Which skills make a good planning and environment lawyer?
It sounds clichéd, but you do need to have an eye for detail. You also need to be able to understand your client’s business and how the law operates in practice in order to draft documents in a way that is going to achieve the client’s objectives. You need to be enthusiastic about the job. There is a lot of law to keep up with and it can be complex. There is a fair amount of research involved and because of that, trainees are depended on as critical members of the team. Organisation is also key. You may be working on various matters, contentious or transactional, at the same time, so you need to be on the ball and up to speed with your files. Much of our work can be purely advisory, looking at specific issues and providing concise, useful advice to the client, summarising what can be intricate areas of law. What impact has the recession had on your practice area? The recession did stifle the practice to some extent. There was little investment in new development for some time and corpo
