Future Trainee Series: Louis Sheridan

Louis Sheridan, Future Trainee Solicitor at Paul, Weiss — On Private Equity, Commercial Awareness and Writing Standout Applications

In this episode, Louis Sheridan shares his journey to securing a training contract at Paul, Weiss, explaining how a genuine fascination with private equity, relentless curiosity and a distinctive approach to commercial awareness helped him stand out during one of the most competitive recruitment processes in the legal industry.

Louis reflects on the exact moment he decided to pursue commercial law after listening to The Caesars Palace Coup, a book exploring one of the largest leveraged buyouts and corporate restructurings in history. That experience sparked a deep interest in private capital, debt finance and the technical side of commercial law, leading him to immerse himself in finance, accounting and credit analysis alongside his legal studies.

The conversation explores how Louis approached applications to elite US law firms, explaining why candidates should never self-select out of applying simply because a firm's intake appears highly competitive. Instead, he argues that authenticity, conviction and concise writing are far more powerful than relying on generic phrases or repeating facts that graduate recruiters already know.

Louis also explains what differentiates Paul, Weiss in the London market, discussing its reputation for advising leading private equity sponsors, complex financing transactions and sophisticated cross-border deals. He shares why the firm's transactional focus perfectly matched his long-term interests.

A major focus of the episode is developing genuine commercial awareness. Rather than reading the news to memorise headlines, Louis explains how he followed topics that genuinely interested him, using books, Bloomberg newsletters, podcasts and court hearings to build a deeper understanding of finance and commercial transactions.

The discussion also explores how candidates can discover the practice areas that genuinely interest them. Louis encourages aspiring lawyers to read widely, remain curious and pursue subjects that naturally capture their attention rather than feeling pressured to specialise too early.

Louis shares practical advice on using commercial awareness during vacation schemes, explaining that the goal is not to impress lawyers with technical knowledge but to have thoughtful conversations, ask intelligent questions and demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the work.

The conversation also provides valuable insights into what to expect during a vacation scheme, from reviewing transaction documents and carrying out legal research to working with supervisors across different practice areas. Louis explains why preparation should focus less on predicting technical tasks and more on developing professionalism, curiosity and strong communication skills.

Throughout the episode, Louis returns to one central message: aspiring lawyers should think independently. Whether writing applications, researching firms or developing commercial awareness, he argues that original thinking and genuine interest will always stand out more than rehearsed answers or well-worn clichés.

Finally, Louis shares advice for future applicants on writing with impact, staying intellectually curious and remembering that successful applications are built on authenticity rather than trying to say what recruiters want to hear.

00:00 Introduction  
00:20 Meet Louis Sheridan  
01:00 The Book That Led Him to Commercial Law  
02:00 Why Private Equity & Debt Finance?  
03:00 Applying to Paul, Weiss  
04:00 Writing Authentic Applications  
05:00 Standing Out Through Strong Writing  
06:00 What Makes Paul, Weiss Different?  
07:00 Discovering a Practice Area  
08:00 Building Genuine Commercial Awareness  
09:00 Reading Beyond the FT  
10:00 Using Commercial Awareness on Vacation Schemes  
11:00 Conversations vs Showing Off Knowledge  
12:00 What to Expect on a Vacation Scheme  
13:00 Preparing for Legal Tasks  
14:00 Final Advice for Aspiring Lawyers  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back to Lawsy Originals. I'm here with Louis. Would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Of course. My name is Louie Sheridan. I'm a future trainee solicitor at Paul Weiss, having been given an offer in December of 2025, and I am due to start in 2027.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Thank you. So I have to break the ice with a very boring question. I'm wondering what made you want to pursue a career in commercial law.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

