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TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2026-27
- Thread starter Abbie Whitlock
- Start date
hey guys, does anyone know how long slaughter and may takes to send invites to interviews/rejections after you submit the form? maybe someone had experience of that last year?
It was 5 months post submission for a DTC interview invite for me
I submitted my Hogan Lovells application 2 days ago but haven’t received any test until now. Should I email the grad rec about it?
Hey everyone!
I am a future trainee at a magic circle firm. Along the way, I applied to US, UK, international and more niche firms, so I have been through a wide variety of processes.
I am an international student and started out knowing very little about commercial law or how applications worked. In my first cycle, I secured two vacation schemes and converted neither, and my grades took a hit that year as well.
Graduating without an offer was quite stressful. There was a clock on it, financially as much as anything, since studying here was a significant investment for my family. I started measuring my own worth by whether an application moved forward, and spent a long time wondering whether the two schemes had been a fluke.
I had taken a year out after my first cycle to bring my grades up, graduated, and then went into the next cycle. I went through several assessment centres and accepted my current offer.
If you are dealing with a non-conversion, stuck at a stage, or working out what to change before the next cycle, do ask. Same for anything else; happy to help wherever I can!
I am a future trainee at a magic circle firm. Along the way, I applied to US, UK, international and more niche firms, so I have been through a wide variety of processes.
I am an international student and started out knowing very little about commercial law or how applications worked. In my first cycle, I secured two vacation schemes and converted neither, and my grades took a hit that year as well.
Graduating without an offer was quite stressful. There was a clock on it, financially as much as anything, since studying here was a significant investment for my family. I started measuring my own worth by whether an application moved forward, and spent a long time wondering whether the two schemes had been a fluke.
I had taken a year out after my first cycle to bring my grades up, graduated, and then went into the next cycle. I went through several assessment centres and accepted my current offer.
If you are dealing with a non-conversion, stuck at a stage, or working out what to change before the next cycle, do ask. Same for anything else; happy to help wherever I can!
Hi!
Did the acknowledgement email mention you would get the test within 24 to 48 hours? If it did and that has passed, a short polite email is fair enough. If it did not, I would hold off for now, as two days could be a bit early. Firms often send test invites out in batches rather than one by one, so two people who applied on the same day can hear back a week apart. Another user on the forum mentioned waiting about two weeks for their HL test invite.
If you get to a few weeks with nothing, that is when I would drop them a note. Good luck!
Hiya,Hello @Antoni Trochimowicz
I was just wondering what you think would be the best structure to answer these questions:
Please give details of your extra-curricular activities, and any prizes, scholarships, positions of responsibility, or noteworthy achievements that will support your application. For this question, are we supposed to connect back to the law firm, or the role of a commercial lawyer - or is it simply just stating the extra-curriculars? Also, are bullet points acceptable?
Describe a time when you demonstrated / needed to... - same with this, are we supposed to connect back to the law firm, or the role of a commercial lawyer?
Skadden’s London office advises on complex matters. Identify a recent deal or case handled by the London office and explain a key legal or commercial issue which the Skadden team had to address in that deal or case? For this question - how can we substantiate the answer further, as well as structure - because it's 300 words for only 1 issue
I'm very sorry, I appreciate it's a lot questions, but your advice would be really helpful
No need to apologise! They are three quite different questions so I will answer them in order. For context, I previously did a vacation scheme at Skadden, so this is how I approached or would approach the form (for these questions) rather than anything official.
Extra-curriculars and achievements: Link these to the skills of a trainee or commercial lawyer rather than to Skadden. I briefly linked them to the skills of a trainee towards the end for each experience I mentioned. What I would avoid is trying to tie it back to the firm as well. There is not enough room to develop both, and you could end up cramming in both without doing either properly. You should focus on your extra-curriculars and achievements and if you have any takeaways from these experiences, so what you got out of it and how it changed the way you work. The focus on this answer is more on you and your experiences instead of the firm, and the third question provides a much better space to demonstrate your interest in Skadden.
