Diary of a dogsbody

As a law student I was constantly reminded that if you want to get a training contract or pupillage, you need to do plenty of work experience. "It'll impress employers with your commitment to joining their profession," they told me, "and give you an authentic insight into being a lawyer."

Dutifully, I followed their advice. Conscientiously I lined up several placements - and found that work experience had a capacity to shock.

McCormicks solicitors
I made my legal work experience debut at McCormicks Solicitors, a small commercial firm based in Leeds, several months after finishing my degree and still coming to terms with the fact that my 10-hour-week student lifestyle was not going to be sustainable in the outside world.
Frighteningly out of touch with real life, I turned up each day wearing a rather unpleasant fleece over an old school shirt and stained tie. Among the smartly clad solicitors, I failed to overcome this awful error. Shunned by partner and trainee alike, it wasn't much of a week (any insights I gained into the legal profession were limited to filing and photocopying), but it was a start.

Broadway House chambers
Scarred by the trauma of McCormicks, I decided to have a look at life at the bar. Naturally, I didn't repeat my previous clothing misjudgment, arriving for my first day in a brand-new (although admittedly cheap) dark grey suit. The clerks at the chambers assigned me to a barrister working on one of the 2001 Bradford race riot cases. And although there were the inevitable moments where I felt embarrassingly like a stalker, I was genuinely engaged by the drama of court proceedings.

Out of court, when the barrister I was shadowing managed to shake me off for a few minutes, the secret, voyeuristic Heat reader in me meant that I was more than content to pore over the various case bundles.

I have to admit I did slightly miss the trappings of corporate wealth that I'd taken for granted at McCormicks. Indeed, the bleak decor and constant anti-government murmurings about legal aid cuts - together with the fact that everyone over 10 years old seemed to be smoking - gave Bradford Crown Court's communal areas a pre-Perestroika eastern Europe flavour. But this was the public sector and ultimately perhaps a more suitable arena for someone with my weakness for fleece jackets and pathological dislike of spending money.

York chambers
Keen to witness a variety of court proceedings, I sat through a personal injury damages assessment (dull), some kind of commercial dispute (even more boring) and an unfair dismissal hearing (spectacular).

The beauty of employment tribunals for neutral observers is that representatives for the parties don't have to be lawyers. Here, the representative for the defendant company was a barrister. The representative for the claimant was a mildly dishevelled used-car salesman type, happy to rely on his TV-gleaned knowledge of US court procedure to cover himself when things got technical. Unsurprisingly, the whole thing degenerated into farce - brought to an end by the distraught claimant locking herself in a toilet cubicle during a break and refusing to come out.

1 Garden Court
By this stage I had a fair idea of what lawyers do. However, in order to show on my CV that I'd had a look at all the major practice areas, I arranged a mini-pupillage at a family law chambers in London. I spent the week with lawyers involved in ancillary relief, which was in many ways like spending the week watching Trisha: couples who hated each other, arguments about who did/owns what and regular emotional outbursts.
And I realised that the barristers who excel in this area do so as much for their abilities as counsellors and therapists as for their legal skills.

Notable clients included a spectacularly wealthy American banker and a minor celebrity mired in tabloid controversy. There were also some fantastically demented ex-partners, whose desperate state meant that they were even driven to confide in me, a work-experience non-entity. By the end of the week I was emotionally drained.

Marshalling
I'd been told that recruiters liked marshalling (following a judge around, as opposed to a solicitor or barrister) so I lined up what I hoped would be the icing on my work experience cake. Monday to Thursday was spent being grovellingly polite to the judge, self-consciously sitting next to him as he oversaw various civil disputes.

Everything was going fine until I turned up slightly early on the Friday and was about to enter the judge's chambers when I heard him speaking on the phone. Standing outside the door I overheard what he was saying, which, alarmingly was about me: "That work-experience guy, he's nice - too nice if you know what I mean."

This was either coded judge language to explain that he was going to have me killed, or he was not very subtly implying that I was a limp-wristed creep who was unsuited to life at the bar. Disappointed he was speaking about me this way, I resolved to show him that I was no loser - even if I'd be dead in a matter of hours.

Having waited for him to hang up, I breezed in as arrogantly as I could - then I spent the morning ranting and dismissing most things he said with a snort. I noticed the bemused judge didn't invite me to lunch as he had every other day. I had clearly over-compensated, but I'd got my haul of legal work experience and and I hope that I never stumble across this guy in my future career.

Did work experience work for me? Well, I'm pretty sure that having those placements on my CV has helped me get invited to interviews. And my various experiences were useful in stripping away some of the intimidating mystique from the legal profession.
But, tellingly, no interviewer has actually asked me about any of those glorious unpaid episodes - suggesting that most employers look on work experience as more a rite of passage than an opportunity to learn.