General Discussion Thread 2020-21

[Deleted member 4851]

Does anyone know which city firms are not too picky about grades? This year was my first application cycle and I can't figure out wether I got rejected because of my grades or because of my application. I got a first from a RG uni with final year average 79 and second year average 73 (all marks were 2:1 or above), BUT my first year was a nightmare, averaging mid 2:2 with two thirds and one failed ;( discovery module as I had to juggle uni with 40+ hours work a week and I was not quite good at it. I really don't know whether my app goes straight to the bin because of the first year grades or the issue is my writing style.... I have the equivalent of all A*s/As before uni and I also have zero legal experience (except of InsideSherpa and webinars) but plenty of other customer facing and office jobs. I want to start apply for vac schemes at US firms but I am not sure whether my ambitions are too high.

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

Does anyone know which city firms are not too picky about grades? This year was my first application cycle and I can't figure out wether I got rejected because of my grades or because of my application. I got a first from a RG uni with final year average 79 and second year average 73 (all marks were 2:1 or above), BUT my first year was a nightmare, averaging mid 2:2 with two thirds and one failed ;( discovery module as I had to juggle uni with 40+ hours work a week and I was not quite good at it. I really don't know whether my app goes straight to the bin because of the first year grades or the issue is my writing style.... I have the equivalent of all A*s/As before uni and I also have zero legal experience (except of InsideSherpa and webinars) but plenty of other customer facing and office jobs. I want to start apply for vac schemes at US firms but I am not sure whether my ambitions are too high.

I suspect your grades are a concern for most of you applied before having your final year results.

Once you had your third year grades and the modules are in a majority of being strong 2.1s or firsts, you are in a much stronger position.

You need to explain you worked 40+ hour weeks though in your first year. And if you have continued to work 40+ hour weeks, getting your current grades and working is exceptional - many firms will take that into consideration if you spell it out for them.

It could easily be down to something else though. Academics are the thing that people think are the issue because they are less subjective and easier to compare than subjective things like work experience or how you write. Most applicants don’t pass either the “career motivation” or “written style” part of an application.

I’d network with US firms to understand whether you are wasting your time or not. No one here will know every individual firm’s preferences enough to comment. They really aren’t uniform - one US firm could love your profile, the next could hate it. You need to connect with them, especially given your situation.

 

[Deleted member 4851]

I suspect your grades are a concern for most of you applied before having your final year results.

Once you had your third year grades and the modules are in a majority of being strong 2.1s or firsts, you are in a much stronger position.

You need to explain you worked 40+ hour weeks though in your first year. And if you have continued to work 40+ hour weeks, getting your current grades and working is exceptional - many firms will take that into consideration if you spell it out for them.

It could easily be down to something else though. Academics are the thing that people think are the issue because they are less subjective and easier to compare than subjective things like work experience or how you write. Most applicants don’t pass either the “career motivation” or “written style” part of an application.

I’d network with US firms to understand whether you are wasting your time or not. No one here will know every individual firm’s preferences enough to comment. They really aren’t uniform - one US firm could love your profile, the next could hate it. You need to connect with them, especially given your situation.

Thank you for your advice. I will try to connect with the firms and see what they say. Hopefully I would find the firm which would love my profile.

 

[Frank]

I suspect your grades are a concern for most of you applied before having your final year results.

Once you had your third year grades and the modules are in a majority of being strong 2.1s or firsts, you are in a much stronger position.

You need to explain you worked 40+ hour weeks though in your first year. And if you have continued to work 40+ hour weeks, getting your current grades and working is exceptional - many firms will take that into consideration if you spell it out for them.

It could easily be down to something else though. Academics are the thing that people think are the issue because they are less subjective and easier to compare than subjective things like work experience or how you write. Most applicants don’t pass either the “career motivation” or “written style” part of an application.

I’d network with US firms to understand whether you are wasting your time or not. No one here will know every individual firm’s preferences enough to comment. They really aren’t uniform - one US firm could love your profile, the next could hate it. You need to connect with them, especially given your situation.

Judge me but grades are such a stupid thing to be honest. In a few years time, assuming you get this job as you want it, no client would ask for your grades. They simply won’t care, come on just a label on somebody.

 

[Deleted member 5185]

If anyone is waiting to hear back from BLM, regarding their direct TC, apparently they are entering into a redundancy consultation with the view that it will affect 89 roles across the board.

They have also closed their Leeds and Bristol offices (this may be because the firm is in favour of working remotely). Not too hopeful about the impact it will have on recruitment .

 

[Camilla]

If anyone is waiting to hear back from BLM, regarding their direct TC, apparently they are entering into a redundancy consultation with the view that it will affect 89 roles across the board.

They have also closed their Leeds and Bristol offices (this may be because the firm is in favour of working remotely). Not too hopeful about the impact it will have on recruitment .

