Case study
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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