Anthony Lyons is a charming, intelligent part-time LPC student who works as a paralegal at top London law firm Mishcon de Reya. What's more, Lyons boasts an entrepreneurial zeal, organising the #AskaTrainee Twitter Q&A through his impressive social media following. In short, he's the sort of person who you'd expect to walk into a training contract – if, that is, he hadn't got a 2:2 in his degree...
Legal Cheek editor Alex Aldridge and Bircham Dyson Bell solicitor Kevin Poulter advise Lyons (pictured) on strategies for getting round this problem – and, in what may be a first for the #RoundMyKitchenTable podcast, agree!
The gist of their advice is for Lyons not to be fussy and to take a TC anywhere he can find one. Then, by the time he has finished it in 2015-2016, the economy will probably be in better shape and, as has happened after past recessions, there may even be a shortage of junior lawyers. In which case, there will be opportunities to trade up to better firms.
Listen to the trio chat in the podcast below. Plus, in the videoclip below that, Lyons reveals how he has built up an enviable Twitter presence through his @ParalegalTony account in a snappy two-minute smartphone interview which Aldridge forces him to submit as a condition to exiting Legal Cheek HQ.
This podcast is also available on iTunes.
Tony is everything you could hope for in a lawyer. He is articulate, informed and sharp as a tack.
He will have the pick of the TCs he deserves and i pity the firms that didn't give him his big break, he'll get there in the end and show them all
May I wish the best of luck to Tony in his search for a TC. Found myself in a similar situation over the last few years due to a 2:2 but I am sure if anyone with that particular "kiss of death" can succeed it will be Tony.
Law firms are missing a massive trick by just looking at degree quals, Tony clearly displays skills that law firms are looking for and need for the future, I just wish they would embrace this instead of lazy recruitment filtering.
Nonsense. Anyone who gets a desmond in these days of rapid grade inflation is either thick or lazy or both. How many are getting 2.1s now? 50, 60%?
I always think that wannabee lawyers trying to make excuses for their desmonds are like fat people making excuses for their gluttony (it's my thyroid, my genes, my emotional issues blah blah) Nope, it's because you are greedy and lack self-control.
Having a desmond these days is like being fat... it glaringly says something about you. Keep on paralegaling mate, it's probably all you're good for imho.
Well I have to disagree because there are many fine practitioners who undertook five years in firm and completed the examinations without having to go to university. Had they attended they well might have achieved only 2:2 results. The real issue here is the sprouting of law faculties everywhere - which has been a complaint since time immemorial. A person who achieves a 2:2 can become a fine barrister or solicitor, especially if they undertake study in their tender years and find the transition from Eton to university difficult. On the other hand, there are people entering the profession aged 35, 45 and what have you who have all of the advantages of time, money and life experience to get a 2:1 or better without raising a sweat simply by pandering to their lecturers' idea of what is required to get a result. These are the people who worry me greatly, as many enter the profession for one of two reasons: they want status or money or both - and not out of the love of law and professionalism at all.
What buster said. There is no excuse for a 2:2 nowadays, especially if you want to go into an extraordinarily competitive industry like law.
My crystal ball shows three possible outcomes: (a) you give up on this pipe dream whilst retaining a modicum of dignity; (b) you spend 5 years as a paralegal gradually making yourself utterly unemployable until you're replaced by a cheaper kid with a desmond with no hope of a decent training contract; or (c) you get a dead-end TC at a shitty high street factory farm in Bumfuck Egypt, spend 2 years drafting lease assignments and cleaning the senior partner's golf clubs, realise you'll never pay back your LPC debt, nor move from the legal equivalent of the Vauxhall Conference to League 2, and then go postal and burn down the firm.
Or maybe one final option: you get the prized TC (somewhere a bit trade, like Hammonds or Halliwells, where your CV doesn't get auto-filtered for crappy degree results), but realise - at about 0.5PQE - that the job is bloody awful, and you'll swiftly join the enormous exodus of people who quit the profession.
The thing is, in my experience law firms tend not to like people with too much entrepreneurial zeal and independence of thought. Partners often feel threatened by them thinking that in a few years time if this person sticks around they could easily become the principle trusted contact for their existing clients.
One of the reasons law firms go for people with high grades is that it demonstrates they can follow orders and be compliant, the ideal candidate is someone that firms can be sure will put up with years of kowtowing to their superiors at the expense of furthering their own ambitions.
I'm not sure there's a direct correlation between a 2.2 and being entrepreneurial though. Whilst it could evidence undergraduate studies spent forming independent views and forging an impressive network of contacts, it could also just mean someone didn't prepare for the exams particularly well, faltered when under pressure, or simply isn't as able academically as others. I can't blame firms if they want to hire people who got good grades. I don't think academics are the be-all and end-all but the best lawyers I know are good technical lawyers as well as experts at marketing. Academics evidence conformity to a degree but not of a sort that is a disadvantage to being a lawyer. It's true that firms want people who follow instructions but I think they're more concerned with having pliable trainees and NQs than worrying about competition from upstarts taking their clients.
