My name's Kieran Shields and I'm a trainee solicitor here at Irwin Mitchell. So far, I've worked in our construction and commercial departments. Here's a look at what I do throughout my day:
8:30am: I try to get in to the office whilst it is still quiet to ease in to the day. This allows me to catch up with the smaller group of people who arrive at the office early and our reception team before setting up my desk.
8:40am: We utilise a hot desking system at Irwin Mitchell with a clear desk policy, so I double check my desk booked for today and retrieve my equipment from my locker.
8:45am: I check my emails for anything that has come through overnight. Our clients regularly work in industries with flexible working arrangements, and Irwin Mitchell colleagues often take advantage of our Flexible by Choice policy, so emails can be received at any time of day, though my contacts and colleagues take care to stress that they do not expect a response outside of my working hours.
8:55am: I review my task list and reprioritise for the day if any urgent emails have come in.
9:00am: I sign on to the day’s 9:00am meeting. Attendance at these meetings is not required, however as we work as part of a national team I try to attend as much as I can to maintain dialogue with my direct colleagues. As no urgent tasks were needed today this allows me 15 minutes to catch up with the team and discuss our respective workloads.
9:15am: I begin drafting a template suite of documents for our agency client to use across their business activities providing media communications services to brands. I have previously prepared a plan for this task, detailing all of our client’s commercial dealings, the form of agreement that will be most appropriate to govern those dealings and a list of the relevant aspects to consider for each document. This task will take a number of days to complete and so I make sure to plan completing other work throughout my day so all of our clients’ needs are met.
11:00am: I attend another meeting with the Manchester Commercial team. As we are all in the office today we book a meeting space and take the meeting in person. We each go through our task list in detail and update each other on whether we need assistance or if we have the capacity to help each other if it is required.
11:30am: I prepare an advice note for one of our media clients detailing the IP ownership structure of a number of works showing where the client has obtained the requisite rights to use the work for the client’s project, entered into an option agreement granting the client an exclusive right to purchase the rights in future should their project go ahead or showing the progress of negotiations to obtain those rights if no agreements have been reached.
12:30pm: I take my lunch break. Since I am in the office, I take my lunch up to our canteen with the other juniors in the office today.
1:30pm: I attend the charity committee meeting to discuss progress on our current fundraisers and, as Treasurer of the Manchester committee, feed back on current progress both on fundraising and policy updates.
2:00pm: I attend a client call with my supervisor. We are advising our client on establishing a charitable foundation so that they can fund further research in the client’s sector. I take the client through the different options available to structure the charitable foundation, and we also advise on the requirement for a legitimate charitable purpose and the other considerations for businesses when establishing a charitable foundation. The client is happy with our comments and asks us to prepare an advice note covering the points discussed that they can present at their next board meeting. I add this to my task list and make sure to diarise the deadline for a couple of days before the client’s board meeting.
3:00pm: I finalise and file my call note.
3:15pm: I review the terms of service of an international media client, referred to us by our international legal network, to highlight the provisions of those terms that may not be compliant with English law, as the client intends to begin providing their services in England. I prepare a short note detailing the areas that may require amendment, and listing some additional provisions that may be required to ensure compliance with English law and send this to my supervisor for review before reverting to the client.
5:00pm: I still have some time before finishing for the day so I go back to the template suite of documents from the morning and draft some additional clauses to ensure that the matter continues progressing quickly.
5:45pm: I update my task list with the work done today and whether any deadlines have changed/ new work has come in throughout the day.
6:00pm: I log off and leave the office to go home. I will check my emails later this evening to check for any urgent issues however it is very rare that anything more is needed after logging off so I can begin to enjoy my evening.