Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer associate Yasmin Jackson shares her journey from a non-law degree into M&A, and how students can start building relevant skills today
You do not need to have your whole career mapped out to start exploring corporate law. For Yasmin Jackson, an associate in the corporate team at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (HSF Kramer), discovering the right path was a process of trying, learning and refining her interests. “It’s fine not to know your career endgame from the beginning, you can shape it as you go along and enjoy the process. I am still doing that now,” she says.
While studying philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Leeds, Yasmin kept law “on the back burner” while she considered where her interests might lead. “My degree gave me a strong foundation for law by giving me the opportunity to develop skills such as logical reasoning, problem solving, articulating positions, and debating ideas,” she reflects.
Alongside her studies, Yasmin attended careers events and gained work experience in legal and non-legal roles before completing a post-graduate law conversion course. Although she was fairly confident that law was the right direction, she had yet to settle on a practice area or type of firm. “It wasn’t the right time for me personally to apply for a training contract or a vacation scheme because I didn’t know enough about what I wanted to do at that stage,” Yasmin recalls. Her experience offers a reassuring perspective: taking time to understand your interests can be a constructive part of choosing a career.
After completing her law conversion, an internship in Disney’s legal team in London helped Yasmin clarify that direction. Working inside a large international business gave her a front-row seat to how in-house teams work with international City law firms, and the work those firms do. “It was at that stage that I was like, ‘Okay, this is something I can see myself doing. This is exciting,’” she says. Private practice, with its client-facing work, variety of sectors and cross-border dimension, soon became the goal. After attending open days and events at different firms in the City, Yasmin secured a vacation scheme at HSF Kramer before going on to complete a training contract there.
Now working in corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A), Yasmin describes the practice in simple terms as “buying and selling businesses, investing in them, or combining them in some form”. This can involve a whole range of structures including buying a whole company, acquiring selected assets or bringing businesses together into a single entity. Corporate M&A lawyers help turn a client’s commercial ambition into a legally workable transaction. The role combines problem-solving and teamwork at every stage: carrying out due diligence to understand the business and its risks, documenting the deal, researching points of law or precedent transactions, and coordinating advice.
For trainees, there are opportunities to contribute while building an understanding of how a deal comes together. Yasmin says the key is “being across the detail and really recognising where a trainee’s workstreams fit into the wider transaction”. Collating comments from internal and client teams, tracking progress, updating document lists and helping draft ancillaries or sections of transaction documents are all pieces of a much larger project. Understanding how they connect helps give the work its purpose.
That wider understanding also helps trainees anticipate what needs to happen next. Keeping an eye on the wider timetable and raising upcoming deadlines with more senior colleagues are practical ways to support the team. “We’re always told from a junior level not to shy away from upwards management. Follow-up with your colleagues if you know there is something coming up, it doesn’t matter if you are more junior,” Yasmin adds. Confidence here is not about having all the answers. It is about trusting the value of your contribution and speaking up when something needs attention.
When asked about current trends, Yasmin explains that increasingly more work on M&A transactions is being “front-loaded” into the period before signing. A key driver for this is execution and regulatory risk. Tariffs, geopolitical issues and national security considerations can all affect whether a deal is possible. At the same time, there has been a shift away from competitive auction processes towards earlier bilateral negotiations between the seller and a preferred buyer.
This earlier focus can give buyers more time to scrutinise risks and negotiate protections. Heads of terms, which set out the main points of a proposed deal, are becoming more sophisticated, with detailed due diligence taking place earlier. For students, this is a useful illustration of how commercial developments can influence the work lawyers do.
The pace and complexity are among the reasons Yasmin chose corporate M&A. “I knew that I wanted exposure to significant corporate transactions where there are difficult problems to solve, strategic issues, and cross-border elements,” she tells Legal Cheek Careers. She enjoys HSF Kramer’s “one firm” culture, working closely with lawyers across teams and global offices. This culture also helps the firm advise on fast-paced transactions as one deal team.
For trainees, HSF Kramer’s breadth and presence also offers a wide variety of work across the four seats of the HSF Kramer Trainee Associate Programme. There are also opportunities as a trainee to undertake international or client secondments, subject to availability and business need. During her training contract, Yasmin went on a six-month secondment to the project finance team in the firm’s Dubai office. Here, she experienced a different type of transactional practice, different clients and a smaller office environment. Although Yasmin has not done a client secondment at HSF Kramer, she sees these placements as an excellent opportunity to develop legal skills in a different environment and learn more about clients: “what’s important to them, and what they value in their external legal advisers”, something she has an insight into from her time at Disney.
So, where can aspiring corporate lawyers start? Yasmin’s advice on commercial awareness is encouragingly manageable: you do not need to know everything. Regularly listening to a short news podcast or reading a commercial awareness newsletter can help build a baseline without making the exercise feel overwhelming.
Alongside this, following one or two transactions in more detail to understand the key terms and commercial context can be an effective way of engaging with a transaction in real time. Asking yourself: Who is buying whom? Why does the deal make commercial sense? What are the parties trying to achieve? What might prevent it from happening, and what could the parties be negotiating? This is a great way of picking up on themes and something you ultimately must understand when you are working on a transaction as a lawyer. Reading a law firm’s write-up alongside other sources can reveal different perspectives on the same deal. Depending on your interests, you can take the same approach in other areas, such as following litigation or a new piece of legislation.
Finally, aspiring lawyers should recognise the value of non-law work experience. Yasmin says one of the biggest surprises of practice has been the importance of soft skills. “Ultimately, as a lawyer, you’re in the service industry,” she says. Having worked in hospitality and retail during sixth form and university, she found those customer-facing, interpersonal skills “very important, more than I would have expected”. For students building their CVs, the message is encouraging: relevant experience does not have to carry a legal job title. Think about what your experiences have taught you, and how you could bring those skills to a legal team. Recognising the value of the skills you already have is a good place to start building confidence.
Yasmin Jackson will be speaking at ‘The anatomy of a deal — with Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer’, a virtual student event taking place on Thursday 12 November. You can secure your place now.
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