That said, I have very good academics but am increasingly conscious that many other skills matter more than my 4As or 2.1 Cambridge Law degree, particularly as I got more senior. There's no doubt those grades got my foot in the door, but I'm not as far ahead as some other people who did worse at school and uni.
I do wonder what firms are meant to look at if not academics? Enthusiasm from law students doesn't mean much -they don't know what the job really involves and some of the most enthusiastic at the outset will quit when they realise what is involved... Plus doesn't prove any ability to do the job. Work experience maybe. But again stacks of applicants have to be filtered somehow.
I follow @ParalegalTony on Twitter. He's obviously done well to build a profile and there's a sense that he's trying to help others in the same boat, which is noble....unless it's all just shameless self-promotion?
On the issue of entrepreneurial lawyers - my wife works in business development at a top-20 firm and says her lot are a bloody nightmare - steadfast traditionalists who refuse to embrace anything remotely different, overly-territorial partners, and they argue over the most tried-and-tested BD practices. Hopefully some fresh blood will bring positive changes.
"they argue over the most tried-and-tested BD practices. "
Is there such a thing? You're getting dangerously close to the world of business speak there, which has little use in a law practice. All you need to be is 1. courteous 2. technically proficient 3. honest and the clients will come. It's not difficult to be competitive, especially when I have my fine assistant Miss Murphy showing the clients around. OK, off to tennis now!
haha. Nonsense. 5 law firms pitch to 1 company to win the instructions on some mega-transaction. Each spokesperson for the 5 different firms is "1. courteous 2. technically proficient 3. honest". Only the firm that stands out has a likelihood of winning, which is why an innovative BD adviser is so important.
Nonsense. If lawyers thought more like businesses they would be in a better position.
"All you need to be is 1. courteous 2. technically proficient 3. honest and the clients will come."
Riiiiiight! Where do you practice, the 1980s?
Traditional partnership law firms have a real problem in that the things that are valuable in junior lawyers aren't the same things as the things that make partners really good at managing the business. So, having a skill set that would make you an ideal partner because you are great at building and managing client relationships, or managing, developing and motivating people, selling or devising corporate strategies is not a lot of use while your main roles will be 6 month seats of collating and paginating bundles, sitting in a data room, doing detailed and meticulous legal research on arcane points that your partners have a vague recollection of having read some years back.
Sadly, a 2:1 or a First is usually a good predictor of being able to do those latter things and not finding them too tedious. If Anthony is as entrepreneurial as he seems it might be that his better option would be to focus on that side of things, do an MBA and go straight into the business management/development side of a firm which completely separates out business functions from fee earning. Most of those people still are qualified solicitors but there's no reason why they should be or that experience as a paralegal wouldn't do just as well.
Yes I hear that the MBA is quite the degree to get these days for anyone not able to withstand the vigours of a law, medical or engineering degree. There must be so much wisdom coming from the business development industry about how lawyers should do business. It must be quite the science to study. Except that it isn't a science at all. It's gewgaw nonsense but one that has the distinct benefit of hordes of idiot business graduates who if they were actually any good would be providing services as accountants but instead try to impose with religious like zeal their ideas of 'how to do business better'. Meanwhile tens of thousands of professional lawyers get on with it. Ok, off to tennis now!
Is there any end to your "common sense" fount of knowledge, chippy??
Alex, How can you guide people to Duncan Lewis?
Look at their contracts and then you tell me how people are supposed to come up with the contracted billable hours during a working week. People are going in on saturdays and sundays just to honour their end of the contract.
Leaving aside the above, Duncan Lewis? Duncan Lewis?
Get a grip.
Hi Tony
One of my good friends just completed a training contract at Mishcon. He had a 2:2 and worked at the firm beforehand.
Let me know if you want to chat to him.
Tricky one this. On the one hand, there's nothing worse than lame excuses - so I agree with the "I am fat because (anything bar 'I eat too many cakes')" analogy. I got a 2:1 on a decent course at a decent uni 20 years ago, without doing much work. A 2:2 then implied you weren't that bright or lazy as hell (or both). So now, with grade inflation, a 2:2 creates a terrible impression.
On the other hand, many men in particular are notoriously immature and late at developing, so I think the Richard Youle answer has legs.
First time iv come across Tony - the podcast was great and really gave a thorough and well researched insight on the current legal profession - primarily junior practitioners. It's defiantly motivating for 2.2 graduates. Tony is evidently highly competent and and well rounded in terms of both his CV and strategy. This is clearly what the legal market needs right now given its current state - individuals who are determined to rise above constraints and use different methods in approaching a problem. Rather than graduates who are academically sound but actually have more knowledge than sense.
Thanks for the talk Tony - very re assuring.