From the perks to the people, lawfluencer Ali Obeid gives followers the down-low
A trainee solicitor a month into his training contract has shared his “worst shocks” so far.
Ali Obeid, 24, is completing a two-year TC at a global US law firm in London, and said in a video uploaded to YouTube (below) how some aspects are “completely different to being a student”. These include the uncertain working hours, grasping legalese, the perks offered and the people.
When it comes to uncertain working hours, Obeid candidly shares: “One minute you’re on a break, and the next minute, you’re breaking your back doing a task that you found out five minutes ago”.
Obeid, who’s currently in his capital markets seat, says he finishes at around 7pm or 7:30pm most nights and “rarely over that”, but “it’s not abnormal to finish at 11pm if you’re working in, for example, private equity, project finance or even arbitration”.
He goes on to say that the role trainees play “is not as big as I thought it would have been”, giving the example of amending documents without an understanding of how a deal works or working on a “minor” research task.
Other shockers Obeid has come across during his training contract so far include the “focus on finance” and the plethora of perks on offer to lawyers at his firm. “As a student my diet was controlled by my finances,” he says in the video, but now “my nutrition isn’t dictated by economics” as his firm provides “free food: breakfast, lunch and dinner”. He’s also given a £500 wellness voucher which renews annually and he’s spent on hair cuts, spa days and golf sessions.
“From my interactions, I’m yet to come across someone who hasn’t gone to a Russell Group university,” Obeid shares. Before he started he admits he feared the people would be “super smart, arrogant and maybe obnoxious” but so far “I haven’t really come across people at trainee-level that confirm those concerns”.
Obeid has often shared his backstory with followers. He was raised by a single mother, who fled to the UK from Afghanistan as an asylum seeker, and went to state school, where he was expelled three times. He was the first in his family to attend university, securing a scholarship to study political science at the LSE. He started his training contract in February 2023.