WHY DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A SOLICITOR?

conmo

See this question on all the application forms and I just cant put down a convincing answer. Has anyone any good tips? Leave out the bad comments ie money money money.. thanks

shaneybaby

conmo wrote: »

See this question on all the application forms and I just cant put down a convincing answer. Has anyone any good tips? Leave out the bad comments ie money money money.. thanks

If it's money you're looking for then being a solicitor is definitely not the way to go.

Interesting job with weird and wacky clients and the little glow you get at the end of the day when you know you've helped people with the little (or big) problems in their life more than makes up for the mountain of debt you racked up studying....

FreudianSlippers

No matter what you write, you should definitely do it in all caps. Or ElSe Do It LiKe ThIs; ThEy LoVe ThAt.

McCrack

shaneybaby wrote: »

If it's money you're looking for then being a solicitor is definitely not the way to go.

Interesting job with weird and wacky clients and the little glow you get at the end of the day when you know you've helped people with the little (or big) problems in their life more than makes up for the mountain of debt you racked up studying....

Doing the right kind of work it pays well but if you are saying if money is your motivator for wanting to become a solicitor then yes I agree.

Procrastastudy

I want to become a porn star but unless the market for fat male porn stars picks up I'll stick with the legal profession - probably a barrister - because I find it incredibly interesting and like the people in it.

The solicitor route is attractive because of potentially more security of income.

nuac

Procrastastudy wrote: »

I want to become a porn star but unless the market for fat male porn stars picks up I'll stick with the legal profession - probably a barrister - because I find it incredibly interesting and like the people in it.

The solicitor route is attractive because of potentially more security of income.

Security of income from law practice? Those days, if they were ever there for the hoi polloi, have imho gone.

Ask around

Procrastastudy

nuac wrote: »

Security of income from law practice? Those days, if they were ever there for the hoi polloi, have imho gone.

Ask around

I'm under no illusions but surely if you're employed you at least know your basic wage is coming in?

johnnyskeleton

"Because I've got nowhere else to go" usually works.

RATM

OP seeing as a few posters are pulling your leg I'll give you a serious answer, and it is given from my experience of running my own recruitment company where I interview hundreds of people every year, not from the perspective of a solicitor.

For starters I'd be wary of a question like the one stated. It is very very similar to the question asked by 90% of interviewers 'Why do you want this job?'. The last thing an employer wants to hear when they ask that question are answers along the lines of 'Because this job will give ME career progression', 'Because this position will give ME a sense of job satisfaction' , etc. 50% of candidates will answer along those lines and automatically those 50% of people will be excluded from the recruitment process. Why? Because they didn't give the answer that the employer wanted to hear. The employer doesn't give a dam what you will get out of the job, they only care for what the employee will bring to the job, and how they will solve their problems, how the employees skills will add value to the company offering and most importantly of all, how your entire package will contribute to increasing profits. That is the bottom line and it goes for solicitors just as much as it goes for supermarket workers or any other job where profits are king.

So in answering that question (or any interview/application form questions) always, always, always think about the employers perspective and what it is that they want, not what you want. Convincing the employer that you are going to be a valuable and productive member of their team who will increase business through either sales ability or through quality work that attracts more business should be your objective.

Best of luck with it

subrosa

RATM wrote: »

So in answering that question (or any interview/application form questions) always, always, always think about the employers perspective and what it is that they want, not what you want. Convincing the employer that you are going to be a valuable and productive member of their team who will increase business through either sales ability or through quality work that attracts more business should be your objective.

Best of luck with it

I may be hijacking the thread a little but what you said is interesting. How do you answer the question in the way you have suggested without sounding massively insincere? If I were interviewing someone who told me that they wanted a job to make my workplace better I would honestly think they were lying or deranged. I'd be much more likely to hire someone who said it was for career progression or security or some other reason that seems honest.

I have no experience of the recruitment industry and I'm certainly not questioning that what you say is true, just asking how it's done without sounding trite?

Manach

Here was I thinking that ye did it because the opposite gender digged the suits. [I was going to say wigs, but that is the other legal types].

