John Lafferty

From Chingford, London, UK	Place of study and course BSc Chemistry and MSc Machine Learning in Science at the University of Nottingham	Fun fact I played football with the locals in Pablo Escobar’s old favela in Colombia

What type of work are you involved in on a daily basis?      

As a BLOG in the Legal Operations Consulting (LOC) team, you’ll be joining a fee earning client-facing practice, in a role that offers a wide variety of work and opportunities to learn. LOC works to support and advise General Counsels (GCs) and in-house legal teams in the application of business principles and new ways of working, to help them optimise the delivery of legal services to their organisation. Given the broad range of services the team offer, your daily tasks will vary depending on the client projects you’re involved in. With multiple client engagements running simultaneously, you’ll often be working on several projects at once – adapting and reprioritising to client needs is a large part of the work!   

Typically, your day-to-day tasks will include preparing client proposals, scoping and pricing mandates, drafting client deliverables, brainstorming alongside the team ways of responding to a new client opportunity, and providing project management support to ongoing engagements — such as tracking milestones, generating reports, and attending client calls alongside senior team members. You’ll also contribute to client workshops by preparing materials, capturing key outputs, and developing deliverables informed by those sessions. Additionally, tasks like market research and data analysis will often play a role in the projects you’re involved in. 

What is your favourite thing about working in LOC?   

My favourite element of working in LOC is the amount of responsibility and trust you are given, and subsequently, the level of impact you feel you can make from an early stage. Your input and opinions are valued highly, and the team encourages you to share at every point in a project - the actual work you deliver will always play a significant role in the success of a client engagement. The learning curve and challenge that comes with the work and responsibility you are given enables you to quickly gain new skills and knowledge. It is a very rewarding team to be a part of as a BLOG. Each piece of work you do is crucial to the team’s success with clients, and so ultimately will be contributing to the firm’s overall success and reputation. You’ll quickly feel that your contributions hold significant value, and you’ll also therefore feel a strong sense of accomplishment with each task you complete. 

What is the main way a BLOG seat has set you up for your future career?   

The BLOG scheme has a great way of setting you up for a future career. One of the key ways it does this is due to the variety of teams you can be a part of, as this helps you to develop a broad range of core skills, including data analysis, project management, problem-solving, stakeholder management, and strong organisational and communication abilities. These are all highly transferable skills that will serve you well across various industries and career paths, so regardless of your future career, you'll be set up for success.  

In addition to this, the scheme places a strong emphasis on the mentoring aspect, as well as networking and relationship-building across all teams within NRF Transform. Prioritising your personal development as well as relationships makes your team selection on qualification easier. Not only will you have a deep understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses, but thanks to the relationships with the heads of each team,  you’ll be able to have insightful open discussions and seek advice.