Team Insights – Harrison Fearn
Next in our Team insights series we are featuring Harrison Fearn, a senior Trainee solicitor. Harrison’s journey with IHLS began in a paralegal role, where his commitment, strong interest in commercial and corporate work and good rapport with clients and the rest of the team, has allowed him to progress within the business, where he will qualify as an in-house solicitor next month. As he approaches the final stages of his training contract, he reflects not only on his professional growth but also on the varied responsibilities he’s taken on within the team.
My role at IHLS
I am one of the more senior Trainee Solicitors within the team at IHLS, due to qualify at the start of July 2025. I work on various commercial and corporate matters, ranging from longer form commercial engagements or advice notes on our On Demand Solution with oversight from our senior solicitors, or shorter form transactional contracts on our Transaction Support Solution whereby I supervise the work of our paralegals and associate paralegals, providing guidance and feedback. Further, I lead our morning meetings, allocating work to all fee-earning team members.
Finally, I am the head of the Social Champion Group, whereby I organise our internal socials and events for team members.
What is your prior experience and why did you choose to pursue a career as an in-House solicitor?
My first insight to law was during various work experience schemes at private firms in London, and barristers’ chambers in the south. From there, I realised that I may want to pursue a career in law. I elected to do a Contract Law module in my first year of university while studying Ancient History as a major, and from there realised contract law is an umbrella terms for a variety of areas of law that I could specialise in. Once completing my first degree, I converted to law via the GDL, completed my LLM, and started work at In-House Legal Solutions. Being an in-house lawyer appealed to me given the breadth of work you get to see and the opportunity to be experienced in a variety of areas but focused on legal risk management; not being locked in to one niche area.
What is the key to managing In-house stakeholders effectively?
From my experience so far I would say it is to always keep the stakeholders’ specific business and project needs at the forefront of your mind, and feed back to the client clearly, pragmatically, and in a personable fashion with solutions – not over complicating any advice with ‘legalese’.
What do you like about your role?
I enjoy the variety of projects and clients that I work with, but also the scale of our work. From some of the largest investment firms and advisors in the world, to local bespoke service providers; with some of the projects I have led or worked on, appearing in the news. This provides an enormous sense of achievement that my work has contributed to something so vast.
It has been said that I am a people person and being given responsibility of working closely with our paralegal team, senior solicitors, and clients means I can put my communication skills to use. Paired with this, I am the Social Lead for IHLS, so I have had the opportunity to organise socials for my co-workers, which not only includes small events, but also the staff Christmas-do and other themed evenings – which again is rewarding seeing the team out and enjoying themselves at an event I have put together from scratch.
What advice would you give to aspiring in-house law professionals?
Always take the opportunities given to you, be it a piece of work from someone senior that you may not at first understand, or a client asking for something out of the ordinary; keeping chipping away and furthering your understanding and in the end you will have a better skillset to take onwards to the next task and another feather in your cap.