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Please state the month/year you interviewed at the firm.

March 2022

Please specify what the interview was for.

Summer Vacation Scheme 2022

Please give an overview of the day with approximate timings.

10:30 - Interview with 1 Counsel and 1 Graduate Recruiter (there were different time slots for each candidate to select from)
until 00:00 - Written Exercise (to be completed at some point that day, up until 00:00)

Please provide a summary of each assessment on the day with approximate timings.

1) Interview - 45 minutes to discuss your motivations, commercial awareness and competencies.

2) Written Exercise - 75 minutes to write a memorandum. You have to read through 4 news articles (the theme was topical and you would have heard about it if you had kept up with the commercial news over the past few months) and summarise: the key points raised, the issues & effects on the business of the client, and suggested precautions or next steps in connection with the issues identified.

Please list any interview questions you were asked.

Tell us about yourself.
Why White & Case?
Tell us about your journey to get here today, pursuing a career in a commercial law firm.
Why did you study your degree?
What makes a good trainee?
Can you tell me 3 commercial issues that you believe will affect White & Case?
Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team.
Tell me about a time you had to deal with cultural difference.
Tell me about a time you showed resilience.
Tell me about a time you received constructive criticism.
Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult person or a complaint?
Is there anything else you have not mentioned but would like to bring up?

What is your best advice for each aspect of the assessment on the day? Please break this down for each assessment. This can include advice for preparation, as well as tips for the day.

1) Interview
The interview is CV-blind, so you need to try to get across your main USPs in your "Tell us about yourself" or "Is there anything else you have not mentioned?" questions. Most of the questions are competency and motivational. The motivational questions flow a lot from your own answers. Having a good reason for wanting to join the firm helps - for example experience at an Open Day or completing the White & Case Virtual Experience on Forage. Understanding the international nature of the firm, the training contract and some of the work the firm has done goes a long way. In addition to that, have a basic understanding of the core issues affecting law firms and commercial issues generally and understand how to use STAR/CAR for your own experiences to answer competency questions confidently.

2) Written Exercise
This is incredibly time pressured. My top recommendation is not to try and write about everything. Read the articles as fast as you can digest the content and then think, 'what were the key issues my client would be really panicking about in these articles' and write about 3-4 of them. If you try to fit everything in or be too comprehensive, you will run out of time. The news articles are usually very topical each year, so keeping on top of the main commercial news will always help as you will be more familiar with the content and be able to read/digest things faster (and even use some of your own knowledge in your recommendations). I also think it does help to have experience reading some Financial Times articles and practice summarising them (key points, issues, solutions) in an hour, if you do this a few times you will feel a lot more confident with the time pressures and if luck goes your way one of the articles/topics they use on the day might even be a one you've read before.

Were you successful?

Waiting to hear back

Hi everyone!

I have accepted a place to study the LLM Legal Practice in September at Guildford!

Is anyone doing the same course? Or does anyone have experience of the campus and what it’s like?

Thank you!!

The application process for TC's feels quite linear in that you aim to secure the VC and convert, and if not go straight to direct TC applications. It is my understanding that doing a BCL has little influence on your career prospects, but what if my extra-curriculars stagnated in this period. Would I be expected to continue extra-curricular involvement during the BCL? or could I simply focus solely on my academics and apply for TC's with essentially the same prospects as I had at undergrad?


EDIT - Also, if you secure a TC, do firms let you delay starting to complete a masters? Of course this would be at the firms discretion, but is it likely to happen at a large corporate firm?

Please state the month/year you interviewed at the firm.

March 2022

Please specify what the interview was for.

Summer Programme 2022

Please give an overview of the day with approximate timings.

9:30-12:30 - Group Exercise.
12:30-13:00 - Group presentations and networking for those not yet presenting.
13:00-14:00 - Break (at 13:30 candidates are informed whether they passed the group exercise and will be allocated interviews or not)
14:00-17:15 - Two interviews at allocated slots sometime throughout this period.

Please provide a summary of each assessment on the day with approximate timings.