To be honest, I don't think it's boring at all because I love this question. I can uh almost pinpoint exactly the moment I decided commercial law is what I wanted to do. And I was walking to uh a university lecture one morning when I decided to play a book, an audible book I downloaded some days before, uh The Caesars Polis Coup. And it's really, it can seem really quite dry. It's a book about uh this billion-dollar corporate restructuring and leverage buyout uh of the Caesars Entertainment Group. And I mean, the opening scene to set it in context is a New York City law firm boardroom, fleets of lawyers, these superstar lawyers, it's the biggest financial titans in the world, your biggest private equity funds, hedge funds. And it's the clash between those two. And I think from that moment, by the time I had finished listening to the to the end of that chapter, I realized that I was just hooked. Um, so for me, pursuing commercial law at the start was quite visceral. It was, it just seemed high stakes, intense, exciting, exhilarating, really. It was only after some time that I really came to appreciate that, well, why is it I really like this stuff? And when I had to articulate it for the purposes of law firm interviews, it came clear to me, it became clear to me that what really stood out to me about per commercial law in particular, was that to really understand that stuff, I found myself reading textbooks and accounting and credit analysis and finance, finance fundamentals. So it really seemed commercial law really stood out to me as as being for somebody prepared to really master the really tough, technical, difficult, dense stuff. To me, that sounded inherently intellectually um stimulating. And for that reason, it just it seemed like something I could I could really um give a good go. Um so that's why I pursued commercial law.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Well, you certainly gave it a very good go in securing a trading contract with Paul Weiss. I was thinking that Paul Weiss is very, very selective with their cohorts, if I'm correct, in that their trading contract is very new and they don't take on so many trainees. So I'm wondering how you went about making a standout application for a firm like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Of course, the first thing I would say to anybody applying to any firm really is not to self-select out. So the first start is almost to apply. And I think that's glaringly obvious, but it's worth saying because a lot of exceptional people I know certainly self-select out because of this fear that this firm's too good for them or takes certain people. It's complete nonsense. Um, everybody, there's so many perfectly capable people. So the first step really is to apply and not to be startled by the statistics, which can make it seem astronomically, you know, just astronomically difficult. So that's the first stage. I think I think with a lot of schemes, getting a scheme comes down to really in the written stages writing with a lot of impact. Don't say stuff that you don't mean or don't believe. Um a lot of a lot of times I've seen things written like, you know, I like dynamic, fast-paced environments. I never understood what that meant. Um to me, it seems more to me, it seems more fitting with like an F1 application or something. Um cross-border work is another one. A lot of people very convincingly talk about their love of cross-border work, but I just couldn't personally rationalise why that was particularly interesting. To me, I thought, well, you can have a you can have an insanely interesting case that involves no more than one jurisdiction. And so just because I couldn't explain it to myself, I've never write that. Plenty of people do, and they do it very well. I just didn't. But the point is that writing an impactful application means being sincere, authentic. And I think the best way to do that is to say stuff you believe. I mean, for context, my Paul Weiss application, very short, very punchy sentences, don't repeat platitudes that you've heard elsewhere, as you say, cliches. So I would say, rather than talking about how it's an international law firm, I would I I simply said, look, for somewhere for someone with my interest in debt finance, this is the place to be full stop. And that's kind of the approach I would take. And then I would say for for every every time I read Bloomberg Law, newsletters, Paul Weiss stood out the most high-stakes deals, sophisticated clients, again, this is the this is the place to be. So I I I think standing out in applications, yes, there's a lot of work in advance, but what when it comes down to writing applications, I think a lot can be said for for thinking deeply and independently about well, why is it this firm? Why is it commercial law, then writing really short, really punchy, dramatic sentences. It should be glaringly obvious to the person reading your application that this person means what they say. Um that that can seem quite vague, but I think it's for me, that's what I always kept in mind with every sentence I wrote. So to me, I think that's one way you can really stand out in an application, your style of your style of writing.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

I completely agree. And when lawyers write to clients, they don't write in beautiful prose with sentences stretching across five lines. They want to keep it simple and get to the point because a client is not going to enjoy reading 10 lines of prose about how you came to your conclusion. They just want your conclusion. And they also don't want to hear something that they already know. So some applicants will write things in their written answers, which are just facts about the firm that are Googlable. Of course. And that's just reiterating things that graduate recruitment already know. But with Paul Weiss as well, they are quite a specialized firm, particularly in London, with their office having very niche practice areas. So could you explain what they do?

