Pros and Cons of Being a Lawyer - Honest Opinions from Two Corporate Lawyers

hey guys welcome to our channel it's m and lloyd and today we want to talk about the things that we personally like and dislike about working as corporate lawyers in private practice in case you're new here i'm a corporate transactions lawyer in hong kong and emily was formerly a corporate dispute lawyer in hong kong for about six years before she ultimately decided to leave the industry between the two of us we have almost 10 years of collective experience working as lawyers and with that brings a lot of thoughts about what we like and dislike about working as lawyers since every job does have its pros and cons we wanted to share our personal thoughts on this in case it was helpful for anyone that's thinking of entering the industry or is entering the industry we also want to provide some insider insight and a realistic picture as to what it looks like being a lawyer because we recognize that most media depictions tend to be a bit exaggerated do you think that means that i can't kick your ass up and down this floor take a swing and see what happens of course but i hired you because you said you'd get me no jail time yeah that's not entirely accurate but before we get into it if you enjoy this kind of content please hit that like button below and if you want to see more please consider subscribing so one of the things that lloyd and i really like about being lawyers is that we do get to work on pretty intellectually stimulating work now it's not always like this and the scope of what you do does depend on how junior or senior you are but a lot of the times when clients come to us it's because they have a relatively complex issue that they need help with in my case my team is instructed by our clients when they want to do complex transactions for example buying a company that has business all around the world being a transactions lawyer means i get to think about the issues involved with the transaction from a lot of different angles it's important to understand the client's commercial objectives like why they want to do the deal as well as which points they're willing to give up on and which points are going to be deal breakers for them in the transaction sometimes we run into complex legal issues too so we have to help our clients figure out how best to structure the transaction to get around the issue while also limiting their risk for me when i was a disputes lawyer a large part of my work involved advising my clients in respect of lawsuits that they're involved in or would potentially be involved in while this required more legal analysis than what lloyd does similarly we also had to think about the client's commercial perspective and advise them on the best course of action for them or their business at the end of the day although one would think from the way that tv shows depict lawyers that the best part about being a dispute slower is going to court which is interesting in real life the majority of cases don't actually make it to court what i actually liked the best was drafting documents involved in lawsuits like pleadings these are the statements that each party to a case has to submit setting out their claims or their defenses and what i particularly liked was the legal analysis involved in coming up with arguments that went along with this process it was kind of like a game of chess and that we have to evaluate our clients options based on the situation of all parties involved anticipate moves that the other side might make and then come up with strategies on that basis all while seeing if we can interpret the facts or the law in our clients favor i actually felt a lot of the same as emily with what i do a lot of people might think that negotiating contracts is really boring and kind of a typical desk job but in my case i actually really enjoyed the negotiation aspect of the job a lot of the points that we negotiate can honestly go either way and so it really comes down to how the negotiation plays out and relative bargaining power of our client versus the other side if my team does its job well our clients usually get the points that they really care about built into the transaction documents while also giving up points that maybe they didn't care so much about so there's a huge strategy element in the negotiation aspect which i really enjoy on top of the drafting and other transaction documentation work however it's often the case that lori's become more and more specialized in one area or practice of law as they work for longer given that legal work can be very technical and the rate of change in the world is increasing bringing with it more complexities and challenges faster and faster the legal industry tends to prefer those who are highly specialized in one area at most firms you specialize pretty early on into different areas of practice as mentioned i specialize in disputes and lloyd specializes in transactions but even within those niches there are certain specializations that people fall into for example in my team corporate transactions is split up into public and private company transactions m a ipo some funds work and digital economy and tech as for me i've done a few different types of disputes work over the years and on my last firm i specialized in projects and construction disputes now specialization is by no means a bad thing and can even be a necessity and it's also what some people really enjoy pursuing but it does not necessarily suit everyone while this is less of a consideration when you're more junior as you're just trying to get as much experience as possible and learn as much as possible typically as you become less junior you become more specialized as you spend more and more time doing that particular type of work as i mentioned earlier i enjoyed the intellectual stimulation from drafting documents involved in cases and the legal analysis that entailed but as i did the same types of cases over and over again i personally didn't feel as stimulated luckily i'm still pretty junior and my team is generally less specialized than a team like emily's i do feel like i get a wide range of work and my work is a little bit less niche than most other lawyers i've always enjoyed pursuing a lot of things that stimulate me intellectually so even when work is feeling a bit monotonous i try to use my hobbies