When the Celtic Tiger property market came to a crashing halt in 2007 I lost everything.
Or should I say all my capital.
Capital I had worked hard to gather together over the previous 21 years
Let me take you back to where it all started and what happened.
Because it is important to the overall story that saw me qualifying as a solicitor in 2011 at the age of 48. And what happened since then.
I started my first business in 1986 at the age of 23 in a small shop in Glasnevin in Dublin.
Over the following 20 years I was involved in various retailing businesses in places like Navan, Blackrock and Enfield, Co. Meath. In Enfield I bought my parents’ business-a petrol filling station-and completely redeveloped it.
But it was hard going, especially the hours involved in retailing.
I had a young family and the working hours involved in retailing were tough going. We closed on Christmas Day, that was it.
So in 2006 or thereabouts I sold it and bought a building site in Longford with planning permission to build a block of 8 apartments. Unfortunately this was right at the peak of the Celtic Tiger property boom.
My plan was to get in and get out quickly. A commando exercise as it were, not a long campaign .
No sooner than I had almost completed the apartments when the Celtic Tiger property market came crashing down in 2007/2008 and I lost everything.
I had no capital, I was 44/45 years old and I had no idea what I could do. The only route open to me was to get a job in retailing, but this thought sickened me because I would be going back into the industry I had just left.
Except this time I would be working for someone else, not myself. This was going to be difficult for a lad who had been self employed for 20 years.
I had always like law in college-UCD-when I did a B. Comm degree in the early 1980s.
So, at the ripe old age of 45 or 46 I went to Griffith College to do a preparation course for the FE1 exams to get into the Law Society.
I treated this short period of study like a full time job and studied from early in the day until 4 pm or thereabouts. Then I went to the evening classes in Griffith College.
The full time study paid off, however, and I managed to pass all 8 FE1 exams at a single sitting. Anyone who has tried the FE1s will know that they are pretty difficult exams.
But they must be passed in order to become an apprentice solicitor and get enrolled in the Law Society professional practice courses.
Then I became an apprentice solicitor at the age of 46 or thereabouts and I qualified two years later at the age of 48.
I got an apprenticeship with my own solicitor, Mary Cullen in Inchicore, who had kindly promised to give me an apprenticeship if I managed to pass the FE1s. I will always be immensely grateful to Mary for giving me this chance.
However, once I qualified I was on my own. So at the age of 48 in 2011 I qualified as a solicitor and set up my own practice in Kilcock, Co. Kildare.
I soon ran out of money, however, as I had virtually no capital to begin with. So, I had to get a job.
I was dismissed from the job within 9 months on the grounds that I had failed to pass my probation. But I brought a claim for unfair dismissal and was successful at teh Labour Court who found I was unfairly dismissed.
This win, however, led to an unenforceable recommendation. The employer threatened to ignore it for that reason.
However, I threatened to embarrass the employer with a social media campaign pointing to the stance of the employer and the potential reputational damage of such a campaign led them to settle with me and pay me off.
So, with the small payment I was paid I set up a solicitor’s practice again, this time in 2013 in Enfield , Co. Meath. I had come full circle.
This time it was different and I avoided the mistakes I made the first time.
I focused on the things I had experience in and quit doing criminal law. I specialised in employment law and property and small business. This decision, combined with my connection with Enfield and combined with my social media activity, has seen my practice thrive and grow.
Now, many people contact me about studying law late in life, about changing careers as mature persons, about how they would love to get into the legal profession . And they ask me for advice.
Firstly, I chose to go the solicitor route, not the barrister profession. I would never have survived as a barrister because I would have had to rely on solicitors to give me instructions. I would have starved if I did this.
By choosing the solicitor route I can get clients directly from the general public, if I am good enough at marketing myself and my practice.
My particular skills and experience from my days as a self employed entrepreneur in the retail industry, as well as skills and experience derived from buying and selling and developing property, have been a great help in building my practice.
Everyone has unique experiences and skills and backgrounds. You need to weigh this up and your particular experience to try to see if you can make a go of the legal profession, regardless of which route you choose.
This is something you need to weigh up and assess.
You would also need to consider starting your own business at a mature age, if you wanted to set up a business as a sole practitioner. I have a lot of experience in thes area of activity.
You may not have and this is something to consider.
I have seen many solicitors who are excellent at the law but are not so good at running their own business. And this is a key factor to consider when thinking about setting up your own practice.
So, what has worked for me may not be determinative of how you will fare. Maybe you will do even better, or have a background in some sphere that will assist you build your career in law.
But you need to consider this carefully.