Thanks for this info. The redundancies look to be predominantly in the business support/marketing teams from what I can see. I would have thought they would continue recruitment for trainees but it is getting a bit late in the year now :/

I am supposed to have a place on the training contract assessment centre but last time I spoke to grad rec they said everything is paused until further notice:

"We are hopeful that things will change in the coming months and as they do myself or someone from our wider team will be in touch to update you."

I will send them another email and let you know what response I get

 

[LegalNim]

Judge me but grades are such a stupid thing to be honest. In a few years time, assuming you get this job as you want it, no client would ask for your grades. They simply won’t care, come on just a label on somebody.

I work as a teacher and I could not agree more. Every single year, students get grades that are often determined by pure luck. I can't speak for international exams but, in the UK, our exam boards are terrible and the mistakes they make are often the deciding factor in which students do well and which students don't. I'm glad to see firms increasingly moving away from judging based on grades. I was reading an article just yesterday about a study where they analysed lawyers grades against their professional success and there was no correlation at all.

 

[Lumree]

I work as a teacher and I could not agree more. Every single year, students get grades that are often determined by pure luck. I can't speak for international exams but, in the UK, our exam boards are terrible and the mistakes they make are often the deciding factor in which students do well and which students don't. I'm glad to see firms increasingly moving away from judging based on grades. I was reading an article just yesterday about a study where they analysed lawyers grades against their professional success and there was no correlation at all.

Do you have a link to the article by any chance? Would be interesting to read that!

 

[Deleted member 5185]

Thanks for this info. The redundancies look to be predominantly in the business support/marketing teams from what I can see. I would have thought they would continue recruitment for trainees but it is getting a bit late in the year now :/

I am supposed to have a place on the training contract assessment centre but last time I spoke to grad rec they said everything is paused until further notice:

"We are hopeful that things will change in the coming months and as they do myself or someone from our wider team will be in touch to update you."

I will send them another email and let you know what response I get

That’s amazing, congratulations for getting onto one ! But yeah it’s really tough being in this constant state of limbo.

Thank you Camilla

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

Judge me but grades are such a stupid thing to be honest. In a few years time, assuming you get this job as you want it, no client would ask for your grades. They simply won’t care, come on just a label on somebody.

It’s not quite that simple unfortunately. Firms are putting you through one or two qualifications before you can even start the job (as it stands anyway), and there is some correlation between people doing well in their degree and the going on to do well in the GDL/LPC. It is therefore a calculated risk assessment to take on people who are more likely to pass those expensive courses and not waste anywhere between £16-35k on paying for someone to take those exams only to fail them, let alone not having someone ready to start because they failed.

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

I work as a teacher and I could not agree more. Every single year, students get grades that are often determined by pure luck. I can't speak for international exams but, in the UK, our exam boards are terrible and the mistakes they make are often the deciding factor in which students do well and which students don't. I'm glad to see firms increasingly moving away from judging based on grades. I was reading an article just yesterday about a study where they analysed lawyers grades against their professional success and there was no correlation at all.

A-level grades yes, but not degree grades.

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

Do you have a link to the article by any chance? Would be interesting to read that!

https://www.thelawyer.com/do-a-levels-predict-highest-performing-lawyers/

 

[Camilla]

https://www.thelawyer.com/do-a-levels-predict-highest-performing-lawyers/

So the Watson Glaser is a better indicator of performance during a TC than A-Level grades. Interesting!

 

[Cer96]

https://www.thelawyer.com/do-a-levels-predict-highest-performing-lawyers/

This is interesting and I think there's a huge amount to be considered further / seen as a caveat here (the context in which someone achieves their A Level grades in relation to their peers being the most important of those, also it being a 1 firm sample size I think), but my main question is what on earth is Training Contract performance score?

Doesn't seem to be explained at all in the article. Is that a standardised thing that all firms do and has just completely passed me by? Surely for that to be a reliable metric for the article it would need to have been calculated only comparing trainees against trainees that have done the same rotations, which would make it an even smaller sample size. If anyone knows any more about it I'd love to know!

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

So the Watson Glaser is a better indicator of performance during a TC than A-Level grades. Interesting!

yep - psychometrics (if used correctly) are typically one of the strongest predictors of performances. Worst are usually interviews

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

This is interesting and I think there's a huge amount to be considered further / seen as a caveat here (the context in which someone achieves their A Level grades in relation to their peers being the most important of those, also it being a 1 firm sample size I think), but my main question is what on earth is Training Contract performance score?

Doesn't seem to be explained at all in the article. Is that a standardised thing that all firms do and has just completely passed me by? Surely for that to be a reliable metric for the article it would need to have been calculated only comparing trainees against trainees that have done the same rotations, which would make it an even smaller sample size. If anyone knows any more about it I'd love to know!

No - it won’t be a standardised measure in a sense something all firms use. But it’s quite easy to use performance data across firms, which are typically on a sliding scale (and usually a similar scale of either 1-4 or 1-5).

