Interview with a Trainee Graduate – Katrina Banks

Starting her legal career out as a paralegal, Katrina joined Herrington Carmichael in 2021 to join our growing trainee programme. Not only has she worked exceptionally hard to become a valuable addition to our commercial team as a solicitor, but she can also speak Catalan and French to varying degrees – and she can play the piano!

To celebrate her graduation as a solicitor, the hard work she has put in and the aspirations that have arisen during her time as a trainee solicitor, we sat down with her to get some insight into her experience in our Trainee Programme, her highlights, and what comes next.

What was the highlight of your Training Contract?

It is always highly positive when we finish projects for clients and get to the signing stage of agreements, knowing we have done everything we can to protect them against legal risks.

One highlight of my training contract must be when we found out that we were successful for a large regulatory application for a client. It felt great to know that we had achieved a good result for our client, and I had learnt so much in the process.

Why did you want to become a lawyer? What was the driving factor?

I am interested in business and people. I wanted to have a career where I could be involved in strategic and exciting projects for clients and really get to know their businesses. Whilst also getting stuck into quite technical problem-solving as part of the client service. I find that being a commercial lawyer ticks all these boxes, especially at Herrington Carmichael. In my team we go from helping entrepreneurs during the early stages of their businesses, to supporting established businesses navigate larger scale partnerships.

How was the training and supervision you received?

What is great about the training at Herrington Carmichael is that you get thrown into the deep end with projects and are directly involved in client interaction, while still having great support from fellow colleagues. My supervisors have always been keen for me to spend time growing my knowledge so that I would get the most I could out of the training contract and be able to confidently advise clients.

What would you like to grow your specialism into?

I am qualifying into the Commercial team, and we do all sorts of commercial legal work for clients, from contract work to advising on intellectual property and data protection. I have enjoyed working on some financial services and regulatory projects during my training contract and I am looking forward to being more involved in projects like these while I develop my expertise.

Where do you see your career growth/work in 5 years?

I see myself advising clients on commercial and regulatory law matters. ESG is a significant area of growth for all businesses, and I think it will be highly interesting to see how in 5 years we will be helping more and more clients as they align their ESG strategies, and I really hope to be involved in this.

Katrina has gone above and beyond during her time with us thus far and we can’t wait to see her development in the Commercial team going forward!

If you are interested in becoming a solicitor or joining the law industry, please get in touch or take a look at our Careers page.