Transferrable Skills with Amit Kapoor
Transferrable Skills with Amit Kapoor. Amit explains how he draws on his IT background and applies those skills in his work as a solicitor.
Transferrable Skills with Amit Kapoor
Question 1
Did your engineering / IT background influence how you approach legal problems or contract drafting?
Yes, particularly in how I think about structure and inter-dependence. In engineering and software, you learn quickly that one line of code can change the behaviour of an entire system. I approach contracts the same way: clauses don’t exist in isolation, they interact. I tend to triangulate provisions across a contract to make sure they are logically coherent and actually produce the commercial outcome the parties intend. That systems level thinking comes directly from my technical background.
Question 2
Looking back: is there anything from your IT career that you now see as a potential disadvantage when practising law? (if yes, how did you adapt)
The biggest challenge wasn’t technical, it was cultural. In most industries, progression is defined by hierarchy and role. In law, I had to re-orient myself around something else: value. I moved from building software for clients to advising them on their rights and risks much further upstream in the value chain. That shift took conscious unlearning & keeping on my path despite stereotypical views of what progression in that career ought to look like.
Question 3
For someone coming from a non law background, what are the “hidden” soft skills or less-obvious strengths they have that law firms may undervalue but actually pay off later?
Commercial empathy. People don’t come to lawyers with “legal problems”. They come with business, career, or personal problems that happen to have a legal dimension. Coming from outside law, I’m often quicker to uncover what actually matters to the client. When clients feel truly understood, they trust the advice and that’s where effective lawyering really begins.
Question 4
As someone who has lived through major technological shifts in IT and now in law, what do you believe will be the “non-negotiable” skills for solicitors in the next 5 or 10 years?
Adaptability. Every generation of technology builds on the last. Lawyers who opt out of today’s tools, especially AI, aren’t standing still, they’re falling behind. The future isn’t about replacing judgment with machines; it’s about lawyers who know how to use new tools intelligently to think faster, see more, and advise better.
Question 5
What’s one belief about the legal profession that you held before you started your training, which turned out to be completely wrong?
I thought legal careers were driven primarily by visible merit that outstanding work would naturally attract opportunity. In reality, the system is designed more around consistency and throughput: delivering large volumes of competent work.
