Gulliver’s travels

Hi Laura, we have a bit of a cheesy question to start… If you were to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?

Honest, chatty and busy! Autumn is a hectic time for the Education & Training team. We’ve been out visiting law firms and universities across Scotland, getting ready to train our newest group of Street Lawyers in order to roll out the Street Law programme to even more schools, and planning for the start of this year’s Donald Dewar Memorial Debating Tournament.

We’re lucky we caught you!

You are - at the moment, you’re more likely to find me on a train heading to a Scottish university and answering careers enquiries on the go. I can also be found distributing freebies to would-be solicitors at law fairs and talking over their career options with them.

What’s the best part of your job?

My favourite part is definitely seeing the feedback that the team gets from students or new lawyers – whether it’s about their career or they’ve taken part in an education and training project. It’s really great to hear from someone who asked us to review their CV and found they’re now getting more interviews, or find out that someone has more confidence in their public speaking skills as a result of taking part in Street Law, or that they volunteered at one of our careers events for school pupils and met a trainee or solicitor who has encouraged them to apply for a new role or widen their network.

It sounds like you can get a lot out of volunteering – how can other people get involved?

There are lots of ways to get involved and lots of local events. You could volunteer to visit schools, attend a legal studies and careers day as a guest speaker, be a judge at one (or more!) of the rounds of our annual schools debating tournament, join our mentoring scheme or take a look at the Street Law programme and register your interest for 2016.

If you’re really struggling for something you can do and want to get involved – give us a call, we’ll be able to come up with something!

Thanks, Laura. One last question – how are you getting on with your new year’s resolution?

So far, I have attended two dressmaking classes and I now have three handmade items to wear, so I’m feeling pretty creative. As for joining more online courses, well that might be something to consider once the autumn term has finally drawn to a close!

Laura works in the Education & Training team at the Law Society of Scotland. To find out more about their work, visit www.lawscot.org.uk/education-and-careers/