Alice Evelegh reveals why she quit her job in advertising to pursue a career in law

After five years working in advertising I was in need of a change. Holed up in a cosy cocktail bar with a few friends, I was indulging in a good moan about how fed up I was. I was bored to tears. Compared with the work stories my friends from university could tell, anything I added sounded trite, facile and empty. They kindly tried to cheer me up by reminding me that usually I loved advertising.

"After all," someone said, "at least you get to work in a fun industry. Imagine being stuck somewhere boring like a law firm!" I didn't laugh. I knew plenty of lawyers, and they weren't boring. Hmm. I was distracted for the rest of the evening, thinking about a career in law.

Working in an ad agency is, let me be clear, great fun at times. The people are all lovely – friendly, witty and dedicated. Very few working environments have so many employees with such strong people skills. After all, account management is all about providing superb service to clients and developing great relationships with media contacts.

It's also a huge thrill to work at high speed, with the satisfaction of knowing that the end result is flawless, the client delighted and a good deal has been struck with the media. The work-hard ethos is balanced by an equal amount of play-hard. Clients had to be entertained, taken out to dinner and taken dancing until they dropped.

So, why was I complaining? Well, sorry to sound mercenary, but the financial rewards were not so great. And advertising demanded long hours. One client was so busy on Fridays that I gave up making any social arrangements for that day, often being in the office until 10pm or so – although I imagine that doesn't sound so tough to corporate lawyers.

In truth, I didn't begrudge the time spent – it was more important to me that the work was done well. But my salary was really, really low. Apologies for being coy as to the amount, but trust me, retail assistants in Topshop probably took home more than I did. And they get an in-store discount too.

Also, with the recession, things changed. The amount of work I was doing each day lightened as clients slashed budgets, which at first I didn't mind as it meant more time to spend on each campaign.

Unfortunately, the extra time revealed one thing fairly rapidly to me: without the buzz of turning around huge numbers of adverts in a short space of time, without the thrill of maintaining accuracy under huge pressures, advertising didn't interest me.

I didn't care that much about finding the perfect solution to a campaign. Digging right into the nitty-gritty of circulation figures and readership analysis bored me rigid. Also, I was horrified to find that I had begun to consider my work trivial. Hours of pain-staking effort made for adverts that might be glanced at once and then chucked in the bin by the reader. Could I really see myself continuing to work in an industry I didn't care about?

The next day I had a look at some legal websites. I read some articles, and found some online forums to chat to people in. I contacted my friends who were already in practice and questioned them in painstaking detail about their lives, their careers and how the industry functioned. And I found myself rapidly hooked.

Reading the paper, every story seemed to have a legal angle – everywhere I looked I saw the impact that the law had. Here was an industry with some serious substance to tangle with. Perhaps life in a law firm would be less playful, but it would also be less frivolous. It certainly didn't sound as though it would be boring.

It would be an opportunity to learn new things every day, to continually develop and engage with a far more substantial world where my decisions would make more of an impact. An opportunity to enjoy the valuable privilege of using my brain each day.

In short, I would dig my teeth into one of the most serious industries I could think of. I was aware it would be tough, but I have a pretty good brain, which I hoped would be up to the challenge. In fact, I was raring to go – I hadn't been so excited in years.

Six months later, and my life has changed significantly. I have started the first term of my CPE/GDL, and am certain I have made a great decision. The course is fascinating, the people are lovely and certainly aren't boring in any way. Believe it or not, I've found that even lawyers like to have fun.

Alice Evelegh is a GDL student at the University of the West of England.