Hi all,
Been looking at the main website for a few days, have just started exploring the forum, thought I'd register and say hello.
I'm a qualified lawyer in an area of legal practice which has become a race to the bottom in terms of fees and professional self-respect. I've been qualified for 15 years now.
For the first 11 years, I was just a lawyer. For the last 4 years, I've become responsible for oversight of our data which we have to provide to clients on a regular basis, ensuring that the lawyers who populate the data on the system keep on top of it, error checking, system design to ensure that the correct data is captured quickly and easily, production of internal and external dashboards, and, recently, delivering lectures to our own clients on what their MI means (due to staff turnover, the people I was dealing with at the start have gone, and their replacements need bringing up to speed).
At the start, I knew little about MI. I was presented with a spreadsheet and told to get on with it.
Surprisingly, it turned out that I loved working with data. I see it as a puzzle that has to be solved each week/ month/ quarter, depending on which client it is. I take pride in accuracy above that of my competitors, even down to presentation of same (shallow, I know).
After a wee while, I thought "there has to be an easier way to do this" than manual filtering, etc. Which is when I discovered Visual Basic. Which lead me to SQL.
So... here I am now. Unhappy at work, not due to the nature of the job, but to the limits on how far I can take it within the current framework and, obviously, because I have to work with a load of lawyers.
I went to see a recruitment agent last week, with a view to a move focussing on my non-legal skills, such as they are. They floated contracting as a very real possibility. I hadn't thought about it before and, honestly, shied away from the idea of loss of secure income but, having discussed it with my wife, we think it's something to look seriously into.
That's all for now. I'm going to digest as much of the forum and site as I can, and then I'll probably still bug you all with questions that have been asked before
Been looking at the main website for a few days, have just started exploring the forum, thought I'd register and say hello.
I'm a qualified lawyer in an area of legal practice which has become a race to the bottom in terms of fees and professional self-respect. I've been qualified for 15 years now.
For the first 11 years, I was just a lawyer. For the last 4 years, I've become responsible for oversight of our data which we have to provide to clients on a regular basis, ensuring that the lawyers who populate the data on the system keep on top of it, error checking, system design to ensure that the correct data is captured quickly and easily, production of internal and external dashboards, and, recently, delivering lectures to our own clients on what their MI means (due to staff turnover, the people I was dealing with at the start have gone, and their replacements need bringing up to speed).
At the start, I knew little about MI. I was presented with a spreadsheet and told to get on with it.
Surprisingly, it turned out that I loved working with data. I see it as a puzzle that has to be solved each week/ month/ quarter, depending on which client it is. I take pride in accuracy above that of my competitors, even down to presentation of same (shallow, I know).
After a wee while, I thought "there has to be an easier way to do this" than manual filtering, etc. Which is when I discovered Visual Basic. Which lead me to SQL.
So... here I am now. Unhappy at work, not due to the nature of the job, but to the limits on how far I can take it within the current framework and, obviously, because I have to work with a load of lawyers.
I went to see a recruitment agent last week, with a view to a move focussing on my non-legal skills, such as they are. They floated contracting as a very real possibility. I hadn't thought about it before and, honestly, shied away from the idea of loss of secure income but, having discussed it with my wife, we think it's something to look seriously into.
That's all for now. I'm going to digest as much of the forum and site as I can, and then I'll probably still bug you all with questions that have been asked before
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