I had an interesting discussion over the weekend with a recent languages graduate. She is about to start a Graduate Conversion Course to become a lawyer, and then wants to find a training contract that will allow her to combine her undoubted languages skills (a native English speaker with fluency in French and Russian) with a career in the law. She assumes that this will be best achieved in a large City firm.
And therein lies the problem. The combination of the size, culture, and type of clients - and many other factors too - means that for many new graduates starting out on a career in the law, large City firms are not the right solution.
The frustration of many MSI Global Alliance (www.msiglobal.org) member firms - and firms in similar groups that put together strong mid-sized firms with like-minded firms overseas - is that they can offer the graduate that I was talking to exactly what she wants in terms of exposure to international clients, but within a mid-sized firm environment.
A current challenge is to educate and inform potential clients of the value of using high quality, mid-tier firms with an international link. It now seems that we should be extending that challenge to embrace students, who need to understand the full range of options before going down one particular career route.
James Mendelssohn (jmendelssohn@msiglobal.org)
CEO, MSI Global Alliance
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