Michael Shaw, real estate partner at Squire Patton Boggs, discusses life in law and offers some words of wisdom for the next generation
Real estate is a sociable area of law with a lot of communication and telephoning involved as lawyers will always have a lot of different matters on at once,” says Michael Shaw, real estate partner, Squire Patton Boggs.
He continues: “It’s an industry where people will meet up for coffee a lot, and we encourage people to get to know their contemporaries in other parts of the industry such as valuers, surveyors and so forth. Real estate is a people-focused business, and a lot of deals are done between people who know each other.”
Michael, who is one of two partners in charge of trainee recruitment in London, describes Squires’ work as “eclectic” in the sense there is no dominant department at the firm. “We are a real team-based firm, and are looking for people who want to be engaged with every department.”
Squires recruit trainees directly from their winter and summer vacation scheme placements and has also devised a system for whittling down the many applications it receives ― candidates must initially apply with their CV and a covering letter and, in the second round, complete an online digital assessment which involves video responses to questions. The firm takes on a handful of trainees at each of its four UK offices, with 8-10 trainees recruited for the London office, and likes to know they are team players who will fit in with the firm’s ethos.
While Michael has an Oxbridge background (Oxford University and the College of Law (now The University of Law)), he is keen to emphasise that the firm seeks to recruit from the widest possible range of candidates and looks beyond academic status. For example, a candidate may have attended a challenging state school and achieved a good range of results for that school. Similarly, Michael says, “we want our interview questions to be fair for all candidates and to ask questions that all candidates can answer well, not just those who had the resources to do unpaid work or internships”.
One of the most important qualities a candidate can demonstrate is commercial awareness. In fact, Michael says: “It is one of the key metrics that we test as part of our recruitment process.” One excellent way to develop this is to go on secondment, thereby acquiring a unique understanding of what’s genuinely helpful and relevant to the client. It’s a marker of the high value the firm places on commercial awareness that it offers all its trainees a chance to do a two-month client secondment before they start.
Commercial awareness can be described as an understanding of the general business environment, and the main issues affecting legal practice. “Brexit is an obvious one,” Michael says, “but we want people to understand the sort of issues that arise as a result, for example, what are the potential trade consequences, which industries might struggle, will it affect services more than manufacturing, how might it affect food or the transport industry?”
More specifically, he explains, commercial awareness covers subjects pertinent to the legal sector, such as automation and artificial intelligence — how might lawyers’ jobs change as a result in the next decade or so? Our working patterns are another major theme. Will we move more towards remote working, and how will that affect the firm’s finances? “We might pay less rent, but how much will we pay for IT? The green agenda is another key issue and will affect infrastructure, energy, transport and buildings. We want candidates to think about what these events mean and what it affects rather than simply to know that they’ve happened.”
In Michael’s own specialism of commercial property, one of the main commercial awareness issues is the changing nature of retail. It raises hordes of questions. As online shopping continues to grow, what happens to the real estate? Will we use shopping malls in the same way? Do we need more warehouses? Increased online purchasing creates a need for more distribution infrastructure. Meanwhile, should the shops be converted into other commercial ventures, or turned into residential space to create more housing? Should town centres be made a destination for leisure rather than shopping?
Another major issue is the changing nature of workspaces and the movement towards shared office space and co-working. One particularly pertinent story, currently in the news, is that of US real estate giant WeWork, which is the biggest provider of co-working and temporary office space. The company is currently in trouble. Michael suggests keeping an eye on this story as whether or not the company rallies will likely influence the direction of the workspace market.
The net zero carbon targets are an important issue, affecting building design and materials. For example, Michael has worked on some buildings where solar panels were fitted in order to power the lifts. Central heat networks where the heat is generated in a central plant and piped round to each building are another interesting development. The use of windows is changing as energy conservation becomes more important, and construction experts are grappling with the tricky question of how to retrofit old buildings to make them more energy efficient.
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