A day in the life of a Corporate Commercial trainee – Trainee Blog

This particular day starts in the office, but given that we are still navigating COVID-19, I am currently splitting my time around 50/50 between working from home and being in the office. Whilst I generally prefer working in the office, you really cannot beat the commute from the kitchen to my home desk.

I tend to get to the office at around 8.30/8.45am and set up my laptop, check emails and draft a to-do list for the day. It’s not expected to start work in the office early, but I like to have some time to get settled before emails start flowing in from my supervisor and clients. I have signed up to various subscriptions which email me legal updates each morning, which I like to have a look through in the morning before I start my day to ensure that I am on top of any legal changes and maintain good commercial awareness.

My first job today is to finish a first draft of an asset purchase agreement. My supervisor has been letting me take the lead on this a little, which has been phenomenal responsibility when I have only been in this department a couple of months. I have drafted the engagement documents and quoted for the work, sent them (with some minor corrections) to the client, contacted the legal representatives for the other side, and am now drawing up the initial drafts of the paperwork. It has taken a few days to get my head around some of the more complicated clauses, but by 11.00 it is ready to send over to my supervisor for his review.

Before lunch, another solicitor on the Corporate Commercial team has asked me to assist on a report for a personal guarantee. I mainly work for a supervising partner, but I do work for all the solicitors in the team when they need trainee support with something. He sent me a precedent so I could see a previous example he has worked on, and asked me to have a go at writing the report to the client. I spend about 2 hours looking over this and get it back to him to review.  He explained to me that the client has a time crunch on getting the guarantee back to the bank so there is some time pressure to work quickly but effectively.

At 1pm I take a break for lunch, and have a quick chat with one of the other trainees. There are 5 of us currently training at Machins, so there is a good support network around. I asked for some advice about how his seat is going in our Public Family team, as I recently found out that I am moving there for my next seat rotation so am keen to understand from him what I can expect!

I am involved as a host for some of the episodes of our Ask Machins podcast series, so after lunch I record an episode with one of the solicitors in the Private Client team. It has been a great way to get to know people in other departments and also to understand the work that they do, especially if I haven’t worked in that department yet!

Next on my to-do list is to look at a due diligence report that we are pulling together for a client. There are assets on a number of different lists and I have been asked to pull everything into one document that we can refer to. After finishing that task, I read over the current draft due diligence report, adding in cross references to the documents and making suggested edits for my supervising partner.

Finally, I have a weekly catch up with my head of department to talk about my current workload and how things are progressing – this is a great way to stay on top of the work that I have been given and gives me the opportunity to get advice on any barriers or challenges that I have come across. I have completed a good number of the matters I was working on, so it is also a chance for him to assign me some new work and explain the background and context of what I am doing. He also checks in to see how I am getting on in the department and we inevitably end up discussing the rugby – it has been made clear to me that conversations will not be as friendly when Ireland play Wales in the Six Nations.

I go back to my desk to check and see if any last minute tasks have come through. I generally spend some time thinking  about what I need to work from home tomorrow such as any files or documents, and then it is time to pack up. It  is rare to be in the office after 5.30 so far in my training contract, so I head home ready to take on what is potentially my most difficult task of the day, getting my 19 month old ready for bed!