It would be impossible to do it for people doing the same rotations, and even then rotations will vary every six months or if the same six months between different supervisors.

 

[Adam Gilchrist]

I think the issue of deciding who gets an offer - whether it be through A level cut off, degree cut off, grade weighting, psychometric tests, etc - is that there are just so many people applying to these firms, and they don't have the manpower, time or expense to make in-depth decisions. MC firms have around 3000 people applying for a vac scheme - and would have more but for the cutoff. It will take far, far too long to go through each and every one of those applications purely on the virtue of the competency answers on the form and not considering anything else. It isn't time-efficient, and especially at graduate entry level, trainees are cannon fodder and are fairly easily replaceable, so the grade focus is a good way at least initially of slimming down the applicant numbers.

Grade requirements are no worse a way than any other of doing this, for two reasons in particular:

1. If you read law at university but performed very poorly in certain important modules like contract, the firm might have good reason to be concerned why you did so badly in an area of law so important to their work.
2. One of the most important - and necessary - qualities in any commercial lawyer is the ability to handle hard work, and a lot of it, mixed in with competing deadlines. If you weren't able to handle this at university/school, that could be a warning sign that you might find it difficult to handle a commercial lawyer's workload/life.

Naturally, some people have extenuating circumstances, and that's why firms take this into account if you explain this to them. On top of that, if you went to a private school with an amazing teacher/pupil ratio & low levels of class misbehaviour, then you'd have likely stood a better chance of doing well at A level - so again, this method definitely isn't perfect, but works decently.

What are the alternatives to this? Well, psychometric tests such as Watson Glaser are an alternative - and many firms use these anyway - but these too have their shortcomings. The first and most obvious problem is that you can game the Watson Glaser test. It only has so many questions to choose from, and after a while of practicing it, you've seen all the questions and know how to answer. The second problem is that some people naturally are very good at psychometric tests, and some really aren't. Yes, you can get better through practice, but some people still have that advantage, so these tests aren't some sort of great leveler where everyone has an equally good chance.

Other than that, how else can you decide? You could do it on extra-curriculars - but even then, too many people do them. You run a law blog? Great, so do 500 other people. You were on the committee of your university law society? Cool, never heard that one before. Extra-curriculars add value to your application, but you can't just decide on them alone.

It's also worth noting that at least some firms do consider the university you read your subject at, not just the degree result itself (confirmed to me by a partner from a top firm, whom I met in a social situation). That's because a lot of non-RG universities (and some RG universities) hand out firsts like confetti, which therefore places candidates from universities with more stringent awarding requirements at a disadvantage.

As Jessica & Jaysen have said so often on the forum, less than stellar grades aren't an automatic bar from commercial law, they just make it a bit more difficult - particularly in applying to firms like S&M, S&S and so on. If the rest of your application, your extra-curriculars, your competencies, your commercial awareness & your Watson Glaser scores are good, they will more than compensate for the bad grades in most cases.

 

[Cer96]

That's because a lot of non-RG universities (and some RG universities) hand out firsts like confetti, which therefore places candidates from universities with more stringent awarding requirements at a disadvantage.

This is something I often see said, but haven't actually ever seen any evidence for. Does anyone have a link to any research that's been done into it? I appreciate it's a problem inherent in the silo'd nature of the UK HE system, and I suppose would need academics from a range of universities to blind mark the same essay, would be really keen to see if there's any work been done on this!

As someone with a 2.1 in Law from Oxbridge, it'd be in my interest to believe it's true, but I wonder the extent to which it's an extension of the 'mickey mouse subject/degree' narrative which often just serves to perpetuate the status & prestige of institutions attended and courses studied by those in positions of power and devalues the hard work done by students at all universities to achieve top grades. Universities which of course are disproportionately attended by marginalised groups within the UK.

Think it's particularly interesting given, as you say @Adam Gilchrist, it's something taken into account by firms in making their recruitment decisions!

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

I’m fairly flippant about this because I have done it for too long, but screening applications is not really a difficult thing to do, even with high volumes. It’s just that no one wants to do it and/or hasn’t got the time to do it.

For every 1000 applications a firm gets:

100-150 won’t be eligible
100-200 will be an easy no as the application forms are so poor
Probably around a third won’t meet the psychometric requirements.

The issue is then reviewing the remainder - typically you’ll only be able to do 10-12 applications per hour. So 600 applications takes up a lot of time. Many firms outsource the screening though (often to people like me) and can do that for a fraction of the price of what it costs to do a lot of other things they pay stupids amount of money for.

 

[GlamB]

Absolutely over the moon to have just received a TC offer from Linklaters. I've been in love with the firm since my first year at uni and still can't quite believe this is happening!

To all those expecting to hear for direct TC apps, I believe Links is finalising their offers to vac schemers today/Monday, so you should hopefully hear back soon. Do reach out if you think I can be of any help!