Croeso

Nathalie, Solicitor
Nottinghamshire County Council

"I have worked for Nottinghamshire County Council since I began my training contract a couple of years ago. Before this I have almost exclusively worked in local government, namely Leicester City Council, Coventry City Council and Nottingham City Council, as a Housing Officer and Benefit Fraud Investigator. To be honest, I had almost given up any hope of being a solicitor, but my background in local government really gave me the edge when it came to applying for my training contract.

I now work in the commercial team for Nottinghamshire County Council and am usually surrounded by various contracts. I advise and draft contracts for European tendering, I draft grant agreements and partnership agreements, and I have done some work on registering a trademark. I find it very interesting.

I needed a law degree and the Legal Practice Course in order to get my training contract. I also needed previous experience of working in a local council.

I like the variety of work. I love the flexibility of working for a local council. As part of my training contract I spent 6 months with our private partner firm and this really hammered home the fact that private practice was not for me. I believe a lot of people are put off from applying to local government, because they think they will not be involved in high profile cases - this is far from the truth - our employment section has recently been to the House of Lords with a case; the commercial section has dealt with two major school Public Finance Initiatives and of course we have been involved with the new tram system in Nottingham.

The most challenging thing about my job is that, unlike in private practice where you receive robust instructions from your client and then you can simply go ahead and act on it (within the law), in local government a lot of the time the client does not necessarily know what they want. Even when there is a clear idea, you have to make sure that the correct processes are followed with regard to the constitution and financial regulations and the myriad of law that governs what a local council can and cannot do, as well as the general law itself. I think this makes the work all that more interesting and exciting."

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