Preventing art fraud: meet microplacement law student Shamara Blaize interning at Wedlake Bell

“Art fraud is more common than you would expect,” says law student Shamara Blaize. “As part of my microplacement at Wedlake Bell, I visited the library in the Victorian & Albert (V&A) for the first time to do research.”

20-year-old student Shamara is about to start the third year of her LLB in Law at City, University of London. She spent the month of June working at the prestigious law firm Wedlake Bell for her microplacement. The microplacement is an internship which is a graded module and counts towards her final degree.

Wedlake Bell is a prestigious independent law firm based in the heart of the city of London, nestled between St Paul’s and Mansion House. The firm has been running for over 230 years, advising companies and private clients alike.

At the firm, student Shamara worked in the private client division across two teams: the onshore team, which works with private UK-based clients, and the arts team, which deals with legal matters related to art pieces.

Among other tasks, the arts team carries out research to trace art pieces and verify if they are real, or if they are copies of original pieces and Shamara’s field visit to V&A library was part of that research.

“Researching different artists and visiting the V&A museum was a really fun experience,” Shamara says.

As well as doing field research, her tasks included working on preparing a legal notice ahead of a client meeting, drafting a will and researching legal summaries. She attended a client networking event which she describes as the highlight of her microplacement as it gave her insights into the client-lawyer relationship.

"Wedlake Bell have been hosting microplacement students for several years now. The microplacements offer such valuable experience for students and it was great to see Shamara, and our other students, developing during the course of the placement," says Annabel Hale, Early Careers Manager at Wedlake Bell.

The Law School has a longstanding relationship with Wedlake Bell and this September, the firm was pleased to welcome back a former City intern as a Trainee Solicitor.

Working across very different topics throughout the month was an “eye-opening” experience which gave Shamara a deeper insight into the different career paths available as a lawyer.

“At times you might feel kind of lost, but our supervisors were able to show us the right way,” Shamara says.

The internship at Wedlake Bell was sourced by the Careers Team and advertised to all undergraduate students on the microplacement programme. Shamara believes her extra-curricular activities helped her application stand out.

Last year, she was the Mayor of London entrepreneurship intern, a role which she found through a listing published by City’s Student Union. This experience was an asset in her interview with Wedlake Bell.

“Corporate and commercial law firms like Wedlake Bell want solicitors with an entrepreneurial mindset so that they can understand business and their clients better,” she added.

Shamara is actively involved in student life and holds the role of Finance Officer of the Women in Law Society, for which she hosted a ‘Black Women in Law’ series during Black History Month last November which won City’s Student Union event of the year.

Microplacements are a key part of City’s Career Activation Plan (CAP). The CAP places employability at the centre of the curriculum, ensuring students get both theoretical employability skills and practical career experience by the time they graduate.

This means that students like Shamara are already one step up the ladder when they graduate and are readier to enter the world of work.

For now, Shamara hasn’t decided what to specialise in. Law allows her to be continually learning and to keep broadening her mind.

“Law is all encompassing,” she says. “Everything you do, everything you have, everything has a law behind it. Whether that be patents or real estate – law impacts everything from the building I’m sitting in down to the headphones I’m wearing.”

As for her career ambitions, Shamara wants to be a commercial solicitor and “a great person to all those around me.”