Your Passport for Success
This is it - It's been 2 years during which time you have become fully acquainted with how to photocopy, pour coffee, and look busy by simply moving piles of paper across the desk. You are now ready to drop the "trainee" from the job title and casually reply to the question at parties enquiring what you do, with "solicitor". At this point people gasp and ask how someone so young, funny, witty, attractive and exciting can be a solicitor.
Back in the real world, you are in fact coming up to a point that is about to shape your future. Decisions made now will be like visas in your passport, they will determine where you travel in your career - giving you access to areas that some will never have, but also potentially making some places off limits for the rest of your professional life.
In the past your qualification in itself was the guarantee of success. You would more than likely stay with the firm you qualified with, wait a few years and work towards partnership. But times have changed. The legal world is changing. You now have options, choices, and opportunities that 20 years ago the old articled clerk could not have dreamt of.
The question is whether you are fully informed - to make the right decisions and whether you have the courage to take them. In a legal world that is rocketing towards globalisation, not every lawyer who qualifies today will be part of the new tomorrow.
Crossroads is your passport to success. It is designed to give you the information to set your career in the right direction, to give you the signposts to the information you require and to help you avoid the pitfalls along the way.
The visas you put in your passport during your first few years of qualification will determine the route of your journey.
Congratulations on qualifying, and bon voyage - enjoy the trip!
