A group of young lawyers tell Gavriel Hollander why they are staying local and pinning their career aspirations on working in a low-cost legal services centre

Away from the benefit to clients and firms' internal cost-saving efforts, the rise of the low-cost legal services centre has had another important consequence: it has offered a new route into the profession for hundreds of talented young and would-be lawyers outside the echo chamber of the M25.

With Ashurst in Glasgow and Allen & Overy (A&O) and Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) in Belfast, there are now genuine opportunities for young lawyers who do not want to move hundreds of miles from home to join the top firms.

"It's always been important to me that we are an employer of choice in Northern Ireland," says HSF's Belfast office head, Libby Jackson. "It's about building the life of an office."

While Jackson concedes that getting a job in Belfast is "not necessarily" a guarantee of being able to work for the firm elsewhere, "there are opportunities for the right people".

A qualified solicitor, Nicola Heaney (pictured) joined HSF in Belfast in September 2012 and has since worked in the dispute resolution and corporate teams and even worked in-house at a funds client in London for four months. "The opportunities I've been given have been amazing," she tells Legal Week. Reflecting on her time as a secondee in London, she adds: "I would never have had that chance in Northern Ireland before. There is no funds work here so you would never get exposed to that kind of work."

In it for the long-runnicola-heaney-herbert-smith-freehills
Having qualified before HSF opened in her home city, Heaney worked for four years at a local firm and admits that she had previously been looking at opportunities in Dublin and England. But she now believes that moving away from home is not the only way to build a career. "If you are ambitious and bright and motivated, you can make a great career in the Belfast office. My aspiration in the next two to three years is to be a team leader; I don't see myself as having to go across the water."

Heaney's colleague Steven Woolfson is not a qualified lawyer but works in the Belfast office as a legal assistant. He hopes to qualify while continuing to work for the firm. "That's definitely my ambition," he says. "I would love to qualify in this office. Being English-qualified also opens up a whole range of opportunities within the sector.

"I see it as a long-term prospect. We do what we do but because we are also part of such a large network there are some fantastic opportunities available – that is the reason for coming here. I don't see it as a stepping stone to something else."

The fact that A&O, HSF and Ashurst all received grant funding to help build their offices demonstrates that the aim is very much to be long-term employers in their respective cities.

No limits
At Ashurst's Glasgow base, Tim Taylor is one of six legal analysts who joined the firm a year ago when the centre was first set up. There are now 24. "It's quite a unique experience to help shape an office from the beginning," he says. "I studied law but I'm interested in business and management too and all of those opportunities are rolled into one here. We work with lawyers but we are also looking at the business of the law."

This attitude neatly reflects the difference in many of the people employed in the new model of law firms and legal services centres, where a training contract is not the be-all and end-all of a fledgling career in the sector. As Taylor puts it: "I never restricted myself to thinking that qualifying was the only thing I wanted to do."

But with an employee base made up of an increasing number of non-lawyers, is there still a stigma attached to the work done by these low-cost, high-volume centres?

"Absolutely not," Taylor insists. We feel like an integrated part of the firm. The sky's the limit in terms of what we could do. We are all legally qualified and have got degrees; that means we can do a lot more. We are building on our experience every day."

For HSF's Heaney, learning her trade away from London is, if anything, an advantage. "I think I have done more than I would have working as an associate in the London office."