In my undergraduate degree, I studied Liberal Arts and Sciences with a specialisation in Legal Studies and Art History. I enjoyed working in the intersection between creative industries and the law which led me to pursue a career in intellectual property (IP) law. After completing an LLM in International Law with a focus on IP and commercial law, I worked as a paralegal in art law and later in music licensing. Thanks to this, my interests expanded beyond the arts, and I also became fascinated with the more technical areas of IP.

Knowing that I wanted to be an IP lawyer and being eager to explore all the different facets of IP, Bristows seemed like the perfect place to do my training contract. The firm has a wide variety of very specialised and renowned IP departments, such as Patent Litigation, Commercial IP/IT, or Commercial Technology and Copyright (CTC) Disputes, but it also allows for insights into other, more common commercial fields, such as corporate or competition law. During a workshop day, I gained some valuable insight into the firm, and I came away excited about the prospect of working on legal and commercial issues in life sciences, technology, and brands.

The application process was thorough but very fair and encouraging. After the written application, I did a recorded video interview, followed by a live interview, two written exercises and a final interview. I found it refreshing not to see any generic aptitude tests and got the impression that Bristows really wants to give its applicants the opportunity to show themselves in their best light. The interviews felt like interesting and engaging conversations rather than quizzes and I felt like the interviewers genuinely wanted to get to know me rather than “catch me out”.

During my first year at Bristows, I sat in the CTC Disputes and Competition departments and subsequently went on a client secondment at Google. I was exposed to a wide variety of contentious and non-contentious issues spanning over a broad range of legal fields, industry sectors and clients. While trainee tasks may include the usual (but no less important) activities like bundling, document formatting and proof-reading, I was also involved in research tasks on some of the latest scientific discoveries, sat in expert meetings, and drafted pleadings for cases that had recently made news headlines. I enjoyed tackling new challenges and having to step outside of my comfort zone on the regular (I spoke to the Court of Appeal on the phone in my first week!) as this has caused a steep learning curve.

What I love most about working at Bristows is that the work is incredibly intersectional and that there is so much cross-departmental work. You often get to chat to people from other departments and thereby gain an insight into their work and perspective. This is also very much indicative of the firm’s friendly, open, and cooperative culture more generally.