Changing specialism after qualification

[Isobel R]

I'm about to start a TC at a law firm that specialises in a certain area. But what if one day I want to work in a different area? I know you usually qualify into a particular practice area - do people stay in that area forever? What if I qualified into Banking and one day wanted to move to Energy - would that be possible?

 

[Nicole]

I'm about to start a TC at a law firm that specialises in a certain area. But what if one day I want to work in a different area? I know you usually qualify into a particular practice area - do people stay in that area forever? What if I qualified into Banking and one day wanted to move to Energy - would that be possible?

Hey Isobel

OK this is outside my scope of knowledge, so this is just me speculating!

I think some people do change after they qualify, but it's usually in a practice area that's similar, so they may become more specialised in their area. For example, if they moved from general banking to asset finance.

If you wanted a big change in practice area, I think that's much more uncommon. If it happens, I assume it would be shortly after qualification and into another seat you did during your training contract. I think the difficulty is if you want to head into new territory. It wouldn't make sense for a new department to take you on unless you wanted to retrain or you had transferable skills. Banking to energy probably does have some transferable skills, especially if you worked in the financing of energy deals, but it seems like quite a difficult shift.

So in relation to your firm, depending on the area, you probably could gain the transferable skills during your training contract to move to a different area, as long as it is not too different and you did it on qualification or shortly after.