Success can turn on the smallest of things.
Cambridge graduate Marta Sanchez (pictured left) completed her LPC in 2008 having narrowly missed out on a training contract at a magic circle law firm. Then Lehman Brothers collapsed, the TC market dried up and Sanchez ended up working as a maid for Bircham Dyson Bell solicitor (and Legal Cheek podcast host) Kevin Poulter.
Four years on and she is still in the same job.
Queen Mary graduate Matt Jones (pictured right) finished law school at the same time as Sanchez, but he managed to bag a training contract with top City law firm Norton Rose just before the financial crisis began. Although he had his place deferred for a couple of years, Jones began his TC in 2010 and is just about to qualify.
As Sanchez serves canapés and champagne, Poulter, Jones and Legal Cheek editor Alex Aldridge talk training contracts.
Do City trainees really have to work 80 hours a week?
Are 70 of those 80 hours spent photocopying?
How do the City’s young cope with the fear of not getting taken on as an NQ?
All is revealed in this week’s podcast.
The podcast is also available on iTunes.