A question for the lawyers

[MOSagain]

Have any of you successfully moved to another area of practice having specialised in one area alone for many years?

Having specialised in family for over 15 years, am currently looking at moving into Employment and would be interested if anyone else has tried this.

Yes, after doing purely Fam for 15 years, started doing will writing when our private client solicitor was made redundant (someone else picked up the probate), but the difference is that I do both fam and wills now.

Have you talked to agencies about what they're looking for? Could you do another ILEX module on employment to get up to scratch?

Good luck, hope you get something soon.

Thats what I'm doing at the moment Mumbles. Am doing the Practice of Employment law course to 'top up' the employment law course I did years ago.

I think the problem is, the lack of experience (even though I did all the work for DH's ET last year and got us a nice little settlement). Employers want experience but if you don't get the chance to get on the job training how on earth are you supposed to get that experience Am hoping to maybe get into HR at one of the local companies as apposed to a firm of Solicitors. Watch this space...................

Hope you find something

Thats the problem Cinny, not currently working due to career break/maternity leave. Thats why its so hard to get back into it all

Mumble will PM you, RL a bit busy at moment!

I have moved from Residential Property to Commercial Property to Real Estate Trust Admin and then into Commercial agency and management. So moved my way over the course of 20 years out of law altogether! I think you can do it, but the best way is to find an overlap so that you do a mix to start with and then move into more Employment stuff.

I moved from private client to pensions but was only a year PQE at the time - suspect it would be much harder at your level, would you be willing to take the salary and cut in responsibility to get an NQ job? I went back to NQ level when I moved area, but had my PQE reinstated in full (worked at a firm with fixed salary banding for PQE level up to 5PQE) after a year.

Have you thought about doing voluntary work to get more experience? The beauty of employment is that it's everywhere - what location are you in? I used to do a legal clinic when I worked in London and lots of the enquiries were employment related. Also there is the FRU, worth looking at that but not sure if it is quite competitive to get involved as they tend to only take on quite major cases. Take a look tho.

LOL at emsyj, I'm doing the FRU course tomorrow in London. Sounded like a really good idea. I'd figured that voluntary work was the way to go so am doing that and a few employment law seminars run by a large local firm of solicitors.