Law Career Guide

We know that it can be surprisingly hard to understand what you'll actually do if you become a lawyer.

That's partly because there's a lot of variety between what different lawyers do, especially at a firm as large and diversified as A&O Shearman. There are different kinds of legal work, and a lot of different practice areas in which you do that work. We've broken down the basics to give you an understanding of each area. It might surprise you the variety of work you'll be exposed to if you join A&O Shearman.

Styles of legal work

What a lawyer does on a day-to-day basis depends on the type of legal work they're doing. These can be understood as three different styles – but remember, there's often overlap and a lot of lawyers will do work that falls under multiple styles. 

Advice

All businesses and organisations need to comply with the law, and usually they'll want to do so as efficiently and profitably as possible. They will often come to a lawyer for advice on how to do that. Lawyers will also apply the same thinking to advising clients on complying with their contracts. 

Transactions

Sometimes a business or organisation wants to do something beyond their business-as-usual activity, such as a merger or acquisition or raising finance. They'll often use lawyers to create the contracts, negotiate with other business's lawyers and help ensure the venture is successful, legally compliant and protects their client's interest. 

Disputes

Where there are contracts, there can be disputes. When two or more parties disagree on something under a contract or the law, they might negotiate with each other and eventually take the disagreement to a court or arbitration panel. Disputes lawyers represent clients in these disagreements through negotiation, court proceedings or arbitration.

Practice areas

Law firms divide the work they do into practice areas. Each practice has lawyers who specialise in a specific area of law. At A&O Shearman, we have a wide range of practices that we group into four areas. Most major global firms will divide their teams similarly.

Corporate

Lawyers in Corporate advise companies and organisations on all aspects of commercial law and some parts of corporate finance. This involves a mix of advice and transactional work. Whether it's mergers and acquisitions, public takeovers or corporate restructuring, the work is often very fast-paced and increasingly global. Practice areas within this group include Mergers and Acquisitions, Tax, US, Capital Markets and Global ECM and IP, Technology Transactions, Licensing & Data Privacy. 

Finance

Businesses often need extra money to grow, buy more assets, navigate challenges or for many other reasons. Finance lawyers help them with the legal side of everything from international loans to debt structuring. They combine core legal knowledge with critical business judgment to make sure that any deal is both legally sound and commercially viable. Practice areas in this group at A&O Shearman include Asset Finance, Debt Finance, Funds, Real Estate and Restructuring. 

Disputes

These are the teams that working on litigating, arbitrating and resolving corporate and commercial disputes. Their practices cover a huge range of areas including intellectual property, employment law and international arbitration. They also do investigations for companies when things go wrong to recommend how they can avoid it happening again in future. Practice areas within this group include Antitrust, Employment Litigation, IP Litigation and Litigation & Investigations. 

Energy, Natural Resources and Infrastructure (ENRI)

This team tackles complex energy and infrastructure challenges worldwide covering anything from renewable energy to digital infrastructure. Lawyers in these specialist practice areas are experts in their respective fields: they help clients navigate rapidly-changing legal landscapes to deliver work that has a tangible impact across the world. Their work often includes a mix of all three styles of law. 

Remember that you can find more detail and examples of typical matters across the A&O Shearman website, as well as information about what your journey could look like as a student or graduate joining the firm. You don't need to be an expert in anything before you apply, but strong candidates always make it clear they've done their research on the legal world and the firm they're applying to. Every lawyer will specialise at some point in their career and the earlier you start understanding your options, the better prepared you'll be to make the right decision for you.