Matt’s successful legal career spanned a 10 year period before he made the change to entrepreneur and legal career coach.
As well as gaining a very broad legal experience in his own career, Matt also spent time recruiting trainee solicitors and young lawyers in the early stages of their careers. This experience coupled with his own experience of job hunting convinced Matt that there was a need for some good quality legal careers advice for aspiring lawyers.
Whilst there is already plenty of early careers advice out there, Matt’s view is that much of it comes from out of touch educational establishments or legal institutions and is not always reflective of whats happening in the real world of graduate legal recruitment. In particular, many careers advisers in universities and law schools are not qualified lawyers and do not have first hand experience of recruiting lawyers.
Matt experienced this himself when he was searching for a training contract over 15 years ago and, sadly, the situation is not vastly changed today. In fact, Matt’s story is one many people over the years can relate to and shows how a candidate, even one who has the potential to be a successful lawyer, can struggle to get onto that first rung of the ladder if they don’t have the right careers advice in the first place.
Matt’s story has even more in common with many others’ stories today as Matt was applying for a training contract as the UK was just starting to come out of the early 1990’s recession. Many firms had reduced their training contract numbers just at they have been doing recently so the market was extremely difficult and competitive.
Matt admits that he had to make 120 applications, and sit through interviews with 12 firms, before he secured a training contract. His first applications were made after some very basic advice from his university careers adviser and were unsuccessful. Not surprising when the only real selling points were an interest in commercial law, good interpersonal skills and captain of various football teams.
After a bit more advice from his law school careers service and some solicitor friends of the family Matt secured his first interviews. However, looking back it is little wonder he was unsuccessful. He attended them in his dad’s suit and tie without having properly prepared answers to possible questions or having prepared any of his own questions to ask.
As he left law school in debt and without a job offer in sight it is not surprising that Matt felt completely demoralised and thought he would never get a job. He thought these were obviously reserved for those people he’d met at law school with straight A’s from public school who seemed to be getting multiple job offers from the top firms.
Anyway, having learnt a lot from his mistakes and having done more research and taken more advice, Matt finally started to get interviews from his applications. After a few more rounds of interviews he finally received an offer of a training contract and from that point on he has never looked back. However, he remains frustrated that there are still so many people coming out of law school and being unsuccessful at securing a training contract.
Matt’s own legal career started with a training contract at a medium-sized litigation firm in London called Edward Lewis (now disbanded). Upon qualification, he was offered a job in the company/commercial department.
After 18 months as a qualified solicitor Matt decided to combine his passion for sport by becoming an in-house lawyer for Sky Sports at FTSE 100 company BSkyB. After 5 years, having working his way up to Sky Sports’ number 2 lawyer, Matt’s itchy feet took him to Australia. There, Matt worked for a pay-TV company in Sydney for 18 months before returning to the UK to become the master of his own destiny.
Matt now has various businesses in property, marketing and coaching but his proudest work is done helping aspiring lawyers secure legal work experience and training contracts.
