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 think the unwanted overseas working is probably very rare - I don't know of any professionally qualified people who have been "sent" overseas for extended periods of time - those that have gone have cut their own deal and usually done quite well out of it.

harpsi - actually, I think it does matter .

A (female) MBA classmate of mine does career counselling and did a lot of research into the information female MBAs wanted before choosing a job out of business school. What emerged was that everyone wished they had had better info on which career paths were most compatible with a decent family life before embarking on their undergraduate degrees.

Mrs Wobble - we obviously don't know the same people

well said harpsichord

minty lawyers doing what I did (project finance) would have to go abroad for weeks at a time at the drop of a hat. I went to the far east for a month with no notice arriving back on Christmas eve. Terribly exciting when you are 25 and unfettered. Wouldnt be so great now...

OK let me help you with that:
which career paths are compatible with family life
answer - none of them
oh hold on, maybe marrying a man with a private income.
come on, we all know what highly paid, highly pressurised careers mean for your family and social life. you can juggle it and make it work for you, plenty of people do.
but to warn women against particular careers smacks to me of keeping women in their place
ie away from anything too powerful
imo

totally unqualified to comment here really as am neither solicitor nor barrister, but I just wanted to throw in that I did a law degree (at an ex poly!) and really enjoyed it. It was fascinating and fun in a lot of ways - I loved how it was logic, social aspects and commercial interests all thrown together. Perfect combination really.
I found out I was pregnant on the day I graduated so there went the legal career but am now happy working as a freelance legal translator.

Oh well, I don't agree at all that giving people good information is the same as warning them away or "keeping women in their place".

Harpsichord..re your recent posting this evening - I'm a patent attorney

I used to be cleversih, v ambitious, totally money/partnership driven BUT then I had ds - by accident at 29 - bloody hell just 1 year away from partnership - totally trashed my career as far as I could make out...

No other practice would have offered me a partnership with children on my terms (ie wanting to drop off at school & be a part of their lives) so set up my own practice - with one main client...best thing i ever did...12 of us now and persuaded some old collegues to join in partnership with me, one's even a man fgs..

Still have some sense of failure though for never achieving a partnership within our professions magic circle...the sense of failure never seems to leave me and its very difficult to find outher women who can understand that...

This thread is v intersting and quite cathartic for me

Just sticking my nose in to remind myself why I am resigning tomorrow[eek emotion]! Still, I shall probably have to work out a squillion years notice but I imagine it will be with a somewhat lighter heart knowing that there will eventually be an end to it all

Oooh, Soapy, didn't know you were resigning!

Like Harpsi I'm unhappy about women being "warned off" certain careers. I do a lot of work in graduate recruitment. To be honest I don't think that the "family friendly" nature of the job is really a big issue for the starry-eyed high achieving 22 year olds I see a lot of. They all want to know about the international travel and the headline deals.

Why on earth would anyone want to warn them against going in to it - I didn't have my first child until 17 years after I graduated - long enough to have had several careers.

i love being a lawyer, qual;ities you need:

1. Nosey-ness
2. Know-all-ness.

I have both of these in abundance and so love it!!

I just have to bithcyly say though to Dinosaur, WHY do people who have gone to Oxford never refer to university as university, why do they always say 'When I was at oxford...' or 'drifted into it after ocford...' WHY>! you wouldn't say 'just drifted into it after walthamstow..' or 'just drifted into it after bognor regis!' or something.

please explain, I've longed to know the answer to this for years.

Oh I totally agree - I'm off to try and build a second career that is new and shiny, and a bit more challenging for me, and perhaps a tiny bit more family friendly. However, I would not choose to do anything different careerwise for a first career - it has been so much fun and so rewarding.

I've been in the accountancy game for 20 years, and 9 of those have been post children. I really wouldn't warn any woman away from aiming for the top in their chosen career, why on earth shouldn't they have the full range of options available to them?

Getting to the top of the game in any field brings a huge buzz with it - sadly for me, the buzz of staying there has never quite lived up to the challenge of making it in the first place. Perhaps there is something that thrives on a degree of chaos in all of us who, at least for a few years, have kept all the balls in the air!

olala - its because the hear their parents (usually junior school teachers/headmasters) saying endlesses to their friends 'when ...(fill name) is going to Oxford, comes home from Oxford, leaves Oxford' etc etc so tis sort of innate.

Parents faults y'see - I have a serious theory that most Oxbridgers have parents who are teachers/were teachers and were alos born b/w Sep & Dec...and also mainly went to fee paying schools.

Highly unlikely I'm afriad that if you have a boy born in the summer attending a state school he'll get anywhere near the place - but might byt he skin of his teeth be v happy with his lot.
Now that's off my chest where were we with this thread!

Ha no idea! Not going to a competitor so will probably have stay while they drag the last dregs of IFRS and FRS out of me

TBH I am very psyched up for the meeting tomorrow but as DH has pointed out - the reliability of the Senior Partner in turning up for a meeting (especially when he has no idea what it is for) is rather variable! If past experience is anything to go by, he will ring up 5 mins before kickoff, asking for a postponement to, OH sometime in February!

Please keep it from A (if you happen to see him) as might have to sign a pledge of silence as part of the leaving negotiations!

I don't say "when I went to "
and I certainly wouldn't say when I was ay university because I would never have referred to it as that.
I say when I was at college

I have been thinking about it all evening, ere the family friendly thing and I think it isn't about "family friendly careers" - the best way to family-proof your career, i.e. moake it more likely that you will be able to work flexibly, not get fired in the first round of redundancies and be able to dictate your own terms is just to be really really good at what you do.
get the best possible education, the best possible experience, the best possible contacts, then you are in the most powerful position.
that's the best advice, surely.

spot on harp..women need to be repsonsible for their own income, destiny etc imho.

oh soapy good luck! I look forward to hearing What Soapbox Did Next

I NEVER say when I was at Oxford.

Oh, hang on, that's because I wasn't...

Message withdrawn

Virgo - don't give up on boys chances of Oxford - both my brothers are summer birthdays and were educated at the local comp and both went to Oxford - it can be done.

No - I am off to do a psychology degree (hopefully) and will in the fullness of time become a clinical psychologist - but it takes years!

Hopefully, the journey will be a lot of fun though!

I may even allow myself a year off too - although many have said that is the road to ruin and I'll never work again! We'll see!

If I urgently need to make some money then I can always make a decent living out of counselling stressed out City execs