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Paul Weiss in London will be most well known, perhaps, for its real top-of-the-market focus on private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies. So the London office really, really has exceptionally strong offerings across the entire breadth of transactional practices, MA, finance, debt finance, debt capital markets. Um, but increasingly uh a strong point of Paul Weiss is the strategic public um MA for strategic clients. So really what the Paul Weiss offering is is top-notch across all of those key um transactional transactional practices that across the entire life, um, the lifespan of a classic private equity transaction deal. Um so and that includes the sort of the stellar teams in tax and and IP. Um but ultimately really it's a very, very strong focus in in sponsor side, sponsor side work.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

So with their very strong focus on such particular specialisms, it seems that you must have known that that's what you wanted to specialize in yourself from quite early on. And I think a point which students and training contract applicants struggle with sometimes is that they are unable to make genuine applications because they don't actually know what type of law they're interested in or what kind of law they want to practice. So, how did you discover that that's what you wanted to do particularly?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

It's a good question because for me, and it's said to me a lot, you've focused quite, you've siloed yourself almost quite quite early on. Don't do that, obviously. But but how did I how did I develop or acquire that interest? Very simply, that book was the first introduction to this world of private capital. And I said that repeatedly on applications because it was true. I was just caught up in it, right? It was a world previously completely unknown to me. And so, since reading that, I was determined to learn as much as possible as I could because the ultimate goal was well, how can I be the technically the best lawyer that I could be? And that would mean that would mean chasing every avenue of content within that book that I didn't understand. So I would start reading textbooks on debt finance, on credit analysis, on accounting, and it might seem difficult and dense. To me, that was kind of the attraction. And once you do that, once you find something you read, you might stumble upon it, keep an open mind, obviously be curious, that's the most important thing. But then just chase it. So I would I would chase it. I would I would uh seek out textbooks, podcasts, webinars, those kinds of things. So that's how I develop that that interest. But all the while, and this is what I would say to people who who are unsure, you don't need to be sure. There are plenty of lawyers who are unsure. Um, and it's only when they take a seat on qualification that they think I'm going to qualify into this practice area. Totally fine. It's much better to keep an open mind, be curious, than to be fixated very early on. That said, technical knowledge, I think is a great way to demonstrate enthusiasm and curiosity. So although technical knowledge and all of those things that aren't required, uh I think it's I think it's a great way to show your curiosity and enthusiasm. So to that person who doesn't know what they want to do, I'd say read voraciously, really become a voracious reader, absorb all you can, learn all you can. Very quickly, you'll find I'm quite interested in that. So chase it up. When you read it in Bloomberg Law newsletters or the FT, you know, delve into it further and learn all you can about it. All the while keeping it open in mind because when you're sat in an interview with a partner, they may well not be a partner in that area of your particular interest, but you still need to be able to have a conversation. So read widely, and that's that's that's something I definitely prioritized.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Or on the flip side, if they are a partner in the area which you claim to have a special interest in, but then you're completely unable to discuss this special interest you so claim to have, quickly it becomes revealed that it wasn't a genuine interest. So it seems that you would have built very thorough commercial awareness ahead of your VAC scheme just through the quantity and the breadth and the depth of the reading that you undertook. So I'm wondering with that commercial awareness in mind, how did you apply that on your VAC scheme? And how did it come up in order to help you then obviously convert that VAC scheme into a training contract?

