Most people don’t stay at the law firms they join as trainees all that long. When I interviewed Freshfields lawyer-turned-author Jonathan Lee on Wednesday about his brilliant new book ‘Joy’, he told me that only five out of the fifty trainees in his 2005 intake are still there.
This week’s #RoundMyKitchenTable podcast guest, Jill Marshall, is another ex-Freshfields lawyer who decided to try her luck outside corporate law. Rather than stick around to battle it out for partnership, Marshall elected instead to do a PhD and pursue a career as a legal academic at Queen Mary, University of London, just down the canal from Legal Cheek’s studios in glamorous east London.
Such a switch is anathema to podcast co-host Kevin Poulter, a lawyer at Bircham Dyson Bell, whose gritty Doncaster roots cause him to view learning with suspicion. “I can think of nothing worse than going back to being a student,” says the Yorkshireman at one point during the podcast, before returning to the sketch of a coalmine he spent much of the evening completing.
Unlike Poulter, Marshall might not pull in the corporate megabucks anymore, but her life as a senior law lecturer sounds great – involving a mixture of research (her specialism is moral and legal philosophy), supervision of PhD students, lecturing of undergraduates and running a masters course on the human rights of women.
“More wine, Jill?” he adds.
Listen to all the fun we had below – or on iTunes.
The podcast is also available on iTunes.