From paralegal to new qualified solicitor

My period of recognised training started in September 2018 and I had previously worked as a paralegal in Blake Morgan’s private client team on the South Coast. I joined Blake Morgan when I finished the LPC and I qualified as a Solicitor in March 2020.

I began my journey at Blake Morgan as a paralegal, working in the Private Client team managing cases under supervision. I always thought I would have a career within the Private Client team at this point, as I knew I wanted to work closely with clients. I am very grateful for my experience as a paralegal and it opened my eyes to the real day-to-day life of a regional law firm.

I then began my period of recognised training at the Southampton office in the Commercial Litigation team. Although thoroughly enjoying private client work (and still very much thinking this is what I wanted to qualify into), I wanted to do something that I considered the complete opposite. I loved litigation work, had great supervision and was very fortunate to go to many court hearings throughout an exciting six months.

For my second seat, I moved to Family law, as I wanted to experience further private client work. Again, I thoroughly enjoyed this seat and gained many transferable skills from all within the team.

My final seat, and the most profound, was in the Banking and Finance team. I wanted to experience transactional work, so that I had experienced private client, litigation and transactional work within my training. Initially I thought this would never be something I would enjoy, but after a couple of months I realised it was the perfect balance of what I wanted in my career. I work closely with clients and maintain good relationships with them, whilst also feeling challenged by the technical drafting elements. I qualified into this team, using time to count from my experience as a paralegal in March 2020. I feel very fortunate to work alongside many motivated and talented lawyers, at a supportive and successful firm.

As you can tell, my training has been extremely varied in terms of practice areas but I would not change any of it. I found an area of law that I found to be the perfect balance and thoroughly enjoy the challenges I face every single day. Blake Morgan have supported me in my career enormously and continue to do so into qualification.

Every seat I have experienced gave me invaluable opportunities and I worked with great people, which made making a decision for my future career even more difficult. If I could therefore offer one piece of advice, it would be to remain open-minded with whatever opportunities you are offered as I certainly would not have predicted to be where I am a few years ago!