Seriously, knowing one work collegegue who went into the profession from IT, did so as break from the corporate life. In that, the mainstream corporate IT is a very formal and massive industry with global teams and multi-year projects. Instead of that, he could concentrate on local issues, for a local clients that he could build up within a community.
Wages are not equivalent, but when I do meet up with him, he seems less stressed than in IT.

johnnyskeleton

RATM wrote: »

OP seeing as a few posters are pulling your leg I'll give you a serious answer, and it is given from my experience of running my own recruitment company where I interview hundreds of people every year, not from the perspective of a solicitor.

For starters I'd be wary of a question like the one stated. It is very very similar to the question asked by 90% of interviewers 'Why do you want this job?'. The last thing an employer wants to hear when they ask that question are answers along the lines of 'Because this job will give ME career progression', 'Because this position will give ME a sense of job satisfaction' , etc. 50% of candidates will answer along those lines and automatically those 50% of people will be excluded from the recruitment process. Why? Because they didn't give the answer that the employer wanted to hear. The employer doesn't give a dam what you will get out of the job, they only care for what the employee will bring to the job, and how they will solve their problems, how the employees skills will add value to the company offering and most importantly of all, how your entire package will contribute to increasing profits. That is the bottom line and it goes for solicitors just as much as it goes for supermarket workers or any other job where profits are king.

So in answering that question (or any interview/application form questions) always, always, always think about the employers perspective and what it is that they want, not what you want. Convincing the employer that you are going to be a valuable and productive member of their team who will increase business through either sales ability or through quality work that attracts more business should be your objective.

Best of luck with it

I think you have mixed up a general interview tip with the specifics of this question. If someone asks "why do you want to work in XYZ Ltd?" You say "because I can add my experience of ABC to yours and we can compliment yours" or some such. The question is really asking someone to sell themselves to you.

But why do you want to become a solicitor is a genuine question because unlike flipping burgers or giving unemployed people generic interview tips, solicitor work is actually quite varied. So they want to know what type of work you want to do.

Obviously if you want to work in a job that involves long hours drawing up contracts you could say something suitable to that role. Or if you want to do litigation something for that. So if I want to work in aircraft finance I would say that I like the idea that of anticipating future risks and preparing against them, or for a family law practice that I like the idea of helping people through difficult times.

Don't forget that to be a solicitor you have to be adept at critical thinking, so bull**** any solicitor will sport the bull**** before its halfway out your mouth, and any that don't are probably not worth working for.

So while telling the potential employer what they want to hear is obviously important, a person fresh out of college saying I want to be a solicitor because I believe I can help your firm expand in X direction will just sound hollow. And even if you can put a convincing answer on paper you will have to stand over it in paper. Also, do you really want to work somewhere based on a lie?

Much better to tell the truth, but tell it slant.

shaneybaby

RATM wrote: »

OP seeing as a few posters are pulling your leg I'll give you a serious answer, .....should be your objective.

Best of luck with it

That's really interesting actually RATM, but like johnnyskelton said above maybe business development is not something a trainee should be alluding to. However i do think it's very applicable to +2 PQE qualified solicitors, ones who will drum up and drag in business.

I suppose some of us were being a bit facetious above but there is a bit of truth in the posts, such as McCrack says there are areas where money can be good however i don't think anyone is going to say that the market is buoyant. If you're in it for the money, your early years are going to be a struggle getting out of bed in the morning unless you're with a big firm that pays their trainees well.

Good luck OP. Some interesting comments people, thanks.

RandolphEsq

I'd spoof along the lines of 'making a difference to people's lives in a meaningful way since the law is there to help people', 'X firm are renowned for their personal, professional approach to their work, I feel this would be a huge benefit to my career' and 'I want to be my own boss, make a lot of money, and be an arrogant prick!'.

RATM

subrosa wrote: »

I may be hijacking the thread a little but what you said is interesting. How do you answer the question in the way you have suggested without sounding massively insincere? If I were interviewing someone who told me that they wanted a job to make my workplace better I would honestly think they were lying or deranged. I'd be much more likely to hire someone who said it was for career progression or security or some other reason that seems honest.

