Hi, I’m Edyta.
I’m a derivatives lawyer, former corporate girl and now an entrepreneur.
I spent years inside Credit Suisse and Man Group, negotiating the agreements behind global financial markets. Today, I run my own legal consultancy and DerivativesLab - an education platform for lawyers who want to understand the parts of this profession that are rarely taught.
This account is for lawyers, paralegals and future lawyers who want to get closer to the business.
The ones who want to understand:
• what lawyers inside investment banks and asset managers actually do
• how complex negotiations work in practice
• how legal judgment is built under pressure
• how technical lawyers become trusted commercial advisers
I call this legal alchemy: learning to move between technical expertise, strategy and influence - depending on what the situation requires.
If you are curious about negotiating legal contracts, or what an in-house legal career in banking and finance really involves, comment IN-HOUSE and I’ll send you my free training.
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The first online platform delivering derivatives documentation know-how & training courses globally!
22/08/2026
Legal’s reputation isn’t built on saying no. It’s built on how.
Five ways to hold the line without becoming the blocker.
Which one do you use? And which ones have I missed? Let me know below.
Some lawyers keep climbing — bigger jobs, bigger opportunities, bigger salaries. Others stay exactly where they are.
Sixteen years across global in-house teams, and it’s almost never about technical legal knowledge.
Five things that actually take you far.
None of them are on a job spec. But they’re what I’d tell anyone starting out.
Want to know what this job really involves day to day? I recorded a full training on it — comment REPLAY and I’ll send it over.
Some lawyers keep climbing — bigger jobs, bigger opportunities, bigger salaries. Others stay exactly where they are.
Sixteen years across global in-house teams, and it’s almost never about technical legal knowledge.
Five things that actually take you far 👆
None of them are on a job spec. But they’re what I’d tell anyone starting out.
Want to know what this job really involves day to day? I recorded a full training on it — comment REPLAY and I’ll send it over.
17/08/2026
A technically correct answer can still be commercially unusable.
I understood this more clearly when I moved from the sell-side to the buy-side.
I found myself arguing against clauses I had once defended.
In-house, you move between three roles.
Technician.
You understand what the clause says, how it interacts with the rest of the document and what happens if it is triggered. You can translate that analysis into advice the business can actually use.
Tactician.
You read the negotiation around the document. You understand the people, pressure points and internal decision-making. You know when an issue needs escalation, when it can be traded and when holding your position will achieve very little.
Magician.
You stop treating the problem as binary. You reframe it, restructure it or find another route through it. You turn “no” into “not like that.”
The difficult part is not performing each role in isolation.
It is recognising which one the situation requires — and moving between them without losing credibility.
That combination is what I call legal alchemy.
Which role occupies most of your time?
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