TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2021-22 (#1)

[John Travoni]

Is anyone still waiting to hear back from Links direct TC, Mayer Brown post JS or Clyde & Co post online tests for spring VS?

 

[S87]

Is anyone still waiting to hear back from Links direct TC, Mayer Brown post JS or Clyde & Co post online tests for spring VS?

Yes me Links direct tc

 

[sxw517]

Feel like my AC interview resembled more of a debate as opposed to an interview? Not sure how this is how it should have gone, is this relatively normal for legal work?

 

[James Carrabino]

Feel like my AC interview resembled more of a debate as opposed to an interview? Not sure how this is how it should have gone, is this relatively normal for legal work?

I think a debate is quite natural, especially if they are pushing back against your opinion on a certain point just to see how you think and react under pressure

 

[thirdtimelucky]

Feel like my AC interview resembled more of a debate as opposed to an interview? Not sure how this is how it should have gone, is this relatively normal for legal work?

Mine felt like this today! We had a long debate about morals and whether courts should be able to invalidate signed contracts. They also kept pushing me to give them an answer on my policy work (I work in the civil service) re why shouldn’t builders pay for insurance premiums. I think at one point I couldn’t really give an answer and felt a bit frustrated but I think the debate style is quite conversational and definitely a good thing as long as you were able to stick to your arguments when being pushed or conceded when a good point was raised

 

[James Carrabino]

Wow I am so impressed that you managed to hold a debate on this topic whilst having Covid!!

Mine felt like this today! We had a long debate about morals and whether courts should be able to invalidate signed contracts. They also kept pushing me to give them an answer on my policy work (I work in the civil service) re why shouldn’t builders pay for insurance premiums. I think at one point I couldn’t really give an answer and felt a bit frustrated but I think the debate style is quite conversational and definitely a good thing as long as you were able to stick to your arguments when being pushed or conceded when a good point was raised

 

[nat237]

Has anyone heard back from travers smith for the summer vac scheme yet? Just saw someone on LinkedIn who was “incoming vacation scheme at travers smith”, but I thought they weren’t getting back to people yet 🤔

I saw this and straight away came on here to check if anyone else has heard😂 Don’t worry I’m still waiting!

 

[thirdtimelucky]

Wow I am so impressed that you managed to hold a debate on this topic whilst having Covid!!

Hahaha I was honestly struck by the question because although I don’t study law my boyfriend and I had just discussed the case times travel v Pakistan international airlines and the concept of economic duress so it was honestly the best question I could have been asked! I think it then evolved into a fun conversation about how I would feel about a sexual abuse victim signing an NDAs. Really great fun to debate

 

[James Carrabino]

Received two post-AC rejections today within the past 2 hours. Trying to stay motivated and not letting the anxiety loom in, but finding it really difficult to do so. I'm a final year uni student, and have my thesis due in less than a month too. Literally can't stop thinking about what to do next because I'm also an international student and I feel like I could have prepared so much better for my ACs. I had sufficient time to prepare for them and did try my best, but in hindsight I feel like I didn't do enough. I have gotten feedback from the firms so will take time to work on it, once I feel a bit better.

I've become active on this forum only a few months ago, and used to be a lurker in the past. Glad I did because this has kept me sane this application season and somewhat still hanging on to a tiny bit of motivation and hope.

Hope you're having a nice week guys, and manifesting positive news for all of us who are waiting to hear back re applications!

Hi @lawful_neutral216,

I want to start by saying how sorry I am to hear that you have found yourself in this position. Rejection is incredibly painful, especially in the later stages of a firm's application process.

I was rejected from three vacation schemes in the space of three months and every single one was brutal. Spending an entire application cycle building up to those schemes, with confidence that I would be able to convert at least one of them, meant that I just felt completely hopeless when I realised that I had failed to do so. The latter two post-vac scheme rejections came on the same day no less!! I moped around for about 24 hours before I sat down and started looking at upcoming direct TC deadlines.

The day after I received both of those two rejections, I sent off an app that ended up in a TC offer less than a month later. The day after that I sent off another app that ended up in another TC offer! This was all in July right at the end of my first cycle. The learning process of getting ACs and vac schemes and subsequently being rejected from them was invaluable in ultimately getting me to a firm that I love. I also got a genuinely interesting and varied perspective of the kind of work that City lawyers do, so I have no regrets about any of these experiences.

Take time to reflect and then realise that you have a huge amount of time remaining this cycle. I submitted a lot of direct Training Contract applications and that is how I received the offer for the firm I am going to. Of course it would be great to have a VS or TC offer at this stage, but I sincerely think that the more work one puts into researching and applying to firms now pays dividends in the long run. You do not necessarily want to default into the first firm that offered you an AC - it is great to have the opportunity to learn from that experience what areas of law you are interested in and which firms you should be looking at going forward.

