Trainee Solicitor
Farrer & Co

Jane Randall

00:02 My name’s Jane Randall and I’m a trainee solicitor at Farrer & Co. I’ve been a trainee for 8 months now, I started in the charity department and now I’m in the intellectual property and commercial team.

00:14 It’s always so different and so varied and every time you get a piece of praise it’s such a great feeling and all kind of makes the job worth doing.

00:23 Growing up I had so many different ideas, wanted to be a doctor and a teacher and lawyer was one of them but I think I never really understood day to day what lawyers did. My A levels were Maths and Further Maths and then History and English and I wasn’t sure at university that I wanted to go down the very logical route of maths or the very essay based route of history or English and I decided that law probably fits somewhere in the middle.

00:52 I went to Warwick university to do my law degree and I had a really good time there. I loved the degree and then socially it’s just great fun just being surrounded by thousands of people your own age and having fun and yeah I really, really enjoyed it.

01:07 I decided to take a gap year largely because I knew there’d be no harm in it, I really wanted to see the world, I think I felt too young just to go straight into work so, I spent a month in India and then I went to Nepal and down South East Asia and then in the summer I spent 2 months with a friend in a tent in Africa. It gives you a chance to see so many different sides of life and different cultures.

01:37 Your life is long so you might as well spend a few years before you get to work.

01:43 I had lots of different considerations when I was applying for jobs, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come to London my family’s from the South West and I’m quite fond of that area but now I’m here all my friends come to London so, I’m yeah, I’m loving the job and I’m loving where I am. Coming to London at times going on the Tube it completely overwhelms me but in terms of relocating it wasn’t a big issue.

02:07 I have no legal background in my family at all. My mum’s a maths teacher and my dad does something with computers he tells me every now and then what it’s officially called but I don’t know. My parents are very pleased that I’m a trainee solicitor and I think they think it’s a good profession it’s very interesting I have 2 sisters who have no idea what they want to do, so in comparison I think I’m the sorted one.

02:36 I do a lot of climbing in my spare time which I really enjoy. It’s so fun and satisfying to kind of get to the top of a climb that 2 weeks ago you just couldn’t do. I’ve also just signed up to be a mentor for the Prince’s Trust and hopefully that should start sometime soon, but yeah at the moment it’s just kind of training stages.

02:58 I’d like to stay in law I really do enjoy it, and yeah this firm’s great and it’s quite easy to see how your career can progress. I’ve only been here 8 months so we’ll have to see I’m not sure what department I want to qualify into but it doesn’t matter at this stage. I’d like to have a family probably and take my time in getting to wherever I end up.

03:21 I don’t think looking back there’s been one motivating factor or one significant event that made me end up where I am today. My grandma was quite important to me, she died 2 years ago at the age of 99 she’s a really strong woman but she trained to be a nurse and was so passionate about being a nurse, and at that time you couldn’t have a family and a career, eventually at the age of kind of 35 she decided that she also wanted a family but did go back to work and I think I always found that really impressive and, it’s nice to see that you can do both and they both define you, they don’t, it doesn’t need to be an either or.

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