Meet Oliver - Trainee

A Day in the Life: 

9:00 AM:  

I arrive at my desk and read over the emails that I received overnight. As many of the firm’s matters have an international element, I often wake up to correspondence from colleagues and clients in various jurisdictions. I then attend our weekly team meeting—many of the team’s ongoing cases are highly dynamic and our weekly meetings are an opportunity to share noteworthy developments and exchange thoughts and observations, particularly in relation to one of our major matters involving several clients who are large lessors of aircraft.

9:30 AM: 

I return to my desk and update my to-do list. I am currently assisting my supervisor in preparing a draft witness statement for a Summary Judgment application. I finish reviewing the last of the exhibits to the statement ahead of an afternoon client meeting, send this to my supervisor for their thoughts, and await their comments.

10:00 AM:

I call the London Commercial Court on behalf of a partner to check the status of an order to transfer one of our claims to the Financial List and to ask for the new case number.

10:15 AM:

I receive an email from an associate asking me to conduct some legal research and draft a response to a client’s query about corporate compliance obligations under UK bribery legislation.

12:45 AM:

Satisfied with the level of research I have conducted and my draft response, I send it to the associate for review. I pause for lunch and meet a few of the other trainees for a catch-up.

1:45 PM:

With the Summary Judgment application client call in 15 minutes, my supervisor quickly runs through his feedback on my comments to the witness statement and the exhibits; we plan our approach of what points to raise with the client during the call.

2:00 PM: 

I join the call with the client and take a full note of the points raised. I was also given the responsibility for presenting some of my own observations and opinions of the Witness Statement to the client.

3:45 PM:

I type up the note of the call and make further amendments to the Witness Statement based on additional information provided by the client. It is crucial for the statement and attached exhibits to be accurate and comprehensive, since they are primary pieces of evidence that will be used during the Summary Judgment trial.

5:30 PM: 

I have a catch-up chat with my supervisor. We discuss the matters that we are currently working on together, and they check in on how I am doing generally as well as what my current capacity is like.

5:45 PM:

I receive feedback on my contribution to the bribery legislation compliance research piece. I am also working with another associate and a partner on an interesting case in which we represent shareholders of a company and are investigating whether certain directors had knowledge of misconduct that caused a drop in the company’s share value. The associate asks me to draft a section of a memorandum for counsel—the barrister retained to represent our clients in court—which will ultimately be incorporated into our Particulars of Claim when issuing proceedings against the company in question.

7:30 PM:

I send my draft over to the associate for review, update my to-do list for tomorrow and log off for the day.