It is an incredible feat that you got to two ACs in the first place, so congratulations!!! Do not worry about whether or not you prepared enough - I am sure you did everything you intended to with the right approach and intentions, but no-one is fully prepared for a law firm AC until they have done several previously. The real preparation required to ultimately obtain a Training Contract involves the lessons you learn from your unsuccessful ACs and how you take that insight into your future ACs. You will continue to develop confidence in your interview ability and you will find yourself in a pretty good position if you draw upon your resilience and keep moving forward

Does the fact that you are an international student worry you for visa purposes? I know that @AvniD has already given you a great response but she may be able to provide even more insight into this issue. Either way, I have every confidence that you will bounce back stronger than ever and obtain a Training Contract offer in this cycle

 

[James Carrabino]

Hahaha I was honestly struck by the question because although I don’t study law my boyfriend and I had just discussed the case times travel v Pakistan international airlines and the concept of economic duress so it was honestly the best question I could have been asked! I think it then evolved into a fun conversation about how I would feel about a sexual abuse victim signing an NDAs. Really great fun to debate

Wow those are very interesting topics indeed! I know that when I had Covid my brain would have started crying if faced with issues this deep 🤣

 

[S87]

Thank you for this post @danieljonesqb - the issue is a really tricky one! Forgive me for my own flood of conflicting thoughts on the issue below 🤣

I remember when applying that I felt the exact same way as you, especially after one firm where I attended a vac scheme (and was unsuccessful in getting a TC offer) sent a simple rejection e-mail stating that it was unable to offer feedback due to the number of applicants...

But then I did receive feedback from some firms post-VS, post-AC, post-VI and even post-application form and I realised that whilst feedback can sometimes seem useful, I understand why many firms choose not to offer it and why it can actually have a counterproductive effect on candidates!

First of all, feedback is often not transferrable between firms. The firm which gave me post-application form feedback told me that I should have related my answer to 'Why commercial law?' back to the firm, whilst I know that other firms explicitly do not want candidates to do this, emphasising that applicants should only answer the exact question being asked. I think that feedback is only really helpful where there is some sort of standard for a clear 'before and after' comparison.

Indeed, feedback can be very useful where there is a clear metric being assessed, such as in a psychometric test or perhaps even in competency answers involving a formulaic list of questions (such as in a Video Interview) where the goal is to assess whether candidates identify and demonstrate relevant competencies.

Feedback can be unhelpful, however, as it becomes more subjective in environments like an interview or group exercise. Remember that law is an inherently human profession and as much as firms try to standardise the process, there is no true standard and everything boils down to whether you, as a person, are who they are looking for at that point in time. Things that factor in heavily are whether recruiters think you would fit into the firm culture or whether your interviewers or the people reading your application *like* you from what they know about you. Should there be a tick-box option, 'We just get the wrong vibe from your application'?

I have two anecdotal examples that may illustrate why firms have a tough time coming up with proper feedback to give to candidates:

• A firm told my friend after an AC that he performed excellently in his interview but that in the trainee meet-and-greet session he was reported to have asked what it felt like to see a deal in the newspaper after working on it, which led them to wonder what his real motivation for pursuing law was. The reason they gave him struck me as rather dubious - would one question like this during an informal chat with trainees really scupper an offer if everything else were excellent? Or was the issue that the firm simply preferred other candidates for a variety of more intangible reasons and had to actively come up with a concrete reason purely for the sake of the feedback?

• On the opposite side of the spectrum, a firm offered me post-vac scheme feedback where the head of graduate recruitment told me in a zoom call that I did very well throughout the vac scheme, although my educational background (I was in the middle of a master's degree in music) made them question whether I really wanted to become a lawyer and this worried them as they did not want the possibility of their trainees leaving law after qualifying. In my opinion, this is a completely fair reason to select trainees and it was probably the most honest piece of feedback I received... but it was not feedback on my performance. Nothing I could have done during the vac scheme would have changed this concern and so there was no advice I could take with me going forward, but for the fact I should maybe drop out of the process if my educational background was going to stop me obtaining a Training Contract. Luckily, I committed to self-reflection on controlling the things that I could control and improving in areas where I felt that I could do better, and I ended up succeeding in the process (after 40 applications)

Ultimately, I do not believe that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to feedback, as the Legal Cheek article is trying to create. The examples listed in the article are very generic - is it really informative at all to be told that your application did not show enough commercial awareness? What if you feel that it did show enough? If it indeed showed very little, should you have not noticed that yourself and how would this generic piece of advice enable you to show more next time? Similarly, if you are told that you made one grammar or spelling error but cannot work out what it is, then this would be incredibly frustrating and the firm may have to start fielding queries (and/or accusations) about whether candidates' application forms were assessed incorrectly.

