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The year before, my firm had taken on practically all of its second year trainees. But it was soon evident that this year was going to be different. A lot different. For a long time we had no idea of which departments were recruiting let alone how many jobs there would be. It was a tense time and political agendas were far and wide. Unfortunately I wasn’t playing the game but to be honest, whether there would have been any jobs in the departments I wanted to qualify into was another story.

I was one of those trainees who had their heart set on corporate law from day one. Why, I hear you ask? Well, I had quite enjoyed the relevant modules on the LPC (business law, private acquisitions) and liked the idea of co-ordinating various task forces when working on big deals. When asked where I’d liked to be placed as my first seat, Private Equity was exactly what I was after. After 6 months helping out on management buy outs and refinancings I spent the next 6 months in Banking. Unfortunately the markets weren’t particularly great which meant any specialist training in mortgage portfolio sales and drafting loan agreements wasn’t put to much use.

For my third seat I had applied to go on secondment. It was always my intention to get seconded either abroad or to a client so I was thrilled when the opportunity arose. Unfortunately, on the Friday before I was meant to start, the secondment fell through and I was placed in my second corporate seat in Financial Institutions & Markets. In this seat I gained a wider understanding of public company law and helped out with more M & A.

After 18 months of corporate, in a market in which corporate was not doing particularly well, it quickly dawned on me that my chances of qualifying at my training firm was bleak to say the least. I attempted to rectify my thus-far “hardcore” training contract with the more “softer” corporate by choosing my final seat to be in Intellectual Property. And it was a revelation.

Although never a contentious lawyer at heart like some of my colleagues, I really did enjoy the commerciality of the non-contentious work I was undertaking. I also began to get much more client contact. Plus, these clients were “normal” – well, ok, they did have their eccentricities, but these clients were not your “sophisticated” investor or your “high flying” director, but I was generally dealing with brand managers, marketing directors and in-house lawyers.

My new found contact with in-house lawyers got me thinking. I had carried out various placements in-house in my summers whilst at university. I had pushed for secondments during my training contract. I had always considered a move in-house at a later stage in my career. Now, with the prospect of unemployment ever more imminent and the fact that there were no jobs (literally, no jobs), I found the time to re-evaluate my career. The search was on for other possibilities. After all, I was armed with a good law degree and two years training at a top City firm. It was now time to explore where these “weapons” could take me. First stop legal recruiters. Surely they’ll be able to help me out…won’t they?