Video insight into working with clients

I’m George Fisher. I’m a second seat trainee, currently sitting in the Tax department. I first came to Hogan Lovells as a vac schemer back in 2008 and was offered a training contract on the back of that. I live in Lower Holloway. It’s super convenient for work because it’s 25 minutes and there’s the 17 bus, which stops right outside the back entrance to the office.

Genuinely, Hogan Lovells strives to create a very positive atmosphere and relationship with their clients. Hogan Lovells is involved in quite a bit of pro bono work; charities need tax advice, whether they want to start up a new project, what tax implications there are off of that. You have to have an open mind to be a lawyer at Hogan Lovells, you have to want to do well, you have be quite ambitious, but also really want to make a difference.

In five years’ time, I would, well, ideally love to be a partner but I might be a bit ambitious! Hopefully pushing Senior Associate and certainly managing my own transactions and matters. Whatever seat I end up in, I’d like to have a little niche within that seat where people come to me as the person for that advice.

Today, I came into work and spoke to my supervisor. They had a bit of research for me to do this morning to do with a client meeting that we were going to attend in the afternoon, but before that we had a meeting with a QC over lunchtime, who’s obviously very keen to develop his relations with the firm, and people got quite involved in the discussions – that was quite entertaining in the end, he was a nice guy. Then, in the afternoon, we went to the client meeting. That went on for a couple of hours, just talking through a couple of their tax issues, trying to advise them on how to resolve those, and then, coming out of it, I then had to write up a note about what we’d told them and hand that over to them. And now, I’ve come along to the drinks for the vac schemers, so hopefully that’ll be a relaxing end to the day.