Video insight into our culture

I’m Hannah Logan. I am a first seat trainee and I’ve nearly finished my first seat with the firm, which I have spent in the Funds team.

I think the firm’s culture was a very important consideration for me when I chose to work here. I did a vacation scheme, so I had a chance to come in and observe how people treat each other, and how people work together, which I think is very helpful. I think I could tell that this was somewhere that I would fit in, and the handover was very good as well. The trainee that I was taking over from is actually in Brussels now, but she still made an effort to stay in touch with me and keep up with me so that if I had any questions about what she had been doing, I could get in touch with her easily and find out what was going on, so that was very helpful as far as making me feel supported.

The trainee population is quite varied. There are people of different ages, and from different backgrounds, and I was surprised by how many people had actually changed careers to come here.

As far as workload and time goes, I think when you choose to work in a firm like this, you know that sometimes there are going to be short deadlines and you’re going to have a lot of work to do, so you might work later than you would in some other jobs, but I guess everyone knows that when they start. So far it hasn’t been unreasonable: I have a very small child, and I haven’t felt that I haven’t had enough time to spend with her. There’s no expectation, here at least, of being here for show or anything. If you’ve got work to do, you have to stay in, and everyone’s going to stay in and do it, and people accept that, but there’s no one-upmanship of who can stay in the office latest or anything like that.

I think what’s special about Hogan Lovells is a commitment to the success of the firm as a whole, and I think the way that reflects is in the everyday working culture being very supportive, open and enjoyable.