Solicitor working In-house for a Banking Institution.

My journey to where I am today has been very varied to say the least.  When I was completing my CAO form in 6^th year, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I went to College.  In order for me to determine my furture career,  I thought my best option was to complete an Arts degree, which provides you with an excellent foundation to build on.  I completed my degree in UCD, where I studied Economics and Sociology.

When I was coming to the end of my degree, I thought that the natural progression from here was to go, with Economics, to Smurfit business School and complete a Post-Graduate course there. This was not to be the case, I decided to get a summer job, in a Solicitors office, purely to pick up some additional IT skills, and administration, this was until I realised how much I really enjoyed the work I was doing and so I wanted to do more of it.  I then decided, instead of going to Smurfit Business School that I would try and get in to DIT Aungier and complete the Postgraduate Course there in Legal Studies, and duly I did.

That is when my Legal Career commenced.  I then went to work with a small law firm to assist with the preparation of all cases going to the Residential Institutional Redress Board, this was a Board set up to hear all stories and evidence from victims that were habitants of these Residential Institutions, wherein I obtained excellent experience and exposure into the abuse cases that have recently been very vocalised in all forms of the media.

Following my time here, I went on to complete my apprenticship with a large Commercial Dublin Firm. I began my apprenticship in 2006.  The whole concept of an apprenticship is to try and obtain as much experience as possible in as many areas of law as possible.  This was achieved by rotating between different departments every 6 months for 2 years, i.e Property, Employment or Tax, whilst also going to College in Blackhall Place.

Following the completion of my apprenticship, the recession was well and truly under way, and I like many other newly qualified Solicitors lost my job. This was daunting, but very challenging.  Fortunately, as with every Recession there was an advantage, which for me was the establishment of NAMA, (National Asset Management Agency), where all bad debt accrued by large Financial Institutions is to be submitted.

I am currently employed as a Solicitor in a Dublin Banking Institution on the NAMA legal team.  My role here involes working through all of the loans that were originally given out by the Society, reviewing the security offered for each loan and following that investigating the title of all properties involved.  Once this is completed we submit each loan into NAMA, who will look at all the documents surrounding the loan and assess it on the basis of all the information submitted, and hopefully return a healthy financial sum.

My legal career did not take the route that I had anticipated at the beginning, there were many highs and lows, however, notwithstanding this I would not change it for the world.