The fact of the matter is that whilst many candidates will fall down for a 'mistake' of some sort, such as the ones listed in the article, the number who do not make any such mistakes will still far exceed the number of interview spaces available. Also, what if a candidate does make such a mistake but the rest of their application is stellar and the firm really wants to interview them? There really is no fool-proof way to standardise the process. Would there be a tick-box option for 'The candidate simply did not stand out to us'? If so, I imagine that this would be the one most commonly used by graduate recruiters and would be of absolutely no use to applicants!

I have a slightly related anecdotal story from my time attending university in the US. Regulations there require that individuals have the opportunity to review what university admissions officers wrote about them when reviewing their application. Soon before I graduated, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to go and take a look (it took me four years to get around to doing this because there was a tricky procedure to arrange it and I had to have someone supervising me etc.). First of all, the comments I read were extremely clinical and if I had read them before knowing I was admitted, I would definitely have been demoralised! This made me learn that the method by which a decision is made does not necessarily lend itself to good feedback. Decision-makers are not in the best place to give feedback because they have no investment in unsuccessful applicants improving and the feedback could easily demoralise candidates. For constructive feedback, I think that the best destination would be advisers and resources such as TCLA, who are able to really identify from their own experiences what does and doesn't work and who want nothing more than to help! I would recommend these as your first port of call for feedback and I think, in particular, that TCLA's application review service offers excellent advice on how to improve written applications (although of course I am biased, having worked for them myself)

My own application journey was a very personal one and I started to work out by trial and improvement what worked and what did not. Over the course of a year, I found that I was the only person who is able to make my own story coherent and compelling. I worry that feedback may only lead to further frustration for candidates who believe that they did not make the mistake they were told they made, who do not understand how to implement the feedback, or who feel that they did in fact implement feedback from another firm and that now they are being told something contradictory. At the end of the day, the most important thing is self-reflection and not a tick-box value judgement by a stranger, in my opinion!


Apologies for the long post - this is a really interesting discussion and I am really glad that you started it! I am not sure that we should expect the graduate recruiters to weigh in on the discussion as their opinions on the issue could risk creating a conflict of interest with the firms they work for now and those they may work for in future - nevertheless, it is an important discussion and I would love to hear other people's thoughts on the issue

You make good points and I hope your exams went well.

 

[S87]

Wow those are very interesting topics indeed! I know that when I had Covid my brain would have started crying if faced with issues this deep 🤣

Goodness me, when I had Covid (couple of weeks ago) struggled with a simple shower!

 

[thirdtimelucky]

Goodness me, when I had Covid (couple of weeks ago) struggled with a simple shower!

Honestly I had a quick little cry while deciding if I could actually go through the 10-4 AC today but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity! I truly thank coffee, paracetamol and adrenaline for giving me the energy to push through lol!

 

[James Carrabino]

Hi everyone! Was wondering whether anybody could share some insights as to White & Case’s Written Exercise. Particularly, should we be using any sort of citations (if the relevant pieces of law is provided) and should we be actually formatting it as an official legal memo (i.e, Question Presented, Short Answer, Statement of Facts etc)?

Hi @amzey2, I would not worry about legal citations in a written exercise like this! Remember that these exercises are geared to law and non-law students alike so outside knowledge is not expected and it is really fair game to incorporate the information they give you in any way that is clear and concise (you do not need to use any official format). Your approach sounds absolutely fine, though!

More generally, if your written exercise takes the form of a case study then I have written some advice on things to do in preparation, including in the assessment before you start writing!

@George Maxwell has also offered some excellent insight into how you should be looking to structure your written exercise

 

[James Carrabino]

Honestly I had a quick little cry while deciding if I could actually go through the 10-4 AC today but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity! I truly thank coffee, paracetamol and adrenaline for giving me the energy to push through lol!

This combination of substances reminds me of when I was abroad and had to do an AC from 1am to 6am 🤣

 

[aspiringlawyer123_]

Honestly I had a quick little cry while deciding if I could actually go through the 10-4 AC today but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity! I truly thank coffee, paracetamol and adrenaline for giving me the energy to push through lol!

10-4?!?!?! don’t think I read that right

 

[thirdtimelucky]

10-4?!?!?! don’t think I read that right

Haha yeah 10am-4pm. Case study, negotiation and interview 🙃 it was a lot!

 

[James Carrabino]

You make good points and I hope your exams went well.

Thank you so much @S87 - hope everything is going well for you too!

 

[thirdtimelucky]

This combination of substances reminds me of when I was abroad and had to do an AC from 1am to 6am 🤣

now that sounds rough! That’s called bed time for me

 

[James Carrabino]

now that sounds rough! That’s called bed time for me

The sad part which makes my story way less cool is that I was unsuccessful 🤣