Solicitor's Diaries - part 5
Our final part of the mini series where Yasmin Khan-Guns shares her reflections on different aspects of a journey as a solicitor concludes with reflections on Personal development and mindset.
Do you have tips for students as to how to maintain motivation and resilience during challenging times?
A few things that help me:
- Zoom out.
When you are rejected or overwhelmed, it is easy to feel as though your whole future is ruined. Reminding yourself that this is one step in a very long career can stop you catastrophising.
- Set small, controllable goals.
Instead of “get a training contract”, focus on “send two applications this week” or “attend one event this month”. Hitting smaller goals keeps your motivation alive.
- Celebrate tiny wins.
Progress is not just the big milestones like securing a training contract. It is the small moments: positive feedback on a draft, feeling more confident in an interview, speaking to one person at a networking event, submitting an application you were avoiding, or finally understanding a difficult topic. These small wins are signs that you are moving forward, even when the end goal feels far away. Noticing them helps you stay motivated and remind yourself that you are progressing — step by step.
- Have a support system.
Friends, family, peers, online communities – people you can be honest with when you are struggling. Saying “this is hard” out loud is often what allows you to keep going.
- Look after your non-law life.
Sleep, movement, food, hobbies that have nothing to do with law.
Motivation will go up and down. The key is to keep taking small steps even on the days when it feels low.
What advice would you give your university self, knowing what you know now?
I would say:
- Stop comparing yourself to everyone else.
- It is okay not to have a training contract before or even straight after your LPC or SQE.
- Protect your mental health; no grade is worth burning out for.
- Protect your physical health; go to the gym, Pilates and carry out mind-focused exercise such as sound meditation and yoga. Focus on building skills and experiences rather than chasing a specific firm name.
- Be open-minded about different routes into the profession – the “perfect” plan may not be the path that actually gets you where you want to go.
Most of all: you do not need to have your whole life figured out at 18 or 21 for it to work out.
What is one piece of wisdom or encouragement you’d like every student or recent graduate to remember as they launch their careers?
If I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be this:
Your career is not a race; it is a series of experiments.
You will try things that do not work. You will move sideways, change your mind, take risks that feel scary. None of that means you have “failed” – it means you are gathering data about what fits you.
If you keep showing up, keep learning from each experiment and keep backing yourself even when the external validation is not there yet, you will eventually look back and see that all the detours and rejections were actually the route.
So trust the process, even when it feels messy from the inside.
That concludes our mini series. We would like to say a huge thank you to Yasmin for her valuable time and for sharing her insights.
