Last month Pete Dowds left DLA Piper's London office for the final time. The three years' qualified solicitor had decided to trade his life of City law glamour and financial security in for a new one running the online cleaning business he has co-founded. Four weeks into life as an entrepreneur, Dowds visits Legal Cheek HQ to tell us how he is getting on...
As you'd expect, Myles Jackman – aka "Obscenity Lawyer" – has some great stories. My personal favourite is the one about a man he represented who had the largest collection of porn ever found in the country – including objects so unwieldy that they required the police to use six six-foot high pallets when confiscating them.
But it's the quirky way Jackman has carved out a niche doing something he's passionate about – and his belief that this generation of rookie lawyers can do the same – that I found most interesting...
Is Rhys Bevan (pictured) crazy? Why would anyone in their right mind reject a place at one of the top universities in the country to go and do an unglamorous legal apprenticeship at a local authority? Actually, though, when 24 year-old Bevan explains his career choices to date, they kind of make sense... 
As Hardwicke Building found out last week, lawyers who enjoy writing in their free time can sometimes cause problems. But, on balance, most barristers' chambers and law firms look favourably on applicants with a few bylines to their name – and as the Barbara Hewson furore fades, that seems unlikely to change. Certainly, blogging helped Hardwicke's most junior tenant, Leon Glenister, to get his foot in the door at the Bar...
The momentum may be with Alternative Business Structures (ABSs) right now as they pour through the newly removed gates to providing legal services – but high street solicitors still have a few secret weapons up their sleeves.
For example, they can spell and employ apostrophes correctly (unlike Apprentice contestant Alex Mills' new legal brand Dynamo Legal). And they are of course qualified in the law (unlike many of the paralegals set to be employed by ABSs over the next few years). After the novelty of legal market deregulation wears off, such attributes could yet save the day, reckons Junior Lawyers' Division's new chief Heather Iqbal-Rayner.
The criminal Bar scored a coup this week when – for the first time in recent memory – it got some positive coverage in the right wing press. Sadly, the comments on the online versions of the articles illustrate just how big a challenge it'll be for criminal barristers to get public opinion on their side in their battle with the government...
Exam season is upon us: students up and down the country are frantically highlighting, cultivating coffee addictions, weeping and – if urban legend is to be believed – tearing key pages out of library books to gain a competitive edge.
Blogger Lucy Pether (pictured with me below), who combines her Legal Cheek editorial duties with the final year of a law degree at LSE, is one such student (although she's never torn pages out of library books). Happily, I'm free from such pain having finished my law degree at neighbouring institution UCL last year. Below, we share our exam tips (and horror stories) for your listening pleasure...
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