Advice To My Younger Self
Following her international law firm career, alumna Kirstin Gould joined the legal department of XL Group (formerly XL Capital) in Bermuda, becoming General Counsel in 2007. She talks about moving in-house and discovering herself amid the financial crisis.
Becoming a lawyer wasn’t a lifelong dream. Like many, I fell into it by happenstance. When I finished college, having a graduate degree was seen as a good career move, and it is even more so today. I also looked at skillsets and chose graduate studies that would play to my strengths, writing in particular.
Having sampled both litigation and transactional work as a summer associate, I soon realized that I preferred the corporate side. I spent my first years out of law school in New York City primarily working on mergers and acquisitions and securities offerings. By 2000, I was with Clifford Chance in London on the US securities team.
