Tag Archives: Alternative careers

Alternative Careers: Magic Circle Solicitor-Turned-Pro Boxer Launches Controversial Clothing Range

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After Laura Sapertsein (pictured) quit Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in 2007 to become a professional boxer (see video below), she found herself lamenting the "sexist attitude" of "the old men in charge and some of the boxing fans".

With women’s boxing only legalised in 1996, one can imagine achieving acceptance in this new career must have been even tougher than, say, making partner at a leading law firm as a woman. Of course, if you can't beat 'em, you could always retire and launch a range of boxing-wear emblazoned with the slogan "Violence is Pretty"...

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The Post-BPTC Files: Starting An Internship Aged 28 ‘Wasn’t The Life I’d Envisaged’ – But It Worked Out Alright

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Editorial note: Last month Gemma Amran turned the conventional pupillage hunt narrative on its head when she wrote about how not getting a pupillage hadn’t been such a bad thing for her. Here Gemma charts her journey from the BPTC to the European Commission.

During the year between graduating from university and studying the GDL, I applied to do an internship at the European Commission. Months of eager anticipation later, I received a rejection letter.

Fast forward five years: I had just finished the BVC (renamed the BPTC in 2010), I had no pupillage and was struggling to find employment. One late dewy summer afternoon as I sat in a London park contemplating my future, my head suddenly turned towards the horizon and a calm and soothing voice overwhelmed me, "Look to Europe," it said...

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Fashion Law: It’s Booming, Darling

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Jobless LPC students and law graduates, have you considered fashion law? Suddenly, everyone seems to be talking about it.

According to the Financial Times, which isn't known for its hyperbole: “demand for legal specialists with luxury goods expertise has risen stratospherically.”

Meanwhile, over at US legal website Above the Law, Staci Zaretsky writes: “Fashion law is a quickly-growing specialty practice area — a place where lawyers can aspire to dress stylishly while honing their legal skills in the glamorous world of haute couture law.”

And About.com’s legal careers section describes fashion law as “an emerging legal specialty that encompasses the legal issues surrounding the life of a garment, from conception to brand protection.”

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Solicitor Wows YouTube With Rap Video

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Steve Wilson, a partner in the accident and injury claims team at Sills & Betteridge solicitors in Lincoln, isn’t the sort of person you’d immediately associate with the world of rap music. But first impressions can be deceiving.

Employing a spoken-word style reminiscent of former The Streets vocalist Mike Skinner, Wilson eschews long-held conventions of rhyme to cover themes including litigation, firm management and the hunt for training contracts in his songs.

Set to a hauntingly retro house backing track, Wilson’s first single, ‘Working as a solicitor’, is posted below.

Escape Routes From The Law: Doing a Hollywood

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For the legions of training contract hunters out there, being a lawyer is a dream. But it’s not a job that makes everyone happy. The British Hollywood actor Gerard Butler (pictured), who started out as a trainee solicitor with Edinburgh corporate law firm Morton Fraser, didn't enjoy his time in the legal profession.

“If I’d continued in the law, I don’t think I’d be alive today,” Butler told The Times on Saturday. “I was 27, I’d passed my degree and was working as a trainee solicitor, but I was heading down the wrong path and drinking far too much. The week before I was due to qualify, I got really wrecked at the Edinburgh Festival and was sacked. I now know that this was covering up the truth and that I was very unhappy with where I was headed.”

Butler wanted to be acting, not assisting companies with contracts. In a previous interview, he told Scotland on Sunday of his heartbreak at watching a Fringe production of Trainspotting as a trainee lawyer “because I thought 'this will never be me'." He added: “those days were incredibly miserable for me because I was trapped. Not even trapped in a law firm...but I was trapped in my life, I was trapped in my head, I didn't know how to make myself happy."

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Alternative Careers: Working for a Legal Charity

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LawWorks’ Alasdair Stewart on why there's more to life than training contracts

When I started my law degree, my thoughts were firmly focused on how it would aid a career in business. By the end of the course, I was moving to London to work for a charity.

I was very fortunate to attend the University of Strathclyde where they run a very successful pro bono law clinic. Unlike most other law clinics, emphasis is placed on student ownership of both the clinic’s direction and the cases that are worked on.

As an inexperienced second year student who'd never studied employment law, I was suddenly faced with explaining to a partner at an international law firm why my client wasn’t going to accept their offer to settle an unfair dismissal claim. To say this focuses the mind would be putting it mildly; they say teaching is the best way to learn something, but I’d argue that having to deal with a law firm partner on the end of a telephone is just as effective. To this day, I still feel like I know more about employment law than any other area I studied, purely from that one pro bono case (which eventually settled, making my client very happy).

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Julian Assange’s ex-Lawyer Re-Brands as Fitness Guru

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Yesterday, it was with considerable surprise that I happened upon ‘Jogging with the FT: Mark Stephens’ - an interview with the high profile media lawyer conducted while he ran around Regent’s Park.

Now, Stephens (pictured below) may be many things – charming, down-to-earth, super PR savvy for a lawyer – but a shining example of physical fitness he ain’t.


Not that he attempts to hide this. “I’m unfit,” Stephens tells the FT. “That’s really the point. Like most lawyers, I go to a lot of cocktail parties, business lunches, business dinners."

Julian Assange’s former lawyer continues: “I’ve put on far more weight than I should’ve done,” adding: “The lawyer’s lifestyle takes its toll.”

So why's Stephens fronting an instructional piece in a national newspaper about keeping fit? My theory is that he ended up doing it as a consolation prize after something went wrong during negotiations to appear in the more famous ‘Lunch with the FT’ interview series.

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