Nicola Walker shares her journey from a real estate lawyer to campus manager at The University of Law Liverpool
Liverpool has always played a central role in Nicola Walker’s career. Having grown up in the area, she went on to qualify as a solicitor and teach there — and the city continues to shape her professional life today. Now, as campus manager at The University of Law (ULaw) Liverpool campus, she describes the city as a “great legal hub” and gets to help the next generation of students succeed in law.
Before launching her legal career, Walker studied English at Birmingham University and completed a PGCE, going on to teach the subject for several years. However, the pull towards law never quite faded. “I’d always wanted a career in law,” she says, adding that “we didn’t really have great careers advice” at school.
In her twenties, she decided it was now or never: “I just sort of made this decision that if I didn’t do it then, when I was in my 20s, I was never going to do it.” The pivot wasn’t straightforward. “I knew nothing about law or the legal route,” she says. So, she did “a lot of research” and returned to her native Wirral to do a conversion course and the LPC at what was then the College of Law, now ULaw. “I’ve kind of come full circle really as a student and now as a lecturing campus manager there.” She then trained and qualified at Weightmans into commercial property, which is now called ‘real estate’, later moving to Hill Dickinson and working as a real estate solicitor in Leeds.
Asking Walker what drew her to real estate in the first place, the answer is simple: it was the seat she “enjoyed most as a trainee”. Walker found it “intellectually stimulating and challenging”, describing it as “a bit of a problem solving” and a different way of thinking from her humanities background. She also liked the client side, “working with clients and finding solutions”. The real estate work itself ranges from commercial property transactions and landlord and tenant issues to leases, negotiations, major acquisitions and disposals, and the due diligence underpinning the deal. Walker’s own client mix included “big retail clients” and charities, which is part of what kept it varied.
If the move from practice into legal education sounds like a pivot, Walker sees it as two strands coming together. “I think I’ve always had two areas that I really enjoy,” she says — teaching and law. After moving into lecturing, she held management roles, including head of student progression but she always stayed closely connected to firms and students. When the campus manager role at ULaw came up, “it was my perfect job,” she says. “It’s a role that blends strategy with plenty of hands-on work”. Walker has “overall responsibility for the delivery of the campus” but still teaches too, most notably tort on the conversion course, alongside some real estate and SQE skills. She also organises events, liaises with teams across ULaw, including study skills, employability and pro bono, and manages some academic staff.
Being in this role for five years, the part Walker finds most rewarding is watching students develop. “I’ve always enjoyed working with students and being able to enhance their experience and also to help them prepare for their own careers in law,” she says. “There’s a particular satisfaction”, she adds, “in seeing postgraduate students progress from the classroom to qualification”. Sometimes an update from her students will even land in her inbox: “Oh, wow. I’ve become a solicitor!”
Liverpool is central to that progression story. Walker is from Wirral and trained and worked in the city and she says that Liverpool has “a great pipeline of legal talent” and that firms are increasingly focused on “talent management” and “talent acquisition”. She also sees the city’s legal market expanding, describing Liverpool as “a really big legal hub” with specialisms in maritime and shipping law, with long-established firms continuing to grow and new investment coming in.
For students trying to build networks, Walker believes the city hits a sweet spot: “small enough that you actually can make great connections.” She is a director of Liverpool Law Society and a committee member of the Cheshire North Wales Law Society and describes the law society work as being heavily event-driven, with input gathered from members to shape what happens next. With “over 2,000 members”, it’s also, she says, “a really good law society to be involved in”.
Of course, the students she speaks to aren’t just seeking advice about where to qualify – they’re also asking about the SQE. Walker considers the “breadth of subjects” as the assessment’s biggest hurdle, “particularly in SQE1” and especially for those who last studied core topics in early undergraduate years. The assessment style matters too. Compared with the LPC, she says, “it is a different way of examining because you’re being tested all at once as opposed to you used to be tested in chunks on the LPC”.
Her advice is clear: “practice, practice, practice!” Luckily, at ULaw single best answer questions (SBAQs) being embedded into workshops, alongside weekly practice tests. She also highlights a ULaw revision app containing over 3,000 SBAQs, with “detailed feedback and the ability to focus on weaker areas”. One feature she emphasises on is the app’s “predictive exam pass analysis”, which she says is “designed to give students a sense of whether their prep is on track”.
Walker also places SQE prep in the winder context of employability. ULaw Liverpool, she says, offers “the whole package” — a central employability team and a campus careers manager, plenty of networking and panel events, and a law fair twice a year. Students can also attend virtual sessions on commercial awareness, CV writing and assessment centre preparation, backed by study skills and wellbeing support.
Walker’s closing advice returns to resilience and flexibility. “Sometimes things don’t happen the first-time round,” she says, so it’s about “being resilient and learning, constantly learning and developing your skill set”. She also encourages students to stay open because “the law now is quite diverse in terms of opportunities”, including being a legal technologist. Her final words of encouragement to those looking to make the leap into law: “Just go for it!”
Secrets to Success Liverpool takes place in-person on Thursday, 5 March. The event features a series of careers talks and commercial awareness discussions delivered by lawyers from Hill Dickinson and Weightmans, alongside a careers expert from ULaw. APPLY NOW!
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