Navigating the transition from university life to the professional world is an exciting journey, offering the chance to explore new fields and leverage unique skills. In this blog post, Zakaria Khan, one of our 2024 cohort Innovation Graduates, shares his experience so far, offering insights into his diverse background and how it shaped his move into the Innovation Group. He reflects on his first few months in the Innovation Graduate Scheme, detailing the projects, challenges, and rewarding experiences that come with being part of a forward-thinking team. This blog provides a great glimpse into what it’s like to be part of the Innovation Graduate Scheme and the opportunities it brings for aspiring professionals.
University to Real World
While there is no traditional route into the industry, my background is in law, having completed my LLB at the University of Edinburgh. Alongside my studies, I worked in the retail sector, the creative arts, and was involved in the business operations of my university football club. I was drawn to the Innovation Group and the legal innovation sector as I saw it as an environment where I could develop skills from each of these areas and apply them to contribute to a constantly evolving part of the industry.
Breaking New Ground: My First Months as an Innovation Graduate
I am currently part of the Research and Development (R&D) pillar within the Innovation Group. R&D is at the forefront of ensuring that AG is equipped with the best-in-class tools and market knowledge. This may be through horizon scanning to understand trends in the market and how to navigate these—informing our strategy and approach—or through working with developers, testing, and crafting solutions.
My first seat was within Legal Technology Consulting (LTC). LTC is client-facing, where we work with in-house legal teams at all stages of their legal technology journey, from initial problem framing, initiating small wins such as our legal front door to identify pain points, to the build and strategic implementation of legal tech for our clients to get the most out of their chosen solution. A good way to understand LTC is as translators between the tech and legal.
As it was my first pillar, I placed a large emphasis on understanding "problem framing", "client-centric thinking", and how LTC operated both internally with AG, and externally with clients. I was incredibly grateful to be part of a client call in my first week and be involved in an ongoing major project. Throughout my time in the pillar, I was able to work on a variety of workstreams and interact with several of our clients. My tasks included preparing workshops, building HighQ sites, observing client calls, and developing external and internal materials. The highlight of my pillar, as a culmination of my experience gained in LTC, was to deliver a site demo to one of our pro-bono clients on a project that a colleague and I had created, where I got to put into practice the technical and client-centric skills I had observed and developed.
Cross-Office Collaboration
In both LTC and R&D, we were split across offices. Across the Innovation Group, we are based in London, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dubai. Being the only innovation graduate in Edinburgh, I was apprehensive and thought I would miss out on the opportunity to collaborate with my peers. I'm glad to say, this has not been the case. In LTC and R&D, I have aimed to travel to Manchester around once a month - this gives me the opportunity to have in-person meetings, collaborate, and catch up with colleagues. As well as this, we have an innovation graduate meeting once a month - either in person or online to check-in, talk about workstreams, and catch up. Despite the geographical distance, I still feel connected to the team and communicate daily with my colleagues across our offices. I believe this is possible due to my peers and seniors in the Innovation Group fostering an open environment and ensuring that we grads understand that we can ask queries across the group.
It's a fantastic opportunity to be able to travel across offices, connect with my peers, and of course review the office cafes (Fish & Chips Friday in London is currently top of my leaderboard).
A Day in My Life: Not Your Average 9 to 5
I spend most of my days in the office. In Edinburgh, we have some great coffee machines, so I usually start the day with a coffee from one of these and occasionally a Ribena from downstairs. I then assess our R&D worklist and emails. On Mondays, I like to outline my projects for the week, so I typically review this and break it down into tasks for the day.
Since I am the only member of R&D in Scotland, I like to start my week by taking time to engage with the team—updating them on what I am working on, any exciting developments I've seen, and taking time to understand their workstream and if there is anything they may need support on. This is typically done via a call or email.
It is true when they say there is no typical day within the Innovation group. If I have some larger projects on, I will spend my mornings tackling the more complex parts of these and developing a strategy for the afternoon. I have just completed a project that involved testing a Generative AI solution. I spent the mornings formulating a testing methodology, creating, and reviewing any trackers, and developing testing prompts. Tackling this in the morning gave me the foundation to focus on the technical aspects of testing in the afternoon, check in with my supervisor with any issues, and adequately review the testing outputs.
When I am not working on a larger project, I will typically pick up daily tasks. This could be horizon scanning, researching a specific legal technology tool, or picking up some on-ground requests. This could be providing insights into solutions in our tech stack or providing general legal tech support.
At lunch, we sit in the social space in Edinburgh. This is great for catching up with people in the office, meeting any new faces, and a great opportunity to talk to people from different divisions and groups, understand their workstreams, and how they interact with legal technology and the Innovation Group.
My afternoons are typically for project check-ins, stakeholder meetings, and actioning any development points from the morning. On Fridays, we have a team meeting, which is great to catch up, check in, and develop our strategy for the following week. I take time in the afternoon to update my weekly list and draft a plan for the following day.
In the summer, I play with our Touch Rugby team. We play against other firms. People from all levels get involved, from grads and trainees to partners. It’s a great opportunity to make connections, physically challenge yourself in a relaxed space, and if you're like me, give yourself a sad reminder of how unfit you have become.
Your Unique Path: Leveraging Individuality for Application Success
As noted above, no day is the same, and that is also true for the people that make up the Innovation Group as a whole. We bring our unique experiences and, most importantly, our passions. Research each pillar of the Innovation Group and think about how you can link your experience to the work we do. Whether it's hospitality skills you can bring to client development, sports that have developed your team skills, or a hobby that shows your ability to problem-solve. If you can bring a creative solution to a problem, I encourage you to apply.
