TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2025-26

[PFO Final Boss]

Which office did you apply to?

London!

 

[clbtchnhl]

re WBD test, they say in the email it takes 5 mins, and it genuinely does. im not sure what the point of their test is, SJTs as they go barely are a representation of ur personality, let alone like 10 questions

won't complain too much though, at least its not an amberjack where I will spend an hour and be aired by grad rec (cough cough Simmons)

 

[trainee4u]

Did we ever decide if it's:
* pass/fail based on minimum score
* pass/fail based on minimum score with separate sub-score minimums as wel
* some kinda ranking system, so 36 is better than 30?

 

[Nimaj]

They changed it! Did you not get an email about it?

Further to our recent emails I am writing to let you know of a change to the structure and format of your upcoming virtual assessment centre.

The exercise that you'll be completing has changed from a research exercise and presentation to a commercial interview. In place of the preparation time you will be given all the required information 5 minutes before your interview starts. We appreciate that this is a change from what you were expecting; it has been introduced to allow us to assess your own real-time reasoning and to give you a greater opportunity to showcase your analytical skills, knowledge of Osborne Clarke and the legal sector, verbal communication and business awareness and understanding.

This change also reduces the amount of time that you need to allocate to the virtual assessment centre.

My guess is they had a much higher volume of applications this year (each AC I’ve been too they have said they had at least 1,000 more applicants than normal, thanks AI) and they want to halve the time to screen more people.

Edit: to add, I think we will see these short prep time exercises more to overcome the AI issues. The job really does demand us to be able to think on our feet after all!

I never got that email, only the link to book an interview slot. Thanks so much for responding, that's really helpful.

 

[jamsparkle]

Just doing my last minute Hill Dicks VI

ChatGPT:
Your ambitious, international platform
It's not a side offering — it’s a core identity.
Hill Dickinson’s ... fits how I work best: A, B and C.

unrelated but it genuinely irritates me when I open linkedin or something to see a post by someone who's claiming to be knowledgeable in a subject but who has clearly copy and pasted the whole post from chatgpt... if you claim to be an expert, surely you can cobble together a few words yourself?!?! also AI has a tendency to drag out posts that could've been one or two paragraphs into whole pages of writing, which means that most of the post is saying nothing of substance

 

[radicaloptimist]

For Faegre Drinker, they have a question 'Please provide any additional information that you think is relevant (Max 400 words).' This is in addition to asking for work experience and a question asking for hobbies or sports. What do they want us to talk about??

 

[Rads]

Any chance we might hear from HL today? Really manifesting an AC!

 

[TheSlapDotCom]

Any chance we might hear from HL today? Really manifesting an AC!

i hope so!!

 

[Laurel Lance - Black Canary]

Morning all, I feel like Sidley Austin and Morrison Foerster will get back to us today or at least this week. I hope #desperately we'll hear some positive news.

 

[Rads]

Also any hope for P,W and AG anymore if they haven’t gotten back for summer?

 

[roo4]

Has anyone heard from PMC?

 

[LawAspirer]

The wait for Orrick rejection begins today.

 

[law_mania]

Morning all, I feel like Sidley Austin and Morrison Foerster will get back to us today or at least this week. I hope #desperately we'll hear some positive news.

from what i have heard, Sidley (at least for the summer VS) will get back to us only in early March - pls correct me if im wrong

 

[Harvey Specter - Presiding Partner]

The wait for Orrick rejection begins today.

I’m not expecting much cos it’s either gna be a PFO post app or post WG. I’m baso looking forward to nothing at this point. It’s a PFO either way…

 

[msclm]

from what i have heard, Sidley (at least for the summer VS) will get back to us only in early March - pls correct me if im wrong

I’d imagine those who applied for spring for Sidley will hear back earlier. There is 2 stages and they also do a full background check before the vac which takes some time. Given that the spring vac is in April, they should start giving out the first hr interviews soon!

 

[LawAspirer]

I’m not expecting much cos it’s either gna be a PFO post app or post WG. I’m baso looking forward to nothing at this point. It’s a PFO either way…

Our coping mechanisms have transcended rejections at this point. You can't reject us because we already rejected ourselves.

 

[LawAspirer]

I’d imagine those who applied for spring for Sidley will hear back earlier. There is 2 stages and they also do a full background check before the vac which takes some time. Given that the spring vac is in April, they should start giving out the first hr interviews soon!

Has anybody gotten rejected yet?
I remember applying for Winter very early on (like September) and heard back almost within like 2 weeks.
I applied for Spring now in early December and yet to hear anything

 

[Rosie_Kitten]

Agreed, but AI certainly makes applying easier for those who may not be confident writers.

I think it makes the quantity of applications increased. Let me use a very simple numerical answer (Obviously, there are way more candidates and firms, and people submit way more applications).

Say you have 100 candidates and 20 firms. They can write 5 apps each, so they will submit to the 10 firms they are a best fit for. For simplicity, let's say there is an equal distribution of applications to each firm. This means there are 500 applications for 20 firms, so each firm received 25 applications. They decide to take 5 candidates on, so they have a simple screening process to whittle 25 applications to 5.

With AI speeding up the research writing process, each candidate now decides to submit 20 applications. Each firm suddenly has to review 100 applications each. In addition, because of the economic outlook and AI integration, each firm is only taking 2 applicants. The process to reduce 100 applications to 2 candidates is a whole different challenge; they aren't able to use the same review system anymore.

Now imagine this, but with 5000 applicants, all with strong grades (or mitigating circumstances), 5% need reasonable adjustments (So they have to account for this when choosing the assessment method), and only 5-10 places at the end (varies a lot by firm ik). It's honestly a nightmare for grad recruitment. The good news is that most AI is not very good at writing or research at this stage. The candidates who copy/paste from AI can instantly be rejected. But those who use it roughly take ideas from it without copying output, making it difficult to differentiate from purely human-written applications. And this is where they have problems.

This isn't a law problem. It's a problem for the entire job market.

 

[Rosie_Kitten]

I’m not expecting much cos it’s either gna be a PFO post app or post WG. I’m baso looking forward to nothing at this point. It’s a PFO either way…

I was going to apply yesterday, but ended up not applying and submitting an application for Harbottle and Lewis instead. My reason was that on legalcheek the work-life balance was a Cand social life also C - for commercial law. When work-life balance is an A/A* , then usually that is already pretty tough working hours, so C must mean basically killing yourself with work without any sleep .

Obviously, take legal cheek with a grain of salt, it's not going to be accurate.