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Interview
The Eagle Interviews Emma Boylan, Associate Solicitor at the Maples Group By Emma Bowie, JS Law Emma Boylan is an Associate Solicitor at the Maples Group in Dublin and a member of the firm’s pro bono committee. After graduating from Trinity with a BA in History and English Literature in 2015, Emma undertook two postgraduate law degrees before joining the Maples Group as a Trainee Solicitor in 2018. In this interview, she speaks to Editorial Board member Emma Bowie about her professional journey, the Maples Group corporate social responsibility initiative, and the benefits of pro bono work for local communities in Dublin. Photo courtesy of Emma Boylan & The Maples Group
You have had quite a varied educational path, having initially studied English and History at Trinity, after which you pursued a Postgraduate Diploma in Law at DIT, and then a Master of Laws in Trinity. Why did you decide to pursue a legal education after your initial undergraduate degree? When I finished my undergraduate degree, I did not have any inkling of what I wanted to do. When you finish an Arts degree, there can often be a push to go into a postgraduate degree of some sort, but at that point in my life, I really wanted to do something practical and be out in the workforce. A few of my friends had mentioned that a career in law would be a good fit for somebody who had studied history – there are quite a lot of parallels in terms of how law and history approach their subject matter – and so I decided to apply for the one-year DIT postgraduate course. I really loved it – the course provides a really helpful introduction to the core law modules, and is also geared towards FE1 study. Once I had finished the diploma, I decided that I would do the LL.M. in Trinity, and use that year as an opportunity to have a better building block for my legal career. I found the LL.M. and the diploma to be quite different: while the diploma was focused on core modules such as contract and torts, the subjects available to study in the LL.M. course were quite varied, ranging from the death penalty in the US to Islamic law. I think it is good to have a pairing of the academic and the practical when studying law, as having a sense of general legal principles is always helpful in the practice of law. By the time that I had started my training contract with the Maples Group, I managed to complete the LL.M. course as well as my FE1 exams. Why did you decide to pursue a career in corporate law, and specifically, what attracted you to working with the Maples Group? I did a three week internship with the Maples Group Corporate team after completing my initial postgraduate diploma. I only had one year of law under my belt at that stage, but even with that, I found that studying and
