James Carrabino
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- Oct 12, 2021
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Hi @manchester12,Just got a post AC rejection… I feel sooo gutted and I love the firmI found the interview extremely hard as it was strengths based and very ridged. I have another AC next week and feel like this has really knocked my confidence
I am going to write a post along the lines of what I wrote to @lawful_neutral216 yesterday not out of laziness but because my heart goes out to anyone suffering from a post-AC or VS rejection and I spent a long time drafting this with the same exact scenario in mind from my own experiences. To make a long story short, you should not let your confidence get knocked at all - post-AC rejections from a dream firm are a rite of passage en route to almost every candidate's Training Contract offer. I know that in your AC next week you will be an absolutely exceptional candidate! My earlier post was as follows (and I sincerely intend it to relate here as well):
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
