Consulting is problem solving, with excellent PowerPoint. And in any business context both problem solving and sadly, PowerPoint, are crucial.
Aside from skills with slide formatting, consulting provides you with many of the foundational skills you need in your business career, whether that’s issue based problem solving, the pyramid principle (communications) or business/investment case development. On top of this, most consultants will experience multiple roles across industries and departments. They will get an appreciation of the shared problems that exist across industries.

The main lesson for me has been to remind myself that there is a great deal that legal can learn from other industries. One of my biggest operational wins was helping a legal team understand the importance of process improvement, not by framing it in a legal context but taking them on a job swap to one of the world’s largest aircraft engineering firms to see process improvement at scale. By the end of our day the lead partner was having an in depth conversation with the head of engineering, “in a world where we are all being asked to do more with less, how can we maintain quality whilst bringing on and developing the next generation of talent”. Despite being in completely different industries they were exchanging ideas on a shared problem. This “ah-ha” moment for the team lead to a much better outcome for the programme.