1) Group Exercise (supervised by x 2 senior/special counsels)
3 minute mini-introduction (tell us about yourself, your interest in Cooley and a hobby)
15 minutes to read through a brief and 3 news articles
60 minutes group discussion (including creating a PowerPoint using a provided template) with the central objective being to suggest 3-5 legal tech ideas and the pros/cons for Cooley)
10 minute presentation to supervisors and 1 additional partner, with follow up questions tailored specifically to our presentation. There was one default question asked to each team member: "What were you thinking about and what was in the forefront of your mind when approaching this group exercise?"

2) Interviews 25 minutes each
1 with a partner
1 with a senior associate
Relaxed interviews focusing heavily on competency questions
The questions asked to each candidate were the same to make the process fair.

Please list any interview questions you were asked.

Why Cooley?
Why commercial law?
Tell me about yourself.
What led you to study your degree?
What have you thought about the assessment day so far?
Why [anything on your application form - these interviews are not CV-blind]?
Tell me about a time you had to explain something and it was difficult to get across your meaning.
Tell me about a time you received negative feedback.
Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult team member.
Tell me about a time you were entrepreneurial, innovative or went above and beyond your role.
Tell me about a time you dealt with differing viewpoints as part of a team.
Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team and had a disappointing result.

What is your best advice for each aspect of the assessment on the day? Please break this down for each assessment. This can include advice for preparation, as well as tips for the day.

1) Group Exercise
My advice would be to act natural and have the goal in the forefront of your mind. It is always unnatural and obvious who is not really listening to other candidates and is trying too hard to get across knowledge of the firm (even if irrelevant) because they are conscious that they’re being assessed. Similarly, it is difficult for assessors to grade you if you are too nervous and stay quiet. I think what allowed me to pass this round is not that I knew the most about technology or the firm (because other candidates knew more than me), but that I genuinely did forget the assessors were there, I listened to each team member very closely, took notes on what they said, responded to them and interacted with everyone as a team. When things went wrong, I reminded my group (e.g. time running low, misinterpreting instructions, miscommunication etc.) because I was making an effort to listen. If you try to be less concerned about what you say and more concerned about understanding and interacting with what other people say, you will do well even if you don’t have good ideas yourself, because you are proving that you are invested in the team.

2) Interviews
The interviews did not involve any commercial awareness related questions and not much of a motivational discussion. Practice competency based questions as much as possible as these form the basis of the interviews. An excellent resource is the TCLA 260+ Training Contract Interview Questions. Try to think about different issues/troubles you've encountered in all your experiences and how you resolved them. Try to be personable and show that you're listening by asking questions about the individual interviewers. It also doesn't hurt to slip in some commercial knowledge into your questions or to demonstrate why you like the firm in your answers (e.g. "how is X affecting your work?" or "...so, this experience really taught me to value different opinions and that's another reason why I'm drawn to Cooley, as the firm XYZ..." etc.)

Were you successful?

Waiting to hear back

Please state the month/year you interviewed at the firm.

February 2022

Please specify what the interview was for.

Vacation Scheme 2022

Please give an overview of the day with approximate timings.

11:30-13:00 Written Exercise supervised by one member of Graduate Recruitment (half of the candidates do the written exercise first and the other half do the interview first).
13:00-13:15 Break.
13:15-14:00 Interview with one member of Graduate Recruitment and one Associate.
14:00-14:15 Trainee Q&A with one trainee to two candidates.

Please provide a summary of each assessment on the day with approximate timings.

1) Written Exercise - 60 minutes in-person (or 75 minutes online) In-tray/E-tray exercise.
The exercise replicated a trainee's inbox with various tasks of differing priority to complete. We were instructed to prioritise and work through the tasks. As this simulates an email inbox, you are only allowed to open the final task 20 minutes before the end to replicate an urgent email coming through. Some of the tasks require you to read, digest and summarise quickly, others are more about attention to detail in spotting mistakes. Note that there wasn't any task that required outside commercial awareness or knowledge, but if you kept up with the news regularly and had read about the topic before, it would help.
The tasks included: summarising news articles into a client memo, reviewing an NDA, collating information from an email chain, suggesting Grad Recruitment university careers event ideas and responding to emails generally (e.g. other members of your team, partners in other departments, the CR&I committee etc.).

