Austin Smith

Being a flexible legal professional is exactly that: flexible. It can be a long-term career choice, as was the case for Henry Nelson-Case and Sara Burney, but it can also be a short-term move to serve a purpose in your legal development. The latter was true for Austin Smith, who worked as a Vario flexible paralegal prior to starting his Training Contract with Pinsent Masons. He’s since gone on to qualify, practicing as an Associate in the Planning team at our firm, and he recently sat down with us to share his story.

How did you start in the legal profession?

Both of my parents were lawyers, but neither of them tried to push me towards the legal profession. I initially studied French and Spanish for my undergrad with a bit of Catalan as well, so my background to a certain extent is as a linguist.

I did the GDL after finishing my degree, but it was nice to be able to pursue another passion as well as looking at a legal career. My mum did Law with French at university, so she had the chance to live abroad as well, but my dad had a bit more of a traditional route into the profession.

What attracted you to working with Vario?

I actually found out about Vario when I was in the process of applying for a Training Contract with Pinsent Masons. When I was preparing for my interview, I remember reading a bit about Vario at the time.

When I got the call to say that I’d got the role, it would have been around September 2018, I remember I was on holiday in Sant Sebastian. Vario was recommended to me as an option because I was then looking for some work as a paralegal to bridge the gap between completing my LPC in 2019 and starting my training.

How did you find the process of applying for Training Contracts?

Getting a Training Contract isn’t an easy thing to do, and I found it challenging at first because I was applying to firms that weren’t the right fit for me. I found that the atmosphere at certain firms wasn't quite right for me, but if I’m honest, I probably wasn’t the right fit for them either.

In many ways, I found the interview for Pinsent Masons much easier, because there was a clear purpose statement and that resonated with me. When I was in the interview, I was able to unashamedly be myself. The Senior Associate interviewing me asked me how my friends would describe me, and I can remember saying that it depends on who you ask. My university friends from Bristol would have said “bald and Northern”, but if you asked my friends from back home, they’d have just said “bald”. That might seem like a silly anecdote, but I really felt comfortable being me, so I knew that I’d found the right place.

What was your experience of working on assignment with Vario like?

It was a bit of a baptism of fire really because the environment was fast paced and Vario was my first legal job. I was used to working hard – I was an assistant manager at a pub, I'd been a student and worked as a journalist – but this was a very different environment. The steep learning curve was extremely beneficial to my career development.

The assignments I worked on also gave me the opportunity to experience different working atmospheres within the legal profession. My first job was effectively private practice within Pinsent Masons, but I also got the opportunity to be seconded with a client. Across these assignments I had the opportunity to work with a wide range of stakeholders (both legal and non-legal) so that was brilliant in teaching me about working with clients.

What sort of work did you do whilst on assignment with Vario?

My first job was a 6-week document review matter with the CAD team. It was meant to be based in London, but the firm invited me to sit with the CAD team in Manchester so that went a long way to helping me settle in. We had a team of about 7-8 people and between us we had to review around 60,000 documents!

When I went on secondment, it was around about March 2020 and Covid was just about to become a major issue within the UK. For the first week of the job, I stayed with family in London before moving into an apartment of my own on the Sunday, only to find out the following day that we were all going to be working remotely. It’s funnier now than it was at the time.

I still really enjoyed that placement though – we were tasked with improving and implementing the client’s contract management framework. This basically looked at the start, end and break provisions for all of their contracts and tracked where revisions were needed.

Did working as a Vario flexible paralegal help your career development?

The short answer is yes. It gave me the chance to interact with clients and gave me a broad career experience within the legal profession at a relatively young age. As well as that though it taught me how to work within a legal team. There are lots of little things that you don’t realise that you need to get used to in practice: time recording, and case management systems don’t sound glamourous, but they’re really important things to get your head around.

The most important thing about being a flexible lawyer of any kind is being adaptable. You’ve got to be able to join a team, integrate yourself within it, and get to work straight away. That’s something that I developed working as a Vario flexible paralegal, but it’s a life skill not just a legal skill.

Does Vario provide a valuable service to clients?

Again, the obvious answer to me is yes. On a tangible level, I can say that our team whilst I was on secondment brought the project in well under budget thanks to the work we did. Bringing a consultant into your company can help to provide a different experience that formulates a worldly view rather than a company view. Clients should always be asking themselves how they can do things better and how they can do things differently; having an external point of view really helps with this.

Would you recommend Vario?

I’d recommend both working for and with Vario. For me, it provided a fantastic learning opportunity as an early career legal professional and the teams I worked in were able to deliver for our clients at the same time.

You also have the benefit of autonomy. You can tailor your career to get what you want out of it and build a great portfolio of work relatively quickly. In particular as a paralegal, getting to experience bits of project management (for example) as well as legal work is something that will be really useful down the line in your career.

Contact Us

If you think that a career as a Vario flexible paralegal is for you, then get in touch to see how we can help your legal experience.

Equally, if you think that your business would benefit from a flexible legal professional, please contact us to see how we can help.