If you're just starting to think about a career at a commercial law firm, this is the perfect place to start.
Commercial lawyers are solicitors who advise companies and governments on business-related issues.
They can either be transactional lawyers, meaning they draw up and review the legal documents that underpin the deals their clients are working on, or contentious lawyers, meaning they help their clients resolve disputes with other parties.
As a commercial lawyer you become a specialist in a particular area of law. For example, you could specialise in finance law and advise on deals such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or initial public offerings (IPOs).
The most common practice areas, in terms of number of employees, are described in more detail in the next section of the guide, “What do commercial lawyers do?”
Regardless of the practice area you specialise in, there are certain personality traits and skills that are important:
We interviewed Hammad Akhtar, the partner responsible for graduate recruitment at the leading law firm Ashurst, to find out his views on the skills needed by trainee lawyers.
As with any career, your first steps should involve finding out more about the industry. At the same time, this will also help you make decisions about the type of law firm you'd like to work at.
Here’s a quick outline of the the things you should be aware of while at university if you’re thinking about becoming a lawyer – you’ll find more detail on each of them later on in the guide:
Once you're confident that commercial law is the career for you, you'll need to apply for training contracts with a selection of firms you feel you'd enjoy working at.
A training contract is the final, on-the-job, part of your training to become a qualified solicitor – effectively a law firm graduate scheme.
Before you start your training contract, you'll need to complete another 1-2 years of legal education at law school (see below).
However, you should apply for training contracts while at university, as if they make you an offer most commercial law firms will pay for the rest of your legal education.
When you apply depends on whether you’re studying law or not:
If you don’t get a place on a training contract first time round, you still have the option of going to law school, although you’ll need to finance it yourself.
Law schools such as Kaplan or the London College of Law provide two courses that are relevant to future commercial lawyers:
Regardless of whether you are studying a law undergraduate course or not, you apply to law school in your final year of university.