2) Interview - 45 minutes of competency, motivational and commercial awareness questions.
Many of the motivational and commercial awareness questions were aimed directly at private equity and working in a high pressure environment.

Please list any interview questions you were asked.

Tell me about yourself and what you are doing right now.
Why commercial law?
Why Weil - there are many elite international law firms, so why Weil?
Has there been a recent deal Weil was involved in that interests you?
What is your understanding of private equity?
What makes an M&A deal different from a private equity deal?
How does Weil make money?
Tell me about a time you've worked as part of a team.
Tell me about a time you've shown resilience to a high pressure, long hours environment?
Tell me about some of your university work, such as a dissertation, that you're proud of.
What skills did you gain from that university work that you would use working in my team?

What is your best advice for each aspect of the assessment on the day? Please break this down for each assessment. This can include advice for preparation, as well as tips for the day.

1) Written Exercise
From my feedback, I now understand that the main purpose of this exercise is prioritising and putting an adequate amount of time and detail into the tasks that you do decide to do. In other words, do not try to do many tasks superficially, only choose a couple/few and do them well. For example, when summarising the news articles for the client memo, make sure to show your analysis as well as rewording the facts from the articles. Keep in mind that the most urgent tasks (in my case the client memo and the NDA) are often the place to showcase your full written skills, analytical abilities and external knowledge, as replying to countless less important emails only shows that you type fast.

2) Interview
Research private equity and how the firm makes money well and understand why it is something that attracts you. I highly recommend TCLA's Private Equity course - it is definitely, definitely worth the premium membership, as it will give you everything you need to know to understand the sector for this and any future interviews/case studies. This interview was more casual than interviews I've had at other firms in the fact that they will not always probe you for further information and you need to be quite active in displaying your true knowledge. So, if you are asked 'what do you know about private equity?' or 'how does Weil make money?' do not be afraid to go off on a whole bit about what you do know - it shows research, dedication and commitment to learning. If you are interrupted, do not make that the reason you do not say what you want to get across. I think the vibe of the interview will be dictated by the associate you are with, but if you feel like they are not giving you room to put your full answer across, try as best you can to pack your answers full of researched information + why this relates to you. I think if you have a structure like: point + research + why does this relate to me/how does this show my interest for the firm , then you will do well. Don't get caught up talking about your university work unless it is directly related to the firm's work/why you want to work there, try to tailor any work you've done at uni to how the skills you've derived from that will benefit you in a career at Weil.

Were you successful?

No

TLDR: I was offered and accepted a Vac Scheme at my dream firm, but they have reached out to me explaining that they want to give me the option to switch streams into the direct TC recruitment stream as they are accelerating trainee recruitment. If I switch, I'll lose my Vac Scheme spot.

Background: I am a recent GDL graduate. After about 40 rejections over two recruitment rounds, I was stunned to receive an offer to interview at an excellent commercial firm in the city. I have been juggling several hospitality jobs to keep myself afloat while studying full-time, and as a result, I have no legal experience outside of my education. I was able to land the interview in part thanks to a diversity initiative I believe.

When I got the offer for a vac scheme, I was over the moon. I made it clear during my interview that I was lacking in experience in commercial law but was able to point out transferable skills.

Problem: The firm just contacted me proposing that I switch to the direct TC route as they are rapidly growing several trainee cohorts for 2023-24, and I am able to complete my SQE before then. My current vac scheme cohort leads into TCs in 2024. If I take their offer to switch, I would lose my vac scheme spot. I am extremely conflicted.

On one hand, this would mean several more interviews and assessment centres. As I lack experience, I would be very much on the back foot. I would also lose my chance at attending the vac scheme and gaining much-needed experience. I fear that I am already lagging behind, and if I miss out on my only vacation scheme, I will be extremely disappointed.

On the other hand, I do not want to seem uncooperative or lacking in ambition. The firm has made it clear that the firm is rapidly growing and needs more trainees. Both my parents are over the moon about the offer for a direct TC stream and interpret the interview offer as overwhelmingly good news.

I really am desperate for more experience. As I am lacking in this area, I believe my best chance at securing a TC is by showing up at the firm for a week to demonstrate my strengths in person. Would I be stupid to pass on their offer for the direct TC stream, or should I continue onto the Vac Scheme?

