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‘I just think differently’: how an autistic lawyer landed his dream career
Property lawyer Martin Whitehorn says the legal profession is opening up to more neurodiverse talent
For Martin Whitehorn a career in law was never on the agenda. “I thought I might be a writer, but I just didn’t have any good ideas for stories,” he tells me over Zoom from the bustling office of Julie West Solicitors in Leatherhead, England, where he is now a fully qualified and practising lawyer. In fact, the idea of becoming a solicitor wouldn’t have crossed his mind had a good friend not told him she was about to pursue a graduate diploma in law in Surrey. At the time, he was struggling to find a job he enjoyed after graduating with an English degree and was making money working odd jobs washing dishes and wrapping up boxes.
It was a leap of faith that turned out much better than he expected; Whitehorn really enjoyed his legal practice course at The University of Law in Guildford, and took a part-time job working with high-risk offenders during their rehabilitation into society. With all of this experience, finding a job should have been easy, but it wasn’t. Every opening he came across needed “six to 12 months experience in a law firm for a so-called entry level job,” he says. “Reflecting back on it now, often those things are more of a wish list than a must have, but it put me off from applying nonetheless.”
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