Interview with Aoife O’Reilly

a trainee at Allen & Overy and alumnus of TCD Law, by Kate Nolan

I don’t really remember why I decided to study law, but pretty early on in secondary school I knew that law would be the only thing on my CAO form. I was always interested in current affairs and politics, so I think that studying law appealed to me because I knew I’d be studying lots of interesting societal issues from a legal perspective. I was also a big fan of Ally McBeal and The Good Wife, so that may have had a role to play…

I thoroughly enjoyed studying law. While lots of people think it is too academic and not practical enough, I think my favourite aspect of studying law was actually reading big constitutional law cases, like TD v Minister of Education and Sinnott v Minister for Education, and seeing how judges can come to such different conclusions on what the law actually means. And I enjoyed the fact that you were then asked to write essays where you had to justify what you would have decided. It really is an excellent discipline for developing critical thinking skills.

The reading lists! They could be fairly unwieldy. I used to split the reading lists with a few friends and we would all take notes on our various assigned readings that we would then share with each other, but even getting through my ¼ often felt like an impossible task in the weeks leading up to exams.

I would tell myself not to be worried about the fact that the grade I received for my first essay was pretty poor. I, like all first year law students at Trinity, had been used to doing well in school and getting good marks, so I was definitely a bit disappointed to get my first piece of work back. However, studying law is a bit like learning a new language or skill. It is craft, and it certainly took me a year to get my head around what lecturers were looking for, but I got there in the end.

After graduation I went to the London School of Economics and did an LLM (Masters in Law). I had really wanted to go to London, and lots of other people in my year were doing the same. I was lucky enough to get some funding, so it ended up being an easy decision. After that I stayed in London and got a job as a paralegal with Matrix Chambers. I then decided that I wanted to practice in the UK, so I did the GDL modules I needed to do (English Land Law and Public Law) and applied for training contracts in London.

It was a tough decision, and I had done some internships at some great firms in Dublin, which I’d really enjoyed. I think my decision may have been partially influenced by the fact that I was already living in London at the time. I was really enjoying living there, and I could see that while Dublin was getting more and more international, London really was a massive international city. I was really impressed by Allen & Overy’s training programme and its international outlook-- the opportunities to do secondments in international offices around the world as a trainee is testament to this. I also felt that I would get exposure to different markets and areas of law at A&O. For example, in my first seat I was involved in lots of project financing projects in Africa, supported by development banks and institutions. I’m not sure I would have worked on a similar deal in an Irish commercial firm. I was also very much drawn to Allen & Overy because the pro bono projects that their lawyers, including trainees, get involved in are really impressive. I really enjoyed studying subjects like human rights law when at university, so being able to do human rights research and take part in various access to justice projects as an A&O trainee has been great, and not something I’m sure the domestic firms are offering just yet.

I think litigation has been my favourite area of law so far. We advise on a whole range of commercial and regulatory issues, so I am constantly being asked to research niche areas of law, often with a international element. I always enjoyed reading the law and researching legal points when at university, so I really enjoy the legal research element of the job at A&O. At the same time as doing research, I will usually be assisting with the preparation of cases for courts and arbitrations as well, so my day is always very varied.

My advice would be to not worry too much about being unsure. I certainly didn’t know what I wanted to do when I graduated. There can be a tendency to think that it is end of the world if you don’t have a training contract in your back pocket by the time you get to graduation, but I completely disagree. Training contracts are big commitments, so it is no issue if you need to take some time to decide what is right for you. There is a wealth of information out there on careers websites and there are constantly interesting people visiting Trinity and careers events being held, so try to be proactive and inform yourself about what your options are, but I wouldn’t be concerned if you aren’t sure about what you ultimately want to do now. I didn’t start my training contract at A&O until I was 25, and I’m so glad that I gave myself the time to do further study and take up other interesting legal jobs. If you are certain that you want to be a solicitor or a barrister when you graduate, then that is great. But if you aren’t then it is definitely not worth stressing about.

I guess the time zone differences can be challenging. If you are trying to get a deal done in Turkey, for example, it may mean that you’ve got a pretty early start on the day a deal is signing or closing, because

Credit: John Reynolds http://www.clickclickclick.net/

chances are the client is going to want it done at 9am in their time zone! Often it will be my job to arrange meetings, so trying to navigate various time zones when you throw daylight savings into the mix can be difficult!

Yes – Brexit will definitely have an impact, but I, like everyone else it seems, have no idea what impact it will have. I think it will generate a lot of extremely interesting advisory work for UK firms in the short to medium term anyway. After that, it will depend on how commercial entities decide to continue to conduct business. UK law is commonly chosen to govern international commercial contracts. Assuming that UK law continues to be popular with businesses, then international firms in the UK should still have plenty to do going forward.

I think I would have become a maths teacher. Maths was my favourite subject in school, and I really liked giving maths grinds when studying at Trinity, including as a tutor with the Voluntary Tuition Programme (VTP). I always found it so rewarding when students who used to hate maths started to enjoy it.