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Richard Guthrie
Solicitor
I read Law at King’s College London then had a gap year in Vancouver and went travelling around the world. I also gained some legal work experience at the High Court before applying to Leathes Prior. I started my training contract in September 2004 and qualified as a solicitor into the Corporate team in September 2006. I moved to Norwich not knowing anybody here but quickly settled in, helped by the fact that the firm is very sociable.
My training contract covered commercial, corporate, employment and litigation work. I had the opportunity to go to court and deal with several hearings on my own during the course of my training. I also drafted an Unfair Prejudice Petition as a trainee and issued it in the Companies Court. One of the highlights of my training contract was being involved in an unfair and wrongful dismissal claim which we successfully pursued on behalf a sixty year old P.E. teacher who was forced to retire early by the convent school where she worked. Our client was awarded £45,000 in damages and the case was covered by the local news and This Morning. We heard the vanquished nuns shouting at their barrister – and then they stormed out of the Tribunal in anger!
Perhaps the most exciting thing I was involved in as a trainee was a big corporate deal to secure extra investment in one of our clients by venture capitalists. There was a big completion meeting in London and we had to convince the venture capitalists and their solicitors to go through with the deal (which had to be done on that day) despite attempts by disgruntled minority shareholders to derail it with applications for injunctions. The deal was on-off, on-off all day and involved several extremely fraught discussions. We won through in the end and went on a pub crawl through the City with our jubilant clients who then took us for a celebratory meal!
It is very difficult to write a piece like this and avoid the kind of clichés which used to infuriate me when I was applying for a training contract, but it is true to say that at Leathes Prior you will get early responsibility. You will be given the chance to find an area of law and practice you are interested in, learn it, deal with clients, be encouraged to form your own view about the advice to be given and develop the confidence to back your judgment (with the guidance needed to be able to do this from the outstanding and experienced lawyers who oversee the training). This does not happen overnight but you will receive a first-rate training at this firm and become a better lawyer quicker than if, for example, you were at a larger firm where you could be chained to a photocopier and learn very little. Being chained to a photocopier is also a bad thing because it means that you cannot walk away when it jams and come back when it is working again!
A number of trainees are taken on by the firm and one of the things the partners place particular importance on is whether they can see the applicant becoming a partner of the firm in due course, and that is far from the case with a lot of other firms. If you are ambitious and this kind of opportunity interests you, why not have a go at the questions on the main trainee page – and then send in your CV and a covering letter. I could not be happier as a result of my decision to apply to Leathes Prior – in terms of the quality of work and training and because the firm is such an exciting and fun place to work.
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