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Working as a Legal Trainee in TSol

Working as a Legal Trainee in TSol

Clare Radcliffe

“My name is Clare Radcliffe and I work in one of the employment litigation teams. I was fortunate enough to be a legal trainee with TSol and what I really appreciate about working here is that whilst you can do both litigation and advisory work on public and private law matters you are always working in a public policy context. In the general public law litigation team I attended cases of great significance to the Government in both the Court of Appeal and House of Lords and a Mental Health Review Tribunal at Broadmoor on behalf of the Home Secretary - which was a slightly daunting but fascinating experience! At the Department of Culture, Media and Sport I worked on what is now the Licensing Act 2003, instructing Parliamentary Counsel on the drafting of the Bill and going to debates in both Houses as it passed through Parliament. I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to see the democratic process in action.

I also spent time in a team advising the Cabinet Office, which has a fantastic range of clients and was involved in advising the British Library and the Statistics Commission and also worked on the guidance on the Freedom of Information Act 2000. On qualification I joined the Employment & Commercial Contracts Group. My team does employment litigation and advisory work, mostly for HM Prison Service - which means plenty of visits to establishments throughout the country. There are also plenty of opportunities to gain wider experience and members of my team have worked on a Public Inquiry and been seconded to the European Commission.”

Judith Sabel

I spent six months of my training contract in the Children’s Services Division of the Legal Adviser’s Office at DfES. It was a very friendly place to work, with a good mix of people of different ages and backgrounds. There was never a dull moment, largely because of the high profile nature of some of the work and the very broad range of issues that lawyers there are asked to advise on – anything affecting education and children, often involving close working with lawyers in other Departments. It was certainly always challenging.

Here are some of the things I was involved with:
· having full responsibility for drafting simple statutory instruments and assisting senior colleagues on more complex S.I.s;
· ongoing direct personal contact with clients;
· drafting full responses to client’s problems (rather than just being allocated a part of an issue being dealt with at a senior level);
· attending Lords’ Committee and debates in the House of Commons during passage of a Bill through Parliament;
· drafting answers to Parliamentary Questions;
· delving into more complex work being undertaken by senior colleagues (e.g. discussions around implementing the Civil Partnership Act and interDepartmental work on child death screening).