On bullet points, in my experience if the firm has not specified anything I would fall on the default option of using prose.
Describe a time when: Yes, given how it is phrased, I would definitely link this one to the skills of a trainee or commercial lawyer. So the structure would like something like this: I developed/showed this during my experiences at Y, what you did and how you showed this competency, linking it to the role of a trainee and why it matters.
The Skadden London deal question: 300 words might seem like a lot for one issue, but there are several qualifiers buried in the question. I would really focus on the structure and go with something like this:
Name the deal or case and say briefly what it was.
State the key issue in one sentence, in simple terms.
Define the legal or commercial issue at its centre.
Explain why the issue arose. There is usually a commercial, regulatory or geopolitical trend attached, so explain the trend and what it means for transactions like this one more widely.
Explain how the team dealt with it.
So if the deal you chose used an unusual financing structure in an M&A transaction, you would name it, say the central issue was X, explain what X means, explain the market conditions that made X a problem, then explain what the team did. The why is the part doing the work here. Be analytical rather than descriptive with it.
This is also the one place on the form where linking back to the firm works, since the question is about them, so you can develop a Why Skadden point, like focusing on a unique selling point of Skadden or recent hires that allowed them to use this solution or advise this client.
I apologise for the long answer.
Hope this helps, good luck with the application!
Hi!
Yes, definitely worth applying, and I would not let this stop you.
According to A&O Shearman’s requirements they need a 2:1 overall on your undergraduate degree, and I could not find a module-level one. At your grades you are comfortably within the requirements. As long as your overall classification is a 2:1 and there is no consistent run of low marks, a couple of 2:2 modules do not tend to hold back an application.
For what it is worth, I had two 2:2s in my second year and I do not think that anyone paid it much attention because I managed to get an overall good grade.
It might also be worth looking at which modules specifically had lower grades, as individual module results can signal where your strengths lie, so a lower mark in something like contract or company law reads slightly differently from one in a module that is not directly related to commercial practice. If yours are in the latter camp, I would stop worrying about this altogether.
And if there was a reason behind them, I would definitely use the application’s mitigating circumstances section and most firm will usually take this into account.
Good luck!
Hey!
This one gave me real trouble too, so you are not alone in finding it hard to prepare for.
What I ended up doing was looking at consulting and banking resources, where Arctic Shores comes up far more often than it does in law, but the tasks themselves are the same ones, and there are some really useful walkthroughs out there. I will link the ones I found particularly useful below.
It goes through each task individually rather than giving general advice, and my scores went up three or four bars after working through it.
I would caution that these walkthroughs will show the same format but not necessarily the weighting or assessment criteria law firms use, where arctic shores might configure the test differently to the firm you have applied to, but these were still helpful.
Two general points beyond that. Do the practice run if the firm offers one, and sit the real thing somewhere quiet on a proper screen with your undivided attention, since several tasks are timed on reaction.
Good luck!
Arctic Shores Guide 1
Arctic Shores Guide 2
Congratulations, that is a brilliant result and thank you for sharing this
Enjoy the TC, you have well earned it!
Hey! @AvocadoAtLaw hope you are well!
I have a question which is more about time management. I work full time and I am finding it very difficult to manage my time between commercial awareness, attend events, practice online tests and also send out applications.
Given how competitive the process is, I want to make sure I am being efficient rather than just busy. How did you manage to balance these moving parts alongside other commitments? Do you have any specific frameworks or a weekly routine you would recommend for full-time professionals to structure their time effectively?
Thanks so much!
I have a question which is more about time management. I work full time and I am finding it very difficult to manage my time between commercial awareness, attend events, practice online tests and also send out applications.
Given how competitive the process is, I want to make sure I am being efficient rather than just busy. How did you manage to balance these moving parts alongside other commitments? Do you have any specific frameworks or a weekly routine you would recommend for full-time professionals to structure their time effectively?
Thanks so much!
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