The ultimate guide to commercial awareness

Commercial awareness is one of the key skills that law firms look for in future trainees so taking the time to build yours is essential to becoming a lawyer.

Reading time: eight minutes

Being a commercially aware candidate means understanding the environment in which law firms and their clients operate. As a lawyer, you’ll need commercial awareness as well as legal skills to help both your employer and your clients achieve their goals.

Commercial awareness is an important skill across the whole legal profession, not just in the corporate world. For example, to be a successful private client lawyer, you must understand clients are business owners themselves.

What's commercial awareness?

There are two crucial layers to commercial awareness as a lawyer:

• understanding your clients’ businesses; and
• understanding the law firm itself as a business.

Understanding clients’ organisations and the markets they operate in enables lawyers to provide quality advice that helps the client to achieve its aims. In today’s legal world, lawyers are trusted business advisers, expected to be constantly alert to not only risks, but also innovative solutions that’ll benefit their clients.

Commercially aware candidates also appreciate that the law firms they’re applying to are commercial enterprises. Whichever area of law you decide to go into, you must demonstrate that you can help to drive your firm’s business forward.

As an aspiring lawyer, you must understand the importance of client relationships and the need for businesses to be cost effective. Make a habit of reading the business and politics sections of high-quality news sources to improve your grasp of the issues. Try to apply the PESTLE analysis technique when delving into news stories.

Read LCN’s latest ‘Wrestle with PESTLE’ articles via the Commercial awareness hub for a deep dive into a variety of issues.

Key commercial awareness issues to understand

There are things that you can do to accelerate your level of understanding. It’s important to focus on the word 'awareness' and not mistake it for 'exhaustive knowledge'.

Remember that you’re going to be a trainee and aren’t expected to know everything about the law firm or its clients’ businesses from day one.

However, a last-minute skim of the Financial Times before your interview isn’t enough. Get yourself into a routine of following business news; it’s useful to be aware of any patterns, trends or how wider economic conditions might affect a particular sector. A routine will enable you to develop genuine interest that’ll build on your ability to spot trends. In short, you’ll take on the media habits of a good professional before you become one.

LCN is a great place to start. You should read our weekly commercial news round-up, as well as our explainers of key commercial awareness issues, written by lawyers in the Commercial Question section.

This Feature identifies the trending commercial issues to know about in 2024. And there are insightful podcasts, videos, blogs and more on the Commercial awareness hub, sponsored by Mayer Brown International LLP.

Here are some good places to develop your commercial awareness:

Radio and podcasts

Social media

Read this LCN Says for more podcasts and social media accounts to boost your commercial awareness.

TV

Press

Other

Use your commercial experience

Consider your employment history and see whether you can identify any previous examples of commercial work experience. For example, have you worked in a service environment (eg, a shop or bar), interacting with customers or clients? Did you gain insight into how the business you were working within was run? Have you ever undertaken a specific project or devised a solution to a business problem? Was there a particular challenge you had to overcome?

It’s not only your employment history that counts as commercial work experience. Positions of leadership and responsibility can also demonstrate that you have the necessary skills. Did you belong to any societies at university and, if so, what was your role? For example, if you were the treasurer of a sports club, this can be used to demonstrate your ability to manage finances and budgets.

Not-for-profit work can also demonstrate commercial awareness as, depending on your role, you may have been involved in promoting events or persuading companies to sponsor you or provide free products. These activities help to show that you understand basic business processes. Working in the family business or setting up and managing your own business, on Depop for example, can all point to a commercial mindset, as there’s no better way to understand the fundamentals of a business than by running one.

Alternative ways to unlock your commercial awareness

You may want to build your commercial skills with new work experiences before you become a lawyer. Consider the area of law you wish to practise, the type of firm you want to work in and any skills you may be lacking. Next, work out where you could gain the skills that may be relevant to the firm of your choice. For example, if you’re interested in banking or corporate finance, then consider gaining experience in a corporate setting (eg, an accountancy firm or a tax office).

Commercial thinking can be developed in any employment setting, particularly if your role allows you access to the rationale for decisions made by your employer. For example, in the publishing industry, you might learn about the challenges faced by legacy media in light of the growth of social media. If you work in retail, arranging delivery and writing trade reports could develop your understanding of seasonal demand or just-in-time purchasing principles.

Another option is to consider the types of client that you’d be dealing with in a corporate law firm and try to gain some experience with them (eg, in a bank or financial institution). If you can gain insight into how potential clients run their businesses, this’ll be a strong selling point at the interview stage.

Alternatively, think about how a corporate firm is run and the skills you need to work there (ie, working on large complex deals as part of a large team). Ultimately, what matters is that you learn about and understand the environments you work in. Even positions that appear low level can produce great commercial insight. It just depends on your mindset and how well you can showcase your business knowledge to a potential recruiter.

For more on developing commercial awareness, head to LawCareers.Net’s Commercial awareness hub page. There you’ll find our weekly commercial news round-ups, in-depth features, commercial case study podcast episodes, videos and more advice on developing this crucial skill. 

And if you’re signed up to LawCareers.Net, you’ll automatically receive our monthly commercial awareness newsletter, Commercial Connect.

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