"I have come to realise that none of this was pre-planned, but in general I try to make smart decisions that push me in a good direction and see where that takes me."

My journey at Krogerus started five years ago, in December 2016. I began working as an office support trainee in the middle of my second year of law school. I was vaguely familiar with the firm at the time, but had heard good things about it as a workplace from friends who worked there as trainees. I decided to apply and hopefully get a chance to experience this for myself. As far as I'm concerned, it turned out to be everything I had been told. At times it barely felt like work at all, spending lots of time with close colleagues as we assisted the firm in its day-to-day operations together. All in all, I spent a year and a half working part-time as an office support trainee and left Krogerus with a basket full of stories and memories, as well as a feeling of connection to the firm and its people.

After this I spent some time working as a benefits officer at an unemployment fund and generally doing different things. The experiences were pleasant and educational, and the people were nice. Nevertheless, I ended up applying for a job as a knowledge management trainee at Krogerus, something I had been considering for a while. I was offered the position and have not worked elsewhere since then. For me, the position picked up right where the office support traineeship left off. The team was lovely and a lot of the colleagues from across the firm were already quite familiar from my previous traineeship. My tasks had more to do with legal matters, often in the form of deep dives into the complicated minutiae of the law, but this taught me a lot about different legal matters across a wide spectrum.

To this day, I use some of the skills I learned as a KM trainee almost daily, especially as they relate to finding relevant legal information quickly. Like the office support team, the KM team also supports the entire firm in its work, which gave me the massive personal gain of getting to complete assignments for practically every team within the firm in the year and nine months I spent in the KM team. This came at a time when I was trying to figure out what kind of field of law I might want to work with come graduation. My experiences working in the KM team gave me a lot of insight into this, and I ended up applying for a job as an associate trainee in the firm's Banking & Finance practice group.

I switched teams over the weekend and started in this new role in the autumn of last year. Working in the team, I participated in and got a much closer look at some of the actual client work that the firm exists to provide. I also felt my knowledge of this part of the law expanded as I got to take part in the work and all of the lectures and training sessions held within the team and firm-wide. I left the firm after the traineeship with a clearer understanding of my own interests, strengths, and weaknesses, looking to write my thesis and finish my studies at university. I was also offered an opportunity to work at Krogerus, albeit in another team.

This September, having recently graduated, I started working as an associate in our Energy practice group. I was excited but at the same time, I had only a general understanding of what the team does. Fortunately, the team had prepared an excellent crash-course for new colleagues and I felt that I was able to get up to speed quickly. The team is as great and supportive as all the teams I've worked in throughout my young career have been and I find myself very happy to be back at Krogerus, working for this team with various transactions and assignments mostly relating to renewable energy.

I have come to realise that none of this was pre-planned, but in general I try to make smart decisions that push me in a good direction and see where that takes me. So far, they have kept me working here. If I pull back, I can see how knowledge that I've amassed along the way from office support trainee to associate lawyer mixes and gives me a slightly better view of the ever-elusive big picture. I realise that there is a multitude of ways of becoming a lawyer and many of my brilliant colleagues began working as lawyers without prior experience as a trainee at the firm. For my own part, I can safely say that my experiences working for this firm as a trainee has already had a profound impact on my young career, and I don't think I would feel as ready to tackle future career challenges head on if I didn't have these experiences to draw upon.