women in business networking groups, which I found very positive as an aspiring female lawyer.
Website review: I enjoyed the task of analysing the services section on the website and spotting any spelling or grammatical errors and making suggestions to improve the wording. It was really interesting to analyse the wording and structure that law firms use on their websites in order to attract clients and new talent. I’m sure there is some psychology behind the use of certain language on websites but a firm is essentially trying to make themselves the most appealing firm to clients. I did make a few suggestions in terms of the wording as I always think its good to have a third party opinion on these things. It resonated with me in the sense that aspiring lawyers are trying to do the same with training contract applications and so I definitely took some stylistic pointers away from this exercise.
Significant Skills
Any type of work experience is always a great opportunity to expand your knowledge and meet new people; but its important to demonstrate the skills that you learned from this experience.
TOP TIP: I created a work experience diary to document the tasks I undertook, how I went about these and the skills I acquired from this. This makes it easier to talk about your experience in an interview.
With virtual work experience, you will acquire the same skills as a normal placement, but there are several skills that will be more apparent for example communication skills.
Here are a few of the skills (highlighted) I developed through my virtual work experience and how I would present them in an application:
· I developed verbal communication skills by participating in calls and videos with colleagues and clients and additionally, by phoning up the estate agents. I developed written communication skills by drafting emails to colleagues and producing legal research reports.
· I developed legal research skills, problem solving skills and the ability to digest and analyse large volumes of information to provide an effective and precise solution.
· My attention to detail developed through analysing the firm’s website for any spelling or grammatical errors. My persuasive and attractive writing techniques improved by suggesting new wording structure for the website.
I hope this blog post has given you an insight into the variety of work during my work experience alongside an introduction into the business development and marketing side of a law firm. Virtual work experience really is as effective as in an office and you can still develop new skills!