Guiding Light - career mentoring for lawyers
Guiding Light Author : Philip Beddows Published in its original format in Legal Week (Training and Education), 3rd August 2007 During the past year or two, much has been written and spoken about the challenges facing lawyers who seek to pursue a career outside law, particularly those who seek a role on the board of a company. A recent letter to the editor of the Financial Times, written by a Birmingham lawyer in response to an article on how City lawyers could be more welcome on boards, was bold enough to state that City solicitors are simply not ‘businessmen’, and that the same could not be said of solicitors outside the City. I could hear the pencils being sharpened in reply, not as swords, but in written riposte to this inflammatory charge. But if the Birmingham lawyer is right, the picture he painted in his letter is not always so for City solicitors. It is true that there are many lawyers who maintain close, high-level strategic relationships with boards