solictors and lawyers,why did you choose your career....

[brimfull]

and are you happy with it?

DD considering this but would like to know

what qualities do you need?
what subjects at a level did you do?
tia

I am SO good at telling the wood from the trees. SO good. It is a coping mechanism from not being organised. Give me 2000 pages of documentation and I'll tell you the 2 trees within 5 mins
Hence I think judiciary will suit - no time to prepare, seat of the pants, identify issues, make a decision, BAM! onto the next

also I have double dose of good-memory-gene and speed-reading-gene. so it doesn't matter that I can't find any of the papers, as long as I read it once, three weeks ago, when it was upside-down on the floor and I was on the phone talking about something else

a good memory is crucial

DH and my siser are both solicitors and coincidently both working in th same area - Private Client (wills, probate, tax and trusts).

DH is now a partner in a large local firm. He loves his work, finds it really interesting and very fulfilling. He is doing very well for himself and is to be equity partner in April. And the advantages of being outside of London means he gets a very good salary (to get much muchbetter next April), loads of time for networking (i.e. playing golf and having meals!) mainly in work hours, and no ridiculously long hours (DH gets to work for about 8:30am after dropping DD at school) and is home for 6:30pm.

My sister is one year post qualification, working in a relatively new firm (I think) near Newcastle. She recently moved there and is finding her feet. She is enjoying it though and really enjoys the area of law she has chosen - she gained experience int he area via DH which helped.

My sister needed 2 As and a B minimum to get into her Law degree. It didn't matter what A levels she did.

Both DH and my sister did Law degrees, followed by the solicitor's exams (LPC?)

As for qualities not sure - both are very bright and able, organised, good with clients, good at time management, etc. DH is great at working efficiently (hence no ridiculously long hours, yeah) and is very focused. He knows what he wants to achieve from hsi career and had gone for it, and got it too.

"It is a myth that you can combine that sort of job and a family".

"In my experience women working at the top level senior positions in magic circle firms or who are partners either had no families and devoted themselves to the career. Alternatively they had day and night nannies, as no one nanny could be expected to mirror the hours they worked."

Well, no. I have that sort of job. And a family. And only one nanny. And DCs who are extremely happy/stable. And even a couple of hobbies (in addition to spending the weekends doing the usual sitting on the side of a pool watching swimming lessons/manning a stall at a Christmas Fair/party pick up and drops offs etc).

Maybe not everyone wants to do it. But I do get quite cross with people who say it can't be done, because it really can. It is not a male ghetto, nor should it be (particularly because so many women are qualifying as lawyers). And the more women who do it, the more will be encouraged to do it. And I agree that even with transactional work if it is the full on, midnight every day for months type thing, then that is a management and resource failure, not an inherent failing of the job.

Agree with Bink re the resilience point. Its an interesting one which I hadn't really thought of before, but I think you are deffo right.

The resilience one I got from supervising trainees ... I'd say that if you don't have bounce-back, the whole experience of the job must be very different.

ok then anchovy, if you can do it, then where are the people with the three nannies going wrong? are they just in a different specialist area? or just pants at saying no?

bossy I must say I've met lots of high powered female lawyers in my time (not as many as I'd have liked, obviously, there is still an issue there as bink says) and I've never met one with three nannies! Not sure I've met any with two (although I can think of one with a nanny and an au pair, which is similar to a nanny and a cleaner so not SO wierd)...

not saying they don't exist, but I think must be v rare

I would guess that most people would reorganise their working life/give up long before they employed that third nanny

I completely agree with Bink's description of the necessary skill set, and I'd add to the trees/wood thing, the ability to completely divorce how you think about something from you you feel about it

that would be "how you", not "you you". Proofreading skills very important as well, particularly in the early stages.

The 3-nanny cynosure is a Terrible Warning drawn from McKinsey (sharp-end management consultancy) though, isn't it? Not the law.

And I would dare to suggest that said cynosure possibly revels in own legendary multifarious nanny status.

not sure "cynosure" is the word i'd use here, but then that's not the sort of work/life balance i'd aspire to.

the three nanny example comes from management consultancy but there is a two nanny anecdote here from the law.

although i'd agree with you about the person with three nannies potentially revelling, if indeed not wallowing in it... agree with pph that anyone i'd want as a role model would not have let things get to the multiple nanny stage!

yikes! have just remembered i have two nannies! but one is mon - thurs and the other is fridays only. phew

one other observation I would make is that most children have two parents and there is no reason once the umbilical cord is cut for sole responsibilty to fall on the mother. most successful women of my acquaintance have other halfs who are equally familiar with how to change a nappy, pick up a child from a play date, get child to school with hair brushed etc etc. this does not mean SAHD but just an equal sharing of the domestic load.

So you need men who understand the need to do this and women who are happy to cede control of aspects of domestic life - you don't need to read many posts on this forum to realise it's not a universal truth.

I also share Anchovy's crossness that It Can't Be Done - when it patently obviously can be if someone wants to. That's not a value judgement - it's a statement of fact.

and also the only person I know with a weekend nanny (as well as a weekday one) is an SAHM. Not sure that career choices are as important as the interests/characteristics of the people concerned

It has to be said, though, that a lot of women do decide, post-children, not to continue on the partnership-at-City-law-firm track but to do something else instead. Which doesn't mean that it can't be done, as Anchovy proves, but it does mean that many women choose other paths.

i also share the crossness at "it can't be done". am not a lawyer but do find some (not all) mnet lawyers can be terribly drippy and hopeless about making it work in the law having had children - ironic given the skills and intelligence required i also work in a high pressured profession and i make it work because i have to.

Message withdrawn

yes, dino. but haven't you sometimes been on threads where "i can't make it work" means "i can't make partner next year in a magic circle firm and i'd rather stick red hot needles in my eyes than consider "...

[drippy and hopeless emoticon]