Legal, and above bored

Thiona McQuiston was 16 when she left Ayr Academy with two O grades and the promise of a job as an office junior with Kyle & Carrick District Council's finance office. Today she is a trainee solicitor with an Ayrshire legal company.

However, when she left school she was quite content with what life was offering her. Although she describes herself as ''not motivated at all in school'', that attitude seemed to change fairly quickly once she started work.

During her first seven years she was steadily promoted because of her obvious interest in improving her skills by taking evening classes in shorthand, and she eventually became a secretary with the council.

She also got married to Peter, a local customer manager with BT, and when her first daughter Nicola was born in 1982, Thiona took three years off before going back to work part-time with an insurance agent. For the next two years she worked as a secretary, still comfortable with the work. Her second daughter Ainsleah was born in November 1987 and Thiona took a year out before deciding to go back to work.

However, childcare caused a problem, and when Thiona saw that a local legal firm, The McKinstray Company, was looking for secretaries to work in the evenings, the situation seemed ideal. ''At that time Peter finished work at 4pm,'' she says, ''so he would take over three evenings a week while I went to work from 5.30pm to 8.30pm.''

It wasn't long before the convenience of the job paled into insignificance when compared to Thiona's enjoyment of the work. ''I had never thought of working in a legal office,'' she says. ''But from the moment I started I really enjoyed it. I asked one of the partners if I could use their books to further my knowledge, and when I was asked two years later if I would work during the day, I started to concentrate on wills, trusts and executries. It was fascinating.''

Strathclyde University was running a para-legal course for one evening a week and Thiona enrolled, completing the course in 1993. It was to prove a significant turning point in her career.

''Maybe it was an age thing, to a certain extent,'' she says. ''But I remember thinking 'I'm 35 - what am I doing and where am I going?' This company has always been keen on training and promoting staff, so it was easy to consider my options with them.

''I thought of doing another course, maybe an HND in legal studies, and then one of the senior partners said I was just putting off what I wanted to do.''

That was all the spur Thiona needed. She knew that she was contemplating a big step in applying to do a part-time LLB, and combining family life and work with all the study that would be involved, but the induction day convinced her she was doing the right thing.

''I came home really excited and said so to Peter,'' she says. ''The next morning I got up at 5.30am and set up a timetable for the weeks ahead, with every hour of the day outlined, and every aspect of my life taken into account.''

Seven years on, and in the first year of her traineeship, Thiona can still hardly believe that her famous timetable worked. ''Peter and the girls were really supportive and helpful, I couldn't have done it without them.'' Ainsleah has grown up with her mother studying, and Nicola worked with her through school exams and into her Social Studies degree at Paisley University.

If it all seemed to be running away from her, Thiona went back to the timetable, took a deep breath and started working from it again. The LLB can be accelerated, which is exactly what Thiona managed in her last two years, by taking six modules a year to accelerate the course by a year. By that stage she felt confident enough to take on the extra workload, and felt that working and studying had become a way of life.

Entry into the course had been on the strength of her experience, and an interview, and her firm funded her throughout. The final part of her course was the Diploma in Legal Practice, which was the only point when she studied full-time, from October through to May.

Next year, on completion of her traineeship, she will be a qualified lawyer in the practice where she started as a part-time secretary. Although proud of what she has achieved, in many ways that will be the real beginning.

''I plan to specialise in family law,'' she says. ''That's what really started my interest in becoming a lawyer and it remains as fascinating to me now.''

Thiona is matter of fact about her career change, and insists it would not have happened without the support of her family and The McKinstray Company.

''If you have that level of support, then all you have to do is focus on getting there,'' she says. ''It's good for our daughters to realise that you can make changes to your life, and that working for something is worthwhile.

''I know I've done a lot of studying over the past few years but as much as possible we've done all the usual family things such as enjoying holidays where we can all switch off. Workwise, I haven't changed. I'm the same person, just doing a different job. And I still love it.''

Two O Grades

Shorthand qualification

Paralegal certificate in wills, trusts and executries.

LLB Strathclyde

Diploma in Legal Practice

Salary: first year trainee #10,000; second year trainee #13,000. Qualified solicitor #18,000+

l Don't look too far ahead, concentrate on one area or qualification at a time.

l For courses or studying, plan your workload and stick to it as much as possible.

l Be focused. Anyone can do anything they really want.

l If you don't try, you'll never know.

l Just go ahead and do it.

l Follow a timetable and ignore the teasing.

Letters of the law: having a degree, says Thiona McQuiston, means that she's still the same person, but now doing a different job