Thats a good idea, I think you're right that I can integrate and work my 'why commercial law' to answer.
I've realised that the way consulting works is quite similar - may I ask personally why you wouldn't go down the consulting path instead? I don't know too much about the ins and outs of consulting yet, so I'd love to know what the diverging reason really is for some people between the two professions. Is it just the aspect of being a lawyer you deal with... the law? Whereas consultants are more general? Please correct me if I'm wrong!
@lawnoob in short, I think that the person's comment about lawyers being 'glorified consultants' was more relevant to why one might be motivated to pursue both professions (and simply for amusement 😆) than to actually offer an illuminating assessment of the work lawyers and consultants both do! Lawyers advise clients in a very different way to consultants and certain aspects of commercial law which are very interesting to me, such as dispute resolution, would not really make themselves into the everyday work of a consultant.
Also, bear in mind that the big-name consulting firms are often management consultancies, which advise clients on how to structure/manage their organisations
from within in order to operate as efficiently as possible. Many areas of commercial law are looking more broadly at deals or disputes between
different parties and perhaps only more specific areas of focus such as tax or employment consider the internal structure of an organisation to the same extent. There are of course many exceptions but that is how I perceive commercial law vs management consulting in general.
That said, not all consultants are management consultants! The way I understand it is that there is a broad variety of consulting, differentiated by industry (e.g. biotech or telecoms specialist consulting firms) and by 'type', including management consulting, strategy consulting or political consulting. Top accounting firms like Deloitte and advertising firms like Ogilvy now have major consulting wings which are naturally geared towards their general area of work as a firm - for example, Ogilvy Consulting focuses on the big-picture marketing strategy for a company, as opposed to the specific advertising campaigns that Ogilvy traditionally creates for its clients.
There are definitely a wide variety of interesting areas to consult on and it is not so much that I decided against consulting specifically, as I did not feel that I had a specific enough area of expertise to make an informed choice about the area of consulting which would have been most interesting to me.
I do know, however, that areas of commercial law such as white collar crime, international arbitration and competition are of particular interest to me at this moment in time and a training contract will offer en exceptional environment in which to explore these, without having to commit to one area or another for the first two years of my employment. I enjoy the logical, problem-solving aspect of the law and I really appreciate the way that the law is constantly changing to reflect what we value as a society during different times.
Finally, I think that being a lawyer will give me an excellent insight into business because I will learn to understand the constraints that businesses have to work within from a variety of different perspectives! In this way, I do not need to worry too much about how much I enjoy my legal career (although right now I am confident that I will, one can never know for sure), because the expertise it will provide me with will be incredibly useful across a whole range of fields.
I hope that this insight is useful, and please do let me know if you have any further queries on this topic 😊
