A day in the life of... The professional support lawyer

Most people will devise some kind of plan or schedule to order their day's workload. However, such lists are more often than not forgotten as individuals cope with a barrage of unexpected tasks and meetings. In this issue's Day in the life column, ALEXANDRA TRUESDALE provides a breakdown of the not-so-typical daily schedule of a busy professional support lawyer.

There's no such thing as a ‘typical day’ as a professional support lawyer (PSL). The only common factors tend to be that what you do on any given day bears little resemblance to what you had planned to do; and that by the end of the day – no matter how hard you try – the number of actions added to your to-do list exceeds the number of tasks completed.

A typical plan for the day might look a little like this:

09:30
Sweep the internet and online journals for the day’s legal developments;

11:00
Check up on partners to ensure that they haven’t signed up to speak at a conference on two-days notice without telling you they’ll need a script and slides (unlikely);

12:30
Lunch with the rest of the PSL team (hopelessly optimistic);

13:30
Write a comment piece on the FSA’s latest consultation paper;

15:30
Sign off on invitation wording for next month’s seminar;

16:00
Check the daily client update before it is circulated;

16:30
Revise the financial promotions case study you are using next week with the trainees.

18:30
Leave the office.

But what in fact happens tends to be something more like this:

09:35
The FSA has published two new market abuse ‘Final Notices’ and there doesn’t appear to be any commentary live on them – yet. Alert the business-development team, analyse the decisions, find a publication in need of a quote, then locate and brief a partner;

10:45
Read and digest the decisions and their business impacts and prepare a short client briefing. Work with Publications and the marketing specialists to ensure that an e-mail will reach the right client contacts the same day;

11:00
Attempt to track down partners, who have gone into a huddle to rehearse for the conflicts training session they have just been asked to give to clients – the next day. And they need slides and handouts for the presentation;

12:45
Realise that the two FSA decisions will impact on an article you have just submitted to the Law and Financial Markets Review. Ring the publishers and beg for an extension to amend the article so that it is still current when the Review is published;

13:00
Cancel lunch with the other PSLS;

13:45
Head out to the coffee shop (a fertile source of caffeine-deprived partners) and return with a skinny almond latte, a request for some research into a point on the jurisdiction of the Financial Ombudsman Service, which cropped up during a call that morning… and some more suggestions for slides for the client presentation;

14:00
Finish internet sweep, brief fee earners on key points arising and finalise client briefing;

14:45
Print off draft article. Begin to amend;

14:50
Head of KM rings up to co-opt you onto a committee to expand the use of wikis to deliver training;

15:00
Continue amending;

15:10
Corporate division trainee arrives at your door with a raft of questions about disclosures to be made to the FSA;

15:30
Continue amending;

15:40
E-mail from a colleague with the draft daily client update for you to sign off. A final sweep of the internet reveals an FSA speech on ‘Treating Customers Fairly’, which may have implications for one of the cases in your group. Fire off e-mail to the case team. Begin to read speech when…

15:45
... Colleague on secondment rings to request a summary of the changes the client will have to make to its document retention policy to be MiFID compliant;

16:45
Finish reading speech, redraft client update and sign off on it to colleagues;

16:55
Unearth half-amended article from desk, which is now foot deep in printouts. Finish amending;

17:00
Urgent phone call from a contact who has just started as head of legal at a major telcoms player. Would like to know if the firm has the expertise and personnel to help him on the regulatory aspects of a huge deal;

17:10
Action stations. Call marketing, speak to the partners with the relevant experience, begin to pull the pitch together, arrange a conference call first thing. While e-mailing contributors to chase for articles for client sector briefing, check that secondee has enough to enable her to amend document retention policy, and promise first-born to partner in return for an extra hour to produce slides for client presentation;

19:00
Deliver slides to partner. Print out invitation and case study for the train home;

19:10
Ring telcoms partner to brainstorm strategy for pitch in the morning;

19:30
Flee;

19:31
Return to office to grab printouts;

19:32
Really flee…

Alexandra Truesdale is a professional support lawyer in the financial services regulatory group at UK firm Herbert Smith. She can be contacted at Alexandra.truesdale@herbertsmith.com.