Contentious construction work involves dispute resolution and encouraging the early settlement of disputes through mediation, other forms of alternative dispute resolution, adjudication, or litigation or arbitration. Non-contentious work involves drafting and negotiating contracts, and advising on projects, insurance, health and safety, environmental matters and insolvency. Clients range from industry associations, insurers, contractors, architects, engineers, public authorities, and governmental bodies to major companies and partnerships.

Sally Davies is a partner at City firm Mayer Brown. Having studied law at University College London, she began her career at what was then Rowe & Maw and qualified in 1994. She says: “I always had an interest in construction because my father was an engineer. I knew about it, but I never knew that there was a specialist area called construction law.”

Due to the document intensive, complicated, multi-party nature of construction cases, Sally could not get heavily involved in major pieces of litigation as a trainee, but she did have some really interesting cases involving well-known contractors. She remembers: “I worked on the shopping centre in Broadmead in Bristol and that was an enormous dispute involving several parties. The person I sat with, who’s still the head of department, was involved in coordinating the defendants. I went along to case management conferences at court and found it incredibly interesting.” Now, with 13 years post-qualification experience, Sally enjoys coordinating the cases herself and leading teams of junior solicitors, although notes that she’s “done a lot of learning along the way”.

Sally says that her caseload normally consists of eight or nine large and contentious cases, all in various stages of progress. She elaborates: “This afternoon I’ve got a meeting on a case which is in the pre-action protocol stage, so that’s finding out what the claim is actually about, considering the letter of claim from the other side, formulating a response with the client, researching and finding a suitable expert witness, establishing who the key factual witnesses are, and finding out about the background and the facts.” Going to the Technology and Construction Court, a division of the High Court, is a real bonus for Sally: “I might be in court on a case management conference, talking about a timetable for the trial, the number of witnesses and experts, and how the trial’s going to be managed.”

Currently she’s involved in disputes relating to the construction of Wembley Stadium. The huge project involves many subcontractors and Sally is investigating the reasons for its various delays.

As a partner in a busy construction department, Sally deals with a lot of “outward-looking work”, such as pitching to clients and client development. Dealing with clients is definitely one of her favourite things about the job: “I enjoy the variety of people that I meet. One of the benefits of doing construction work is that you get to work with a massive range of people from commercial directors of construction companies to insurers and barristers – I’ve been lucky enough to work with some eminent QCs – and technical experts such as structural engineers, roofing specialists and foundation designers.” It’s the face-to-face contact that Sally relishes. “The construction industry is very hands-on,” she says.

If Sally spends a lot of time advising and assisting clients, her more junior assistants do what she calls “the hands-on work”. Sally explains: “A mediation submission will be done by one of my assistants and then I’ll go through it with them, so I have a lot of supervisory work.” But the real buzz is still the litigious side of her job: “The highlight of my career to date was when I got a case struck out of the High Court – it was a £4 million valuation negligence case. We got it dismissed because of a procedural irregularity: the claimant hadn’t filed a complete list of documents by the deadline. That was just absolutely fantastic. The low point was when it went to the Court of Appeal and was reinstated!”

Construction solicitors work on intensive cases with hefty files. Sally’s advice is to “roll your sleeves up and don’t be put off by the vast quantity of documents”. She says that “to be a top solicitor in construction you need to be unflappable and take everything in your stride. You need a thick skin. You deal with a lot of people who call a spade a spade. You’ve got to be down to earth and gritty”. As with all areas of law, something else you’ll need is attention to detail. Sally explains why, in construction, this skill is especially important: “Construction is an area of law which is always changing. All the main cases that change the law – in tort particularly – tend to be construction cases. You need to have a good understanding of the legal issues and the law, and be quite practical and, most importantly, commercial.”

For those thinking about construction as a potential practice area, Sally recommends finding out as much as possible about what the work involves, especially by doing a work placement in a construction department. Be prepared to do some unpaid work experience, she says, even just shadowing someone for a week. “And don’t be snobby about location,” she warns. “If you can’t get a training contract in London, go to the regions, but pick a good firm that will give you really good experience and you can always move into London afterwards.”

Sally knows that lots of students worry about specialising too early but she says you don’t need to do this: “I knew I was interested in litigation and I wanted to go to court, but I didn’t even know there was a discipline in construction at that stage.”

In this area you have to work very hard. Sally weighs things up: “You are paid a lot of money but it requires a huge commitment. I don’t think you appreciate that until you’re in the thick of it. When you’re coming up to trial you’ll be under great pressure working 12 to 18-hour days but only for three or four days. Then, when the case is finished or settled, everyone is in the pub and normal life resumes.”