Professional Support Lawyer
Farrer & Co

Leonora T

00:00:03 My name’s Leonora, and I’m a Professional Support Lawyer for a Law firm called Farrers. I provide professional technical legal support to the Corporate Team. If somebody was doing a deal and there was a peculiar point that they hadn’t come across before, and they didn’t have time to look into what the Courts had said about these particular sort of issues, I would look into that.

00:00:30 Initially yeah, I wanted to be a Criminal Barrister, that was what I was interested in, I sort of wanted to save the world. When I was at school I talked to Dad about it, and he said – he said – If you have a passion, do that at University. And at the time I loved English, I still love English, and he said, you know, why don’t you just carry on doing that. So that’s what I did. And it was actually quite good because I sort of investigated other things along the way, I looked into Publishing, I looked into other things sort of just doing work experience in my summer holidays. And came back full circle to Law. And did what’s known as a mini Pupillage, which is when you follow a Barrister around for a couple of weeks, and I really enjoyed that.

00:01:12 But then at the last minute did some experience with a Solicitor, just so I could make an educated choice, and ended up deciding that actually I wanted to be a Solicitor, because I liked the idea of building a relationship with a client. A Solicitor is the person that you will have a relationship with, the person you will ring up on a day to day basis and say – I need this contract, what do you think about that? You need a Barrister when things get argumentative.

00:01:44 I did two years afterwards at Law School. My first year was essentially a Law degree in one year, it’s called a conversion course. And then when I finished that I did my training contract, which is what you have to do for two years. I was really excited to be in a suit, walking along with all the other commuters, I thought that was really exciting. And the firm that I first worked for was a sort of – it was quite an imposing, impressive building. You know I remember walking through the sort of swing doors, and feeling kind of excited, and vaguely important. (LAUGHS)

00:02:18 At the end of your two years, you then do or don’t get offered a job by this firm you’ve trained at. And at the end of my two years they offered me a job in Corporate. Corporate Law is buying and selling companies, getting investment, getting money for companies, setting up companies – yeah, it’s basically company law.

00:02:47 The times that I – yeah, the highlights when I was doing Corporate was – it really came from the personal relationships, and making sure that a transaction happened. I mean there are a couple of transactions which very nearly didn’t happen. And just making sure that they did, seeing them through, that’s quite satisfying, when you know that you’ve been instrumental in making something happen. And also make something happen in a way that perhaps wasn’t as aggressive as it might have been.

00:03:21 Very often deals happen very quickly. But there’s one deal for various reasons took a very long time, which meant that I could go back and revise documents, and look at them and make sure that it not just did the job, but did the job well. And I just realised I was really enjoying that. And also I’d been thinking about somehow going part-time so I could spend more time pursuing my sort of interests outside of my working life, and somebody suggested PSL. And then the more I looked into it, the more I thought it was interesting.

00:04:01 So the days I’m not in the office, I spend time getting involved with the theatre on a sort of voluntary level. I’m on a committee for the development arm of the Old Vic. I’m also on the Board for a Drama School. And it’s just nice to be able to give those interests the time that they deserve, rather than trying to cram them in around my five-day week.

00:04:27 ENDS