The Lawyer Hot 100 Career Quiz: Michael Levenstein

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What’s your most vivid memory from being a pupil?  

Prior to starting pupillage, I was on the horns of a dilemma as to where to live. One horn was represented by the invitation to flat-share with some friends, a tempting prospect considering I expected the year ahead would be tough and the camaraderie very welcome. The other horn was the opportunity to live (literally) a stone’s throw away from my future chambers in a beautiful listed building, thanks to the generosity of my Inn of Court.

After much debate, I opted for the closer, albeit less sociable, option. My first day of pupillage, while welcoming, was not particularly eventful – that is until my supervisor suggested I take that first day easy and head home early. And so I did, crossing a tiny courtyard and returning to my Inn flat within 60 seconds (told you it was a stone’s throw).

Upon reaching my bedroom and opening my curtains, I froze – there, directly across from me, was my supervisor at his desk, a direct line of sight from his office (and a half-dozen other members of chambers) into my bedroom. I hurriedly drew the curtains, suddenly resigned to the prospect of having to choose between no privacy – or no daylight – for the next 12 months. Timidity prevailed, and I ducked the issue by vowing to always be the last to leave chambers and outstay any potential onlookers.

Almost a year later, upon learning that I’d successfully completed pupillage and offered tenancy, I recall my supervisor telling me how impressed he’d been with my work ethic: never leaving before him (despite his frequent insistence), even if he had to work very late into the night. If only he’d known what kept me at my desk all that time!

It’s hard to break a habit and, while I no longer live next door to chambers, I am usually still the last to leave. Nowadays, however, I blame mountains of paperwork and not the fear of living in a goldfish bowl!

Tell us about a sliding doors moment when your career could have gone in an entirely different direction?

Having been born and raised in the States, I had unconsciously assumed that my personal and professional future would always remain there. Following my first degree and before heading to law school (both in the States), I took up an offer of a master’s at Oxford – a decision which yielded one of the best years of my life. That time proved so transformative that I wasn’t quite ready to return to the New World, instead prolonging my stay and enrolling to read law as an undergraduate (my second time around – clearly a glutton for punishment!).

As I was wrapping up my law degree, I knew my future was to be a litigator (I was much less certain whether that’d be in a wig or some American courtroom). A devout believer in ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’, I decided to apply for pupillage on the off-chance some chambers might think I had a future. Lo and behold, I was incredibly fortunate – not only to be offered pupillage, but to find a uniquely supportive set which has remained my professional home ever since.

Had I resisted the urge to explore what opportunities the English Bar held in store, my life now would look very different. While I confess a certain envy for my American counterparts able to saunter around the courtroom or transfix juries with their closings, I am grateful for the sliding doors moments which brought, and kept, me here. Most workdays find me poring over challenging legal issues and debating fiercely intelligent (and gracious) colleagues, occupied by a profession which maintains the highest standards of competence and character. As things turned out, it would have been impossible to ask for a more rewarding career.

What’s the hardest question you’ve ever been asked at interview, and how did you answer?

Final round pupillage interview. Panel of eight. 100 minutes in. Final question. ‘So Michael, we’ve interviewed dozens of others for a place here. Why should we give it to you and not any of them?’

Disarmingly simple, dangerously hard.

Impossible to recall verbatim what I said (or my inevitable humming and hawing as I struggled to fashion a careful yet sincere answer), but it had something to do with recognising that a chambers is not a charity, but a collaborative business, and that in due course it was important to take the valuable training received and transform it not only into a self-sustaining practice of my own, but to pay those opportunities forward – to share my success and professional networks with colleagues, and to transmit my own legal and practical knowledge to the next generation of pupils. In other words, to always remember that none of us is an island, and that we thrive best as individuals when we work toward a common purpose and shared sense of welfare.

I stand by that answer, and hope to have given back, at least in part, for so much of the time, attention and training invested in me by others and for which I remain grateful.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get to where you are/do the job you do?

My answer to this is well-rehearsed, having shared it with students and pupils for years now. When I was somewhat younger, I blithely assumed that talent and hard work would blast their way through any obstacle in academic or professional life.

I now know better, and of an important missing ingredient in my original formula: perseverance. The student tends only to look ahead to their exams, the graduate to their first job, the young professional to their next promotion. What we often fail to appreciate (or at least I did) as we move through life is that the journey is never over. We never quite reach our destination. There is always something more to aspire toward, something more to learn.

And with each new challenge, success is not always guaranteed. And so, what’s more important than always winning or being right – whether in life, law or litigation – is to not give up. A student might struggle to gain pupillage, but legal history is overflowing with eminent judges who once struggled to convince chambers to take them on. A pupil might not gain tenancy at their first set, but if they persevere chances are they will elsewhere. Even the most successful of barristers will lose cases (sometimes many), but that doesn’t mean they didn’t perform well or add value for their clients.

Rather than lament the inevitability of setbacks, embrace the opportunity to grow and improve in order to overcome them. It’s important as we scale life’s mountain range to take pride in our achievements from time to time, resting at a plateau to enjoy the vista. But the real thrill, the real living, is when we once more don our climbing gear and resume the ascent. So, until such time as we reach the summit (whatever that might mean to you), keep hanging tough.