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Well, this is a good point because when you when you talk about commercial awareness, one thing I really would stress is that the key is not to acquire all this knowledge to go in and think you know anywhere near as much as the lawyer interviewing you. That's a big mistake. So that's not the aim. You don't want to impress, try and impress people with your knowledge because, well, at least in my case, you know, you might be different, other people might be different. I know for a fact that I know so uh there's so much more than I, you know, that I that I really know. But the key is to to develop all this, to do all this reading, to get interested in as much as you can in order to have a conversation with people. That's where I think commercial awareness is applied on a scheme. It's not so much in the tasks you do, you can't really anticipate what'll come up on a scheme, but it's certainly in the in in the ability, you want to give, you want to prepare yourself to have a conversation with with lawyers on a on a scheme. To give an example, I was fascinated with corporate restructuring, debt finance, and so that's where a lot of my reading very early on was focused. I would sit in, well, I would lie, I would watch the live streams of Court of Appeal hearings and huge restructuring cases. And on one scheme in particular, I happened to have a conversation, a coffee chat with a solicitor, and having spoken to them for a while, it became clear that they had been sitting in on this Court of Appeal case, which I had watched the entire live stream of. And so it's things like that where you can you can leverage what you know or to to have an engaging conversation with people. So that's that's how I would apply commercial awareness. You're not going in, you're certainly not going in to make it seem that you think you're a you know a know-it-all, because in my case, I'm not. Um, but but it's a great way. It's a it's it's a really great way to be genuinely uh to be genuinely curious and enthusiastic. And and that's ultimately what what I think I was trying to do on schemes. That's really really what matters, aptitude rather than knowledge or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

And on your VAC scheme at Paul Wise specifically, what did you actually do in terms of tasks and assessments? Just, you know, for somebody if they have a VAC scheme coming up, how should they know what to expect?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Vacation schemes generally follow the same kind of structures. You'll typically be given work by a supervisor in finance that might be going through facility agreements, taking templates and updating them, you know, in line with the or in light of the the details of the New Deal. They're all they're all things that you you don't need any prior background for. This is what I would say. I would also say that because it's difficult to anticipate exactly what you will have to be asked to do in a scheme, so it could be those tasks in in finance, could be research tasks in a litigation where you'll be expected to to go off, review the law in one area and come back with a a neat, distilled summary for a for a senior lawyer. All that said, what I would say that what I always say to people before scheme is I think it should be reassuring of some reassurance before scheme that there is really not as much preparation that you can do that there really isn't much preparation you can do in advance. And I think that is reassuring because to me it's the little things on a scheme that matter much more. It's being polite, being kind, being enthusiastic, curious. Those things matter much more than how do I prepare for this task I'm going to be given in in corporate M ⁇ A and funds and finance. Um so you'll appreciate I'm being quite vague and it's deliberately because I can't possibly anticipate what'll be on people's schemes, my schemes. I've always thought that those were the most important things, the the little things.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

I agree. I think it's very difficult to be able to anticipate a particular type of assessment or task you'll be faced with. But in general, you know, if you'll be in a litigious seat or a contentious seat, if you're non-law, then it's good to familiarize yourself with West Law and LexusNexis. If you've never used those platforms, in case you're asked to do a research task. And if you're in a transactional seat, then it's good to just familiarize yourself with the basic documents that might be involved in a transaction. Just so when somebody asks you to review a term sheet, then you're not completely at a loss.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Very true. And and you'll develop that doing reading widely. Of course. And that's how I would come across a lot of those terms. One book I'd recommend, Pragmatist Guide to Leverage Finance. I find that massively, massively beneficial. But you're of course, you're right. Um being familiar generally with the with the kind of especially vocabulary and jargon that you'll come across is is immensely helpful too.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

And I think if you are genuinely interested in the career, that's things that you should know anyway, just through the application research that you've put in and all of your reading around it. So I think there's been so much value in everything you've shared today. I've learned from you, and I can't thank you enough for coming on. Thank you very much. So best of luck with the SQE. I'm sure you'll be absolutely fine. And good luck with your training contract as well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Thank you.