The energy and natural resources sector is an important part of the legal landscape and is currently making headlines more than ever before. It covers, among other things, oil and gas projects, pipelines, refineries, liquefied natural gas, nuclear and renewables. Emerging energy initiatives such as biofuels and carbon capture and trading also feature. The key legal issues centre on trading and projects, and may be either domestic or international in scope.

Although she had originally considered it as an option when choosing her GCSE subjects, Rosie Lord decided that when it came to university, law wasn't for her. Like many young lawyers today, she had other interests and wanted to pursue them before settling on a career. "I didn't want to do a straight law degree in the first instance," she says. "I wanted to explore a scientific subject, knowing that I would then be able to switch over after I had completed my zoology degree, and ultimately that is what I ended up doing. I think this approach stood me in good stead when I was applying for training contracts, because it allowed me to show that I had a broad range of interests and could think outside of the legal box."

When it came to firing off those applications during her fourth year at Edinburgh, Rosie was surprised at the intensity of the competition and, partly to compensate for her non-law background, she sought a place on a number of vacation schemes. "I thought it would enable me to gain legal experience and understand more fully the role of a commercial lawyer. I secured a training contract at Ashurst on the back of a three-week vacation scheme, and I would thoroughly recommend this route."

From the outset, Rosie pinpointed energy and the environment as the sectors that would interest her most. She soon focused more specifically on energy law and qualified into this team at Ashurst, before moving to Burges Salmon. Today she focuses primarily on renewable energy, nuclear law and the power/electricity sector, and while she agrees that there is a lot of legislation to deal with, it is the commercial nature of the sector which really fires her enthusiasm.

Her clientele is "a mixed bag" of both large electricity providers and small-scale renewable energy generators: "For example, we will advise the developer of a wind farm on how it can obtain the best financial benefits that are currently offered by the government, and what contracts and land rights it needs to put in place to erect the turbine and operate it over an extended period. Our client base is very wide, encompassing public authorities, private landowners and large-scale developers. We also have regular contact with Ofgem and DECC (the Department of Energy and Climate Change) with regard to the legislation applicable to the sector."

Trainees can expect to experience a good cross-section of this varied workload, assisting the more senior members of the team with their day-to-day work. Energy is a constantly evolving area of law, so there is a vast amount of new regulations and research to keep on top of. It often falls to the team's trainees to produce executive summaries of new developments for others in the department.

It's not all paperwork, though: there are also opportunities to attend client meetings, seminars and conferences. Rosie explains: "A trainee's work scope can be very varied and largely depends on who you're sitting with and what projects they are working on at the time. So in that regard, it's a very interesting area of law. It is also new to many people – they don't really know what it involves until they sit with us, and I think they are always quite pleasantly surprised."

This diversity is a feature of the career path and is still clearly evident in Rosie's practice. "What I do on a day-to-day basis varies immensely," she explains. "Some departments tend to work on deals that are all of a similar model, whereas many energy deals tend to be quite novel – groundbreaking in some respects. We are often doing something that has never been done before."

One such transaction that Rosie's team worked on recently concerned alternative energy generator Helius Energy plc. It involved the establishment of a joint venture company with The Combination of Rothes Distillers and the securing of project finance for the development of a biomass-fuelled plant in Scotland. The plant will use a combination of distillery co-products and wood chip as feedstock for the generation of 7.2 megawatts of electricity (enough for 9,000 houses). The deal involved the drafting of contracts with the various distillers and consortium of lenders, and a large number of the energy team were involved.

Because of the fast-paced nature of the sector, the ability to assimilate new information is crucial for would-be energy lawyers. "You also have to have quite a large degree of commercial awareness and common sense," says Rosie. "Ultimately, anyone can read the underlying legislation, but combining the law with a pragmatic approach and commercial aptitude is key. Those skills then need to be applied to your particular client's needs in order to filter out what is important and what they need to be aware of, so you don't bombard them with every last detail."

It's also important to stay up to speed with the latest developments. Rosie suggests that the sector is so well reported these days that this has become relatively easy. "It's a hot topic," she says, "primarily because of the UK's need to increase the amount of electricity and heat that's being generated by renewable sources. Oil and gas are still important, but their influence is going to diminish as there is a real need to look at alternative sources if we're going to keep the lights on."

In-depth industry knowledge, combined with a broader commercial awareness and the ability to engage with others, will help you stand out from the crowd: "You can assume that if you secure a vacation scheme place or a training contract interview, your CV and academic record are sufficiently strong. The assumption is going to be made that you're bright enough to be able to answer the legal questions posed to you, so recruiters these days tend to look at the broader person in front of them. I remember someone said that they assessed prospective trainees on the basis of whether they would sit an individual on a train with their best client for four hours – if the answer to that is yes, then you're doing OK."