and interests outside of work as an outlet for that so that i don't feel too burned out or just mad at work i try to get involved in different things in my team too while most of my work happens to be in transactions and mergers and acquisitions i do try to get into other things too like digital economy or in some cases even some of the more legal stuff like doing research and writing advice memos our point about specialization in the legal profession is just something that we think about when we're thinking about the long-term aspects of being a lawyer in private practice another thing we like about being lawyers is being able to help people with our knowledge so as a corporate transactions lawyer to be honest i don't always feel like the work that i'm doing is directly helping people as most of our clients are large corporations and companies and the transactions that we help our clients achieve while usually super interesting don't really have that direct human element to them all the time now don't get me wrong there are circumstances too where our corporate clients find themselves in really difficult positions and when we help them get through it it does really feel like we are helping them but as someone who looks at a lot of contracts and thinks about commercial issues a lot i find the most satisfaction when i'm just helping people like my friends or anyone who started a business that needs a little bit of help trying to read and understand a contract if you're not a lawyer can be a really daunting thing so i try to use my skills to help people wherever possible i've had friends who need to read and understand contracts either for their business or in their personal capacity and it feels really rewarding to be able to help them navigate those situations law is kind of like a language and i feel like as a commercial lawyer it definitely feels like i'm having the most impact when i'm able to help people interpret these situations when they may not have the ability to as for me over the years my clients have ranged from individuals to large corporations and whether or not i felt like i was helping people it just depended on the circumstances of the case for instance helping victims of domestic abuse back when i used to practice family law is a clear example of work that made me feel like i was directly helping people there was also work that i sometimes did for corporations that made me feel like it was making a difference such as helping victims of cyber fraud recover possibly millions and millions of dollars on the flip side i also had my fair share of work that felt like i wasn't really helping anyone in particular just acting for companies who want to fight but on the personal front like lloyd my experience with dispute resolution has allowed me to help friends or people i know who are facing situations involving legal disputes or potential legal disputes just being able to explain to them what the procedure is or what their options are so they feel like they understand what's going on is something that really feels rewarding on the flip side legal services is a service industry at the end of the day and being in a service industry where things are often moving very quickly and clients need things done urgently can mean that you often don't have control over your own schedule for example over the last couple of months i've been really slammed because i've had a lot of things come in back to back i worked on one transaction that was super demanding and had a really tight timetable and right after that when finished we were instructed by another client on another transaction that was similarly urgent and needed to be done within about three weeks we worked pretty much straight through those three weeks including through the weekend and the day after that second transaction finished we were instructed on another urgent thing by a third client and i was up until about 4 30 in the morning drafting a document the nature of the job can make it really hard to plan our personal lives at times and especially when things are back to back like this it can be really demanding now to be honest this isn't something that we minded that much when we first started because it's kind of a reputation in the legal industry that work is going to be really demanding and we just wanted to get as much experience and education as possible but when you end up doing this day after day and it affects your lifestyle in the long term it can be really exhausting oftentimes as a service provider you want to differentiate yourself in the market by competing in terms of price and availability and this applies to law firms as well the result is that you need to do more work to try and generate a profit for the firm but you also need to be available to respond to your clients whenever they need you the difficult part from our observation is that unfortunately the situation doesn't seem to improve very much as you get more senior for example it's not an uncommon occurrence to see lawyers who are more senior to us like partners frequently have to carve out time to attend to work from personal time with family this might be anything from skipping a dinner with their kids in order to take an urgent work call or just missing out on a family holiday altogether of course this isn't always the case and it's by no means exclusive to the legal industry it's just another factor to keep in mind when thinking about a career long term and the lifestyle or schedule that you want or don't want so it's worth mentioning that we didn't talk about certain things like money stress and the perceived prestige of being in the legal industry but if you want to hear more about those topics or if you want to discuss any of the things we talk about in this video we'll see you guys in the comments and now you should definitely check out emily's video on why she ultimately decided to leave the legal industry which we'll link up above [Music] you

Channel: Em and Lloyd

Views: 62,178

Keywords: should i become a lawyer, working as a lawyer, should i be a lawyer, what its like being a lawyer, pros and cons of being a lawyer, benefits of being a lawyer, corporate lawyer, litigation lawyer, lawyer pros and cons, becoming a lawyer, things they dont tell you about being a lawyer, lawyer life

Id: RuoDJ2EqbVs

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2022