I learned to swim when I was four, but I never thought I would do it professionally. I started learning at my aunt’s house in Australia, and continued when I got back to the UK alongside my best friend.

I did it on and off, because as I only had one hand I felt I wasn’t progressing as fast as everyone else. It wasn’t until I was ten that I watched the Beijing Paralympics and saw that Ellie Simmons was competing at age thirteen. I was in awe, and that made me want to learn to swim professionally, in the hope of being a Paralympian. I was lucky that my parents believed in me and so we found someone to coach me!

Around the same time, I started to attend summer camps for children with arm deficiencies. There was a girl there who was ten years older than me, and she was studying law, and had a boyfriend, and that meant a lot to see someone doing everything while having one arm like me. She was the first person I had seen like me achieving all these things. And that was my first introduction to the idea of law.

In the meantime, I ended up qualifying for my first Paralympics at age 13, and went on to win a bronze medal in Rio in 2016. When I came back from Rio, I went to university as it was what I had been encouraged to do at school. But by January I still didn’t feel it was for me. I decided to leave and come home and look for apprenticeships I could do instead.

This was back in 2017, so apprenticeships weren’t as well known for areas like solicitors. My mum encouraged me to do one, but my dad had negative views of it because he had been a painting and decorating apprentice and his experience was of a minimum wage job where you weren’t treated as well as the rest of the team. It was through trawling the government website with my mum to find a role that we saw the solicitor apprentice route and that’s when I thought this could be for me!

Trying to find an apprenticeship is definitely a challenge when you start. And at the time I felt there was a real stigma around leaving university to start an apprenticeship.

However, since I started at BPP I knew it was right decision for me. You get involved in all sorts of things from day one in-house and that level of responsibility continues to grow as you progress. I’ve worked on everything from data protection matters, contract work, litigation work, international expansion work, as well as internal and student complaints.

One of the challenges is that trying to maintain a good work/life balance can be tricky. You have to get used to working and studying at the same time. But it helps you grow, to develop time management skills and responsibility.

There is also nothing better than working with qualified lawyers day to day, because it genuinely feels like that is no one else best placed to teach a solicitor apprentice straight out of school.

Typically, Monday is my allocated study day, as we are entitled to 20 per cent off the job to study, and then the rest of the week I spend doing the practical work alongside the rest of the team.

Being a solicitor apprentice can be lonely, so in September 2021, I set up the BPP legal apprentice society which provides a safe place to network, connect and have support while doing your apprenticeship. When I started I didn’t know how to connect with other apprentices and didn’t want others to feel like they are on their own – so I’d always encourage people to look out for networks.

My piece of advice for aspiring apprentices is always the same: be brave! If something does interest you, try to learn as much as you can and be brave enough to trust your gut and try it.

Amy Marren is a former Paralympian turned solicitor apprentice in-house at BPP