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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NickMcK" data-source="post: 44495" data-attributes="member: 3800">Nick's response on speaking with your employer is really good advice and something that I would echo has really helped me through the process.From reading your current thoughts I would also suggest thinking about your answers to questions such as 1) What do law firms provide for clients? 2) Why do you want to work in a role that provides that? 3) Not just 'why law', but why 'commercial' law? 4) How do law firms work as a business? 5) Why do you want to be a solicitor in a law firm rather than continue as a lobbyist?Aside from question 5 which I've tailored to you, all of the other questions are ones I was asked during interviews and you will be scrutinised for knowing that you understand the answers to them. Other candidates might get asked 'why don't you just go and work in a bank?' in a similar way that you should expect to be asked 'why do you want to be a solicitor rather than continue as a lobbyist?'Finding your answer to 'why law?' and 'why now' is only part of the narrative you need to make clear to recruiters. From my experience your answers to the above questions are more important than the issue of why you are deciding to switch at this particular point in time. To be honest, no one in interviews cared that I was applying later in my career, or was a bit older than the other students they were interviewing that day, but they did care that I was making a genuine decision that was worth their investment in me as a potential trainee. You need to show that you are genuinely committed to the career not just because you like the work or the idea of the work.Just on private client - I also explored going down that route due to similar work with politicians etc. Definitely attend some open days with firms specialising in private client work to understand what they do. I was surprised to see how much family + tax law it involved compared to the idea of 'stakeholder management' that I had expected it to entail. You seem to have really good work experience for disputes too - the only thing to consider if you haven't be able to do it already is getting some court time. Ideally this would be through working through problems with clients or attending hearings for cases you've worked on but any experience you can get to see 'the day in the life' of how the courts work is really helpful. It doesn't all have to be very high value commercial work as it can be useful to understand the reasons why the civil, family and criminal courts work differently from each other.</blockquote>

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