Law Story 5– Idin Sabahipour

“It's not always a bad thing to start a training contract a couple of years later”

Follow along as we take a dive into Idins journey into Law from former Corporate Lawyer now turned business owner with LittleLaw.

As someone who has followed Idins content for the last few years, it was amazing to have the opportunity to learn Idins story.

For listeners keen on working and securing a training contract in the City or helping guide fellow aspiring lawyers on their journeys into the profession, then this episode is most definitely for you.

This episode provides listeners with an understanding that just because something doesn’t happen the first time around does not mean it will not happen and Idin is a perfect example of grit, drive and determination.

For more information about Idin, please visit his LinkedIn here or alternatively, visit LittleLaw here.

Listen to the full story:

Idin, thank you so much for joining me today. If you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself and telling us what it is you currently do. 

My name is Idin, I am a qualified lawyer and I used to work as a corporate lawyer and now I run a media company called Little Law. 

What was it that initially inspired you to pursue a career in law ? 

So my journey into law was probably not a traditional one. I was at the University of Nottingham studying economics and didn't really enjoy that degree, so while doing economics, I realised that wasn't what I wanted to do and kind of fell into law by accident.  

I wanted to do economics and then once I got there, realised it wasn't for me. I stayed at Nottingham and wanted to see what I could do while staying there and had a few friends in law, had a few chats with them and thought it sounded quite interesting. It was still a humanities based subject, so wasn't a million miles away from what I was doing. And so I changed internally, but that meant I had to leave and then do the LNAT exam, come back the next year and then that's how I started studying law. 

How did you find the law degree what were some of your favourite modules and did you join any societies for law? 

I was in the Committee for the Law Society at UNI so I got super stuck in and that I guess was how I found out loads about the career of a lawyer, specifically commercial law, because as a committee member you're always organising events, meeting people from firms trying to, you know, sell tickets to the events or whatever. So you're always aware of what's going on, promoting the deadlines of your sponsor firms and therefore you know, when the vacation scheme and training contracts are happening. So you get a lot of information and that was useful for me and gave me something to speak about when it when it came to my applications and interviews. 

I was in a publicity role in the committee so, I was doing probably the most relaxed job you could do while still being involved in the society. 

What was that experience applying for vacation schemes and training contracts like for yourself?  What was that process like for you and how did you find it? 

It was tough. It was, the first time that I really, really tried something and just was getting no success after trying again and again and again like in my life generally. If I've applied myself, I've done all right with like exams and if I do bad, it's probably because I wasn’t, really trying so hard. But applications I found that I was really trying my best and just getting rejection after rejection after rejection. 

I had placed some first year schemes in in my first year and that went all right and I got two or three of those, but back then first year schemes were less competitive than they are now. They're basically like open days at the time you just, fill out a form and then you got in. But then in my second year I was doing vacation scheme applications, got nothing, third year I was doing the same and got nothing and eventually it was two years after I graduated that I got my first vacation scheme, so it ended up being four years of applications for vacation schemes with just rejections. 

Going through, as you say, 4 years of trying, what was it that motivated you to keep going , what was that sort of driving force behind your motivation to still become a Commercial lawyer?

Well, I had a lot of exposure to the job from my time at the University and in the committee, so that was one thing. This was something drawing me to it.  

I also wasn't drawn to anything else because I had very little information about anything else. That's probably a mix of my own fault and the fact that commercial law roles are really the main thing you hear about when you're at university, or at least they were at that time and so I wasn't aware of other opportunities that you could or other paths you could go down as a lawyer. Now I see my friends doing all sorts of things. 

So it was a mix of being drawn to that, not knowing about anything else and I guess a thing of wanting to prove that I could actually do it after getting told that I can't for four years. Eventually I got in and had a pretty good time training and ended up getting two Training Contract offers in the end after four years which is a bit frustrating but that's how these things happen.  

I would have taken either one, both of them were good firms and  I ended up taking a Training Contract at CMS, had a really good time there, trained there, qualified there, stayed there for a bit as well. So it all worked out in the end. 

