Hey there!
When I was studying law, there was very little insight into construction law as a career. It wasn’t offered as a course, and the career fairs usually featured the ‘sexier’ practice areas like M&A, banking and corporate litigation. Which is unfortunate – because construction lawyers play an important role in all of our lives (the roads, hospitals, apartments, offices came from somewhere), are relatively stable careers, and are usually in high demand.
From my work with young lawyers and law students, I get quite a few questions about this practice area. In order to give a bit of insight into construction law, I partnered with Matthew Berrick (future Trainee Solicitor at Pinsent Masons) and his colleagues at The Legal Line Up to run a Q&A sesh. It’s split between general commercial law questions and construction law questions so feel free to skip to what interests you.
This is part of a comprehensive e-book (“Legal Insider”) that they’ve put together with a roundup of much more experienced lawyers with even better content – available for purchase at this link for £11.99 with all proceeds being donated to charity.
General commercial law questions
Tell us about why you chose to pursue a career in commercial law?
During university, I realised pretty early on that I was better at learning on the job than via textbooks. So I spent most of my time building up work experience in a variety of legal sectors – from criminal law, to community legal centres, in-house, government, and private practice.
Out of all of those experiences, I enjoyed commercial law the most because there’s a really active pace of work and learning, and a variety of clients and projects you can get exposed to. I was also fortunate to have worked with great colleagues and find that many people that work in private practice are really intelligent, ambitious, and ‘switched on’. It’s an environment where I feel challenged and presents a variety of opportunities to get involved.
Did you consider any other career paths?
I hadn’t considered any other specific career path – mostly because I was lucky to find a good fit quite early on.
That being said, I have always enjoyed dabbling with some sort of side project – from renting out university graduation gowns, to selling travel equipment online, and now creating ‘how to’ content / webinars to help out other young lawyers.
What does it mean to work as a commercial/corporate lawyer in practice?
I think the biggest misconception I had was that lawyers were predominately concerned with creating a technically perfect legal product. While that’s (very) important, it’s only one part of the job.
Now I’ve learned that the modern lawyer wears many different hats – project manager, salesman, mentor, manager, customer service etc. as well as being somebody that understands technology and financials.
While this might seem intimidating, it actually means that there are multiple ways for us as young lawyers to play to our unique strengths and excel. Being the technically perfect savant is only one of the ways to achieve success in this industry.
Construction Law Questions
What does your average week/month look like?
As a front-end construction lawyer, my average week depends on the projects that I’m on. Usually it’s quite reasonable 9am to 6:30pm but there are sometimes multiple late nights / weekends in the urgent stages of projects (although that’ll vary depending on your team / clients / firm). One good thing about working in construction is that our clients are generally quite realistic about timeframes and what can actually be accomplished.
When I’m not working on client-related matters, I’d be getting involved in business development, knowledge management, or preparing training for clients / the team.
At Pinsent Masons, what kind of responsibilities and work can you be expected to do in this sector?
As a front-end construction lawyer, your key role is to help your clients deliver projects on time, within budget, of a high quality, and without taking on unreasonable risk. Examples of specific tasks would be preparing advice (in a practical way linked to commercial outcomes), amending project documents, and assisting in identifying and mitigating risks.
As a back-end construction lawyer, you would help with construction disputes (or situations that could lead to disputes). These would commonly involve disputes about defects, delays, and payment. Specific tasks could include fact-finding and legal research to prepare a case for your client, liaising with experts and barristers, preparing evidence, and assisting in dispute resolution processes (expert determination, adjudication, arbitration, mediation, and in court).
At Pinsent Masons, you get as much responsibility as you can handle, and the firm encourages us to think broader than just the legal work. If your experience is anything like mine, you can be asked to assist with business development (articles, white papers, presentations to clients), attend industry events, or get involved in legal tech / project management initiatives.
Talk me through a transaction that you can disclose that you worked on. What did you find quite interesting/exciting from a strategic or commercial perspective?
From late 2019 to early this year, we had intense bushfires across Australia that destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. My team assisted the contractor that was appointed to coordinate and undertake the first phase of recovery works after the bushfires in NSW.
We carried out the ‘normal lawyer work’ like helping them understand the contract and potential legal risks. But unlike the typical projects, our involvement wasn’t centered on the commercial outcomes (e.g. making sure that the potential rewards were worth the risk). The focus was really on assisting in areas such as their community engagement processes, how they handle personal data from residents, response to COVID, and ongoing communications with the Government.
It was great to see that everyone was working to help recovering communities – definitely one of the ‘warm and fuzzy’ projects.
What are some of the highlights you have had either as a trainee or lawyer?
I think the personal highlights were mostly moments where I started to realise how much I’d learned over time and felt like I could actually succeed as a lawyer.
One was running a presentation to clients on a contracts topic and being able to field their questions (and actually knowing the answers!)
The other was being seconded to work within a client’s legal team. It was pretty scary not having the safety net of multiple people reviewing my work (like I would in a law firm) but again super encouraging.
Best aspects of working in construction law?
I personally enjoy working on the sector-specific (instead of “area of law-specific”) type of work. There’s a real sense that you’re understanding and working with clients more collaboratively than in one-off transactions across different sectors. You get exposure to a range of legal issues (contracts, torts, work health and safety, environment, finance, intellectual property, insurance etc) that affect the sector instead of potentially being pigeonholed into a particular legal area.
The other thing I enjoy is working with really practical and logical clients – usually with a commercial, engineering, or finance background. They work hard but are also quite reasonable with deadlines and their expectations about outcomes.
Finally, it’s good to be able to see a real impact from the work that I’ve been involved in. Unlike transactions where money moves from one account to another behind the scenes, I can see how a new wharf for cruise liners impacts the local community, or how the road project I worked on saved so much time in peoples’ lives.
What kind of skills are required in this area and what skills did you learn?
‘Commercial awareness’ gets floated around a lot in the legal industry, but I think it’s especially important for construction because you’re servicing a particular sector. Over the past few years, I’ve learned the terminology, how businesses operate, where they make their money, the type of work involved (demolition, services, construction, design, maintenance), and the risks / opportunities associated with these different types of work.
On the technical side of things – there’s a level of rigour and discipline that I’ve learned along the way due to the nature of the work – reviewing / drafting 200 page contracts, research on fact-heavy cases, and trying to understand the actual commercial documents involved in the deals. It can feel a bit overwhelming, and still something that I still stumble on at this stage in my career, but being able to see the big picture and realising how much you actually learn over time is really rewarding.
Do you have any tips for those looking to qualify in this area?
I think the best tip is to be enthusiastic about learning the actual construction industry itself. Understand the clients, the work that they do, and the real impacts on people. Appreciate that these aren’t just one-off transactions, but quite long-term projects with complex relationships, different commercial drivers, and lasting results. Once you have this in mind, the legal work itself becomes a lot more interesting and makes more sense.