I have no experience of the recruitment industry and I'm certainly not questioning that what you say is true, just asking how it's done without sounding trite?

It is an interesting point you raise and is one I see all the time. It is also a commentary on Irish people and on our cultural blocks. By that I mean that Irish people are not very good at selling ourselves, we lack confidence. Compare us to the Americans- when they enter any race, no matter what it is, they do so with the attitude that they are there to win and nothing else is acceptable. That is why they are so competitive and know how to sell themselves. Irish people on the other hand are culturally hardwired to show up at a job interview and take the begging bowl attitude 'please sir, can I please work here'- it is our cultural nature but it is not what works in interviews. Often I witness Irish candidates literally talk themselves out of a job, I cringe when it happens but it happens a lot.

The OP is a graduate looking for their first position. In a competitive jobs market (and trust me, it is extraordinarily competitive at graduate level right now) he needs to stand out from the crowd. So what he needs to do is avoid the stock answers of ' career progression' (who doesn't want that?) and 'job security' (again who doesn't want that?). Employers have heard it all before and go like this :rolleyes:

As someone who has done a lot of graduate recruitment I can guarantee that 80-90% of people will give those answers. Whereas I am advising a different approach becauise when a recruiter reads 100 applications where 90% of them have the same stock answers then it is the 10% who stand out from the crowd.

Only last week I placed a candidate into a major healthcare & medical consultancy firm. He had a total of 6 years experience in that domain and was up against several candidates who had 10-12 years experience. But he beat them because he realised the value of the bottom line where as the others didn't- in initial interviews in my office they had given me the usual stock answers. When asked I him why he wanted this job he answered that 'I can see an enormous gap in the healthcare consultancy market, I have researched this extensively and I believe that there are unexploited opportunities from the HSE to acquire policy consultancy work but also to go one further and win new contracts where we are responsible for not only formulating the policy but also in the implementation of it. '. He made some bold claims (one being that he was confident he could increase turnover by 10% in year one and a further 15% in year two when he had a full pipeline in operation) but he was able to back up all his claims with concrete evidence that was clearly well researched. He knew his stuff and wasn't afriad to show off his deep research into the industry, I knew straight away that this guy was a winner because he had done his research into the current state of the industry, he had identified a gap in the market and he had formulate a plan on how he was going to fill it and he could articulate all of the above very well. That gave the employer the confidence to employ him, in fact the employer later told me that if he wasn't in the process they wouldn't have employed anyone at all- in other words the other candidates weren't even at the races as the next best candidates- they weren't getting hired full stop because they didn't have what the employer wanted.

Perhaps the Irish legal industry is different to the norm when it comes to recruitment- I don't recruit in legal services but in IT, Consultancy and Accountancy/Auditors/Actuaries. The legal domain does come across to me as quite a dinosaur of an industry that is conservative and resists change. However there are innovators waiting in the wings and Alan Shatter is committed to the Troika program which involves big changes in the legal industry. If legal firms in Ireland don't change soon then they will die when the EU opens up the game to large German law firms who will come in and provide real competition. Young unemployed solicitors would do well to remember that because the industry they enter right now will be utterly different from the one it will be in 10 years and they need to adjust to the forthcoming and changing realities To that end Irish law firms need their employees to win new business now more than ever because if and when rationislation comes then they might be asked to win new business on foreign soil and if they can't do it here then there isn't much chance of doing it elsewhere. That is my assessment of the industry but I stand to be corrected on it.

I know of a good few small firm solicitors who are struggling at the moment and many of them are living month to month, not because their job doesn't pay well but because either a) the got too deep into conveyancing to the point where it was 50% of their business or b) they made bad investment decisions and are now servicing huge debts. If those people were to hire a graduate from Blackhall they are taking a huge huge risk because if it doesn't work out it will cost them even more. In their cases they would much prefer to have a candidate who is going to bring business in the door than have one who is there for 'job security' or 'career progression' - their backs are to the wall and they want to be sure that in hiring new employees that that employee is going to make them more money that what it costs to pay their salary. Why the hell would they care what the candidate is going to get out of it. Profit is the bottom line, everything else is immaterial.