So what goes on in a solicitor’s office behind the doors located next to the reception desk? Well, 18 months in and approaching qualification you would think that I would have an idea by now. Hopefully I do, but you can be the judge of that. Through this article I am going to provide you with an account of my training contract with Howes Percival. However, unlike the latest autobiography provided by a hot topic celebrity (as at the time of writing Katie Price has released no less than five) this will be more of an overview of my working life rather than the latest instalment in a series of celebrity engagements. So here is my Howes Percival story, warts and all.
You will be pleased to know that photocopying and pagination duties do still exist on planet Trainee. However, the sophistication of technology has alleviated any worries of sitting in a dark room post-midnight, pen in hand numbering each page of a 386 page bundle. You can rest assured that the only reason you will be experiencing such a nightmare is either down to user error or in the slim circumstances that the laser copier has decided to clock off early. As such, the amount of time spent doing such tasks is now limited to the speed of the technology available.
Further, other staples of my trainee diet at Howes Percival have included minute taking at meetings; and filling in the required weekly SRA trainee diary.
So moving on to the good stuff, what kinds of work should you expect to be involved with at Howes Percival? Broadly speaking, you can expect to be provided responsibility for involvement with matters from an early stage. You will be client-facing but with a solid support network behind you. Therefore, you might be involved in researching a bespoke point and preparing an explanatory email to a client or sat in on a conference call with the client seeking further instructions, either way you will be involved. Therefore, you can guarantee that at Howes Percival you will not just be a spectator sat on the subs bench watching the clock but starting, finishing and providing a post-match interview. Further, and more specifically as a flavour of the kinds of work on offer at Howes Percival, I have been involved in:
Overall, the work that I have completed at Howes Percival has been varied and I have been able to identify my strengths and weaknesses as a result. Through being able to do this I now know that when the final day of the training contract comes and the first day of the NQ life begins, that the transition will just be a formality in terms of updating my email footer from “Trainee” to “Solicitor”. Therefore, the trainee experience at Howes Percival has served its purpose in preparing me for that change and I am now looking forward to qualification with Howes Percival and the next set of challenges that it provides. Who knows, I might also consider releasing the second instalment of my work-autobiography.
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