JAMES & AMIN
JAMES
Promote its reputation, I don’t know. Because I wanted to work in Leeds and Eversheds is pretty much top dog in Leeds and I just knew that if I am going to commit my career to it, then I wanted to be at the best. Eversheds pretty much is the best.
AMIN
Yeah, it is quite a similar situation for me. I really wanted to stay up in Manchester, having finished my degree there, and the reputation for Eversheds in Manchester is second to none. I have heard very good things about the training programme there, so it made sense just to go for Eversheds rather than anywhere else.
JAMES
From our point of view, obviously, you are going to be nervous when you are speaking to partners and stuff but from their point of view, they don’t mind. It is literally once you have got over that hurdle of speaking to your first partner really, then they are all the same because...
AMIN
I think the point being because it is all open door and mostly open plan it is not like you have to go and knock on the door and it seems a bit stuffy. They are probably sat ten feet away from you and looking at you, so if you make a comment they will probably make one back. So it is so easy to go and talk to them. I know for me, I go and play football with two of the partners and because I run the football team, I get to tell them what to do when we are playing football. So that is quite funny. They get me back when we go back to work the next day and I have had a go at them, but from that point of view it makes it really easy to go and talk to anyone.
JAMES
I think the social side of things does make a big difference. When you are playing football or playing cricket and doing all sorts of things with them outside of work, it just makes it so much easier to approach them in work.
AMIN
I think you will find that because you are at such a good firm at Eversheds, you kind of have a foot in the door of pretty much everything that is going on. So you find you get invites and opportunities arising, not just in legal things but in all other professions that you get invited to functions and...
JAMES
Client entertainment.
AMIN
Client entertainment and even other training schemes that you might be interested in, seeing them working and what they do for a living. You get invited to all these things purely because you work here.
JAMES
Yeah, I had a chance to do lots of charity work; like, I was involved in building a traverse wall and an obstacle course for a children’s activity centre just outside Leeds. These things you do not really associate with coming to a firm like Eversheds; it just adds to the package really.
AMIN
It is actually trying to better yourself and further yourself, and progress your own career is perhaps the most challenging thing. There is a lot of opportunity there to do it but at times it is up to you to go and grab that opportunity. Like, we were saying if you are not in a seat that you want to be in or you are in a seat and you are not sure if it specifically suits you and you want to get an opportunity to do some other work, it is kind of up to you to go off and do that. You get all the support you want once you’re there but I think that can be quite a challenge sometimes.
JAMES
I agree with that. It is really knowing where you want to specialise, because it is a long career and at our stage we are splitting between seats and it is hard to know exactly what you want to do.
AMIN
Yeah, definitely.
JAMES
So it is just trying to find the type of work and the seat that you really want to do, and just set your mind with that and stick with it.
AMIN
I have found that, I have to say that the one thing I wish I had known before I joined is when you do join, you find that Eversheds is split into all the core teams; so, real estate, litigation, etc. I think from a trainee point of view, it would be useful to know what teams are within that split so that you have more of an idea of the type of work that goes on within them because you will soon realise, that, say, with litigation, it covers a huge range of activities. And it gives you a better idea of where you might want to go and which bits you might want to work in as opposed to others. I think for me that would have been something really useful to know.