Many thanks! I really appreciate any advice you may have! The market is extremely competitive, and I feel like this one decision will make or break my legal career

I've currently got a range of open days to attend, but also have an upcoming legal cheek "vacation scheme". Is it worth attending? would it ever be appropriate or useful to talk about in applications or in interview?

Hey everyone

Was just wondering about the marking of Wills regarding the questions since its MCQ.

The marks are out of 100, and are 20 questions. Which means every question has 5 marks.

I have a few thoughts,and if anyone could clarify, this would be appreciated

1) Some questions required working out(IHT, Income Tax, CGT) etc, yet others are merely one question of knowledge(for e.g, about the adeemed gifts etc). Surely we get marks for working out or no? Was wondering how Ulaw work this out.
2) I saw someone on this forum say they failed the Wills exam by 1 mark. Meaning, every mark counts rather than 5 per question. This confused me, as I assumed it would be 5 marks per question. Any clarity would be appreciated.

I've got an open day in the next few weeks and was wondering how I get the firm to reimburse me. Do I contact them before the open day or after? Silly question I know, but I didn't want to give a bad impression by emailing them.

A couple of my applications which have been rejected have received a variation on this response:

"Please note, we considered your application to be particularly strong and would encourage you to reapply next year if you wish to do so."

Is this something they send to everyone, or should I take it as encouragement that I've been doing the right thing and I'm just applying too late? I recall being sent this response to my applications to CMS and BCLP, for example, both of which I believe review applications on a rolling basis, and both of which I applied to shortly before the deadline.

Thanks!

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Hi everyone, I've been struggling with being up to date on the news and expanding my commercial awareness.
I get overwhelmed by the amount of daily news, it takes up a lot of my time to read all the news updates, and I fail to recall most of what I've read after.

How do you approach reading the news?
Would you suggest reading just the big news summaries once a week?
Do you pick a certain practice area you are interested in and mostly focus on that area of deals/firm updates?
Do you focus on one specific firm? How do you manage to remember cases?
For an AC, how many news stories would you prepare?

While I read, I do think about how the news is relevant to law, the clients, etc. What are some ways I can make sure I am hitting the right ideas?

I'm applying for law and investment banking roles, and as such have a mix of extra-curriculars involving both. Should I still include things like excel modelling competitions on my CV? I fear it may make me appear as undedicated to law.

I'm a bit late to the party with this application but I'm gonna give it a shot. It says 'Considering the location in which you wish to train; tell us about a local project or development that has interested you. Explain why it is of interest and how, as a business, we could provide support'.

I'm wondering what they mean by 'explain why it is of interest' - do they want me to explain why the project interests me personally or why it if interest to the firm?

x

I am a first-year law student currently involved in a relevant society. I am on the committee. To be quite honest, I have really not enjoyed this experience whatsoever. I might be making generalisations about most student societies based on my expereince, but unless drinking and clubbing is involved, members really don't seem to put an effort into organising events properly. Members on the committee have been unreliable, cancelled events last minute without an explanation and I feel like everyone on the committee was just doing it as a box ticking exercise for their CV (which is kind of understandable). Anyway, I am making this post for some reassurance really. I think my time and effort are better invested elsewhere next year and perhaps I could find something else that is both fulfilling and adds to my CV. I don't truly want to lead any society having realised that I want something more challenging and worthwhile.

Will it negatively impact my applications to law firms if next year I am not on the committee for any society (though I will be an active member of quite a few) and instead seek positions of responsibility elsewhere? I do volunteer at the law clinic and have an interview coming up for a brand ambassador role. I am also considering mooting next year.

Thanks. Apologies if this is one of those stupid questions we first-years ask. Still, I'd really love to hear what people think haha

@Jessica Booker Your insight would be much appreciated.

Hi everyone,

Does anyone have book recommendations for an insight into working in commercial law as a solicitor? There are lots of books for thinking like a lawyer but many discuss the life of a barrister and not so much commercial solicitor in a corporate environment.

Would appreciate any other relevant book recommendations too
Thank you!