During those years of applying, did you have any sort of mentors or role models who influenced you to push towards a career in commercial law? 

Not really. I struggled at university to deal with the rejection because you're there with all your peers. And you see people who get in and then you start comparing yourself and you're like why are they getting in and why am I not? It’s natural but when you're out of university, it's way easier.  

So, I found it much easier just to be isolated and I was working part time in a restaurant at the time and doing applications at the same time. That I found a much nicer way to do it. Also, another thing that you kind of gets skewed when you're applying is that you think everyone who's getting into vacation schemes are second year university students, but that's not the case at all. Like, once you get there, you realise there's people from all stages. So, to answer your question, no, I don't have any role models or mentors. In fact, I think being too close to people who are going through the process put more pressure on me, I think.  

How did you find your training contract in terms of sort of your seat rotations and your preferable seats? And then the level of work given to you? 

I really liked it. I did  three very different things. I guess two of my seats were not too dissimilar.  

So I did my first seat in Financial services regulatory disputes. That was a tough first seat to do because it's super technical, as you can imagine. It's like, financial regulation and then you had the guidance from the regulators, you had the actual statutes, you had EU law because we're in the EU at the time and then trying to marry up all of these different sources of law. That was my first seat. So that was tough.  

My second seat was in corporate transactions, which is where I ultimately qualified and stayed at CMS, and my third seat, which I say is not so dissimilar from corporate transactions, will be called employee incentives share schemes. So it was basically like when you give your employees options over shares and like the chance to own a percentage of the company, that's what that team did. My final seat was a seat in the innovation team, so it was kind of like an internal secondment to the the innovation team and the business services team of CMS. So I was doing basically no law for six months and rather legal tech stuff, which I thought was fun .  

The work I got was good. Like it's very it's very different in the types of seats. Like, as I said, the first seat is super technical with analysing statutes and doing research and getting things sent to the associate, who sometimes sends their analysis to the senior who sometimes checks with the partner and then that goes out to the client. Whereas in corporate you're dealing with a lot more like high volume stuff, which is easier to wrap your head around and you can get much more involved as a trainee. So I had a really different experience in in the different seats and I think the variation was useful for me. 

Would you say it was an easy decision to come to in picking the department where you qualified? 

I only in fact applied for corporate, so I knew as soon as I did that second seat, that's what I wanted to do.  This will happen a lot in people when they do their training contracts, I wanted to do tech and IP and I didn't get the option because it's so competitive, but once I got corporate in my second seat, I stopped applying for tech or IP stuff so I just stayed basically doing corporate stuff and  I enjoyed it because as I said, even as a junior you can get really involved. As trainee I was handling some very small stuff on my own with a partner supervising me but the partner is willing for me to have a go ad if I got stuck, they were there and if not, they were happy for me to just speak to the client, e-mail the client etc. So that's something that I think corporate is good for. 

I've obviously noted that you're qualified in both England and New York? What was that process like take taking the bar and when sort of did you do that during your career? 

I did that before the TC so I did that when I had left University in that gap of that two years that I was applying for jobs and not getting any results. I went to New York, did the bar exam there and my plan was to try and apply for jobs there because nothing was landing in London. That was that was challenge I had and that's why I did it.  

It was tough but I'm glad I did it. It was a hard couple of days, you have to go and do it like a two day exam in New York along with loads of other elements of things you have to do, but the hard bit is that two day exam.  So I did that and qualified there and then came back and got the TC here and then kind of never thought about it again once I started the TC here. 

I know that you created a YouTube channel whilst you were a trainee. What was your motivation behind creating the channel and how did you manage your time between working at such a big firm in the city and pursuing obviously growing the channel and helping aspiring lawyers along their way ?  

So I just started it because I thought it would be fun, like also what happened is when you get a training contract and you update your LinkedIn to say trainee at whatever or future trainee, you'll get loads of messages from people who are trying to break into law asking how do I do this? Can you review my application? Can you give me tips for interview for this firm or whatever?    

