Associate Chidi Onyeagucha shares what attracted her to the firm, what she learned across her training contract and how life has changed since qualifying
Sidley leveraged finance associate Chidiebere Onyeagucha’s interest in law started early. Growing up in Nigeria, she would often accompany her lawyer father to court and sit in on hearings. “For a very long time, I actually wanted to be a judge back home in Nigeria where I grew up,” she recalls. But after moving to London to study law at UCL, she found herself drawn to the solicitor route. “Advocacy is great, but I found myself more drawn to the commercial aspects of legal practice,” Chidi says, pointing instead to the appeal of working in teams, dealing directly with clients and providing advice.
Before university, Chidi had worked with several start-ups, where she enjoyed strategising and solving business problems. A mock M&A negotiation exercise during her first year at UCL then connected those interests with corporate law. “It confirmed my path because it allowed me to fuse my interest in law with commercial thinking and commercial problem-solving,” she explains.
When researching firms, Chidi was drawn to Sidley’s private equity and finance strengths, as well as its smaller trainee cohorts. Her interest in private equity had developed at UCL, while a bank internship had drawn her towards finance. She was also keen to take on substantive work early. “I wanted to be in an environment where I could dive straight into substantive work early, take on early responsibility, and learn directly from practice on lean deal teams,” she says. Sidley, she adds, “offered all three elements together”.
It was during Chidi’s 2024 vacation scheme, however, that the firm’s culture really came into focus. “What surprised me in a good way was just how genuinely interested people seemed in me and my development at such an early stage,” she recalls. During a coffee chat, she mentioned some previous work experience in passing, only for the associate to encourage her to talk more about how it helped distinguish her as an applicant. “She was not my supervisor or evaluator, just someone taking time out for a coffee,” Chidi says. “That conversation stayed with me because it demonstrated Sidley’s culture: people take an authentic interest in your growth early on, even when they have no formal reason to do so.”
That culture carried into the training contract. Chidi was aware of a longstanding perception that trainees at US firms may be expected to find their feet with limited support, but says her experience at Sidley was different.“While you are given significant responsibility, people are genuinely there to support you,” she explains. The small cohort also helped foster a “collaborative rather than competitive” dynamic, with trainees sharing advice and talking through unfamiliar tasks. “Even though it is abusy, high-performance environment, you are not scrambling or trying to figure things out alone,” she says.
Chidi’s training contract took her through Restructuring, Leveraged Finance, Debt Capital Markets and Private Equity (Infrastructure). “I started my training contract knowing I wanted to do something finance-focused,” she says, with each seat offering a different view of how financing works. Restructuring showed her “finance in reverse” — what happens when financings do not go to plan and need to be reorganised or renegotiated. It also sharpened her approach to drafting. “It taught me to draft initial finance documents with exceptional care,” Chidi explains, having seen how “subtle wording in agreements like intercreditor deeds can have massive long-term consequences”.
Debt capital markets gave Chidi a contrasting view of “public finance”, with greater emphasis on public disclosure and marketing securities than on private borrower-lender negotiations. Her private equity (infrastructure) seat, meanwhile, showed how financing can differ across sectors. Taken together, those rotations helped confirm where she wanted to qualify. “Experiencing how financing operates across different industries and at different stages ultimately helped me decide on Leveraged Finance,” she says, describing it as “the perfect mix of everything I was looking for”.
“The daily routine depends on the stage of the deal,” Chidi explains. Mornings often begin with emails and a prioritised to-do list, followed by drafting, reviewing or negotiating mark-ups and calls with clients, counterparties, local counsel or US deal teams. Transaction management is another key part of the role, including tracking deliverables and closing timelines. Quieter periods, she adds, leave more time for internal training, firm events and pro bono work.
That responsibility is backed by practical support. “You are never forced to take on more than you can handle, but the space exists to step up,” Chidi says. Supervisors and associates are available to talk through unfamiliar work, while the trainee cohort has a group chat where “no question is considered too silly”. Trainees can also draw on the firm’s document production, library and secretarial teams. “You are never left out of your depth,” she adds.
Qualification has brought a different kind of responsibility. “The biggest difference is ownership over my work and managing my daily schedule,” Chidi explains. As a trainee, she might be brought into a deal for a discrete task, such as running a redline or helping with a signing, without always having the full context. Now, she is involved earlier, making it easier to see the bigger picture, anticipate workflow and organise her time. The work itself has stepped up too: instead of focusing mainly on corporate authorisations and board resolutions, she is now involved in drafting more substantive documentation, including principal security documents, and takes on greater responsibility for transaction management.
The step up is not only about managing her own work. Chidi now works directly with trainees too. “Learning how to delegate tasks, explain instructions clearly, and keep trainees integrated into deal flow is a completely new experience for me, and I’m realising that it’s a skill in its own right,” she says.
Having experienced Sidley as an applicant, vacation schemer, trainee and associate, Chidi says the firm’s investment in her development has remained constant, even as the focus has changed. As a trainee, conversations shifted towards choosing practice areas, developing practical skills and deciding where to qualify; now, as an associate, they are increasingly about “shaping my long-term career and developing into a high-performing lawyer”. “Having that support evolve alongside my journey has made me value it even more,” she adds.
For students considering an application to Sidley, Chidi’s advice is to go beyond the firm’s website. “There is nothing as valuable as speaking directly to someone who actually works at the firm,” she says, particularly through open days and law fairs. The key is to be specific: “Use those opportunities to ask targeted questions about trainees’ and associates’ day-to-day responsibilities and substantive work.”This, she says, can provide “the practical insight needed to assess whether the day-to-day reality aligns with your own career goals”.
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