I was getting that the same way that anyone else would be getting that and it was COVID at the time, and I had time on my hands. I was doing the LPC. You do have lessons, but you do have a lot of time on your hands. So, I thought it would be fun to give it a go and basically answer the common questions that I was being asked in my LinkedIn in a more public way and it was just like for fun. 

Was it a stressful process? As someone obviously you could appreciate trying to build something myself. How, how much independent sort of learning and how? Much. Along the way, did you learn and how to build something and make it so successful? 

I've learned loads from doing it like I knew nothing about cameras, I've learned a lot about editing and creating engaging content trying to make things clear and trying to make hard things simple and that's like the vein that runs through I guess everything I do. I'm trying to get things that maybe might be gatekept or maybe badly expressed or put in confusing terms and trying to make it into like simple frameworks actionable that you can implement and get to where you're trying to get to. 

I don't have a question as such, but normally this is a part of the podcast where I tend to ask people how they stay up to date with developments in the legal space. I just wanted to sort of give you the floor to tell everyone what LittleLaw is. 

Thanks, Charles. LittleLaw is a solution to the problem of how do I become commercially aware?  

So that's the challenge that loads of people face. I was facing it at the time and what I was always told just to read the FT (Financial Times). Whilst I think that's not bad advice, it's probably not going to help get you to where you want to get to. So what I started doing is writing new summaries. Let's say I read an FT article, I kind of write a summary for myself as a practise as a way of like processing it and helping myself remember the main points. I wrote it in a book at the time, so a few of my friends were seeing it and they were asking to read these summaries and then I put them on a website and then it kind of snowballed into what it is today.  

It was there to solve a very real problem that I was having and became public because I realised other people were having it as well. And so that's what LittleLaw was and is trying to do and now it's just doing it in a slightly different way. So instead of writing it in the notebook, we put it in an e-mail and send it to 15,000 people who sign up. 

What sort of advice would you give to aspiring lawyers today who are just starting their journey, whether that's they're picking their A levels and they're thinking that the long-term goal is Law or they're just starting university or even people that have graduated and are still yet to find a training contract? 

So I think what I touched upon before is the main thing I would stress you're going to be tempted to compare yourself to others, or think that you're behind in where you need to be. That's natural because you think that there's a certain thing you need to have done by a certain age and also that's way more likely to be your mindset when you're at university applying. But what I would love to tell younger me or younger people in that position is that you've got a really skewed sample of who's applying for these jobs because you're at University, so everyone you see who's succeeding are people at University whereas, when you get in, you realise there's career changers, there's people who've done other things, there's people who paralegal for a few years, all sorts of people, foreign lawyers who might join who are at completely different stages, different levels of experience and background and different ages going into vacation schemes and training contracts and into that like pathway to qualify as a UK lawyer.  

A lot of the time, those extra years of I'd say struggling and getting rejected can actually be beneficial for you in a number of ways. One you'll show you are super motivated to get in because you've been showing this prolonged desire to get in and you'll be older, which is always helpful and you'll be a bit more mature maybe and a bit more able to deal with difficult things that arise in your career.  

In those years that you've not been getting a training contract, you have been doing other work. So I did some short-term paralegal work, I worked in a restaurant, I did all sorts and they you'd be surprised how valuable your non law experience or even your paralegal experience or anything like that is to you when you start your training contract.  

This time that you're, you know, struggling to get in, if you want to call it that, you're actually building other skills. So it could help you out in the end because the training contracts really hard. It's not always a bad thing to start it a couple of years later. 

Would you make any changes to your law story? 

No, not at all. So what I've ended up doing is I'm actually doing this full time, so I've left my career as a commercial lawyer and maybe people would think is that would you have rather have done, you know something else from the start but not at all what I think what I learned about my training contract and working at the time  and working in corporate with all the challenges that come with it really, really was a valuable experience for me and I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't change a thing.