The TCLA Forum Terms and Rules

We have updated the TCLA forum’s Terms and Rules to ensure that TCLA remains a safe and supportive environment for aspiring lawyers. Where disagreements arise, we want to make sure that members can concentrate on the content, rather than the individuals. We also want to make sure our members don't have to face trolling, spam, self-promotional content, harassment, and much more.

By registering with the TCLA forum, members agree to abide by the following Terms and Rules. Members also agree that any post deemed to fall foul of the below guidelines may be edited or removed at the sole discretion of TCLA.

TCLA has the right to warn, suspend or ban members at its sole discretion.

Terms and Rules 1-5 will lead to the highest warnings, temporary suspensions, or instant bans. Repeated violations of Terms and Rules 6-7 will lead to warnings, temporary suspensions or instant bans.

1. Personal attacks

Taking a firm stance on hurtful content is essential to fostering a supportive TCLA community. We do not tolerate personal attacks towards TCLA members or staff. This includes:

• Direct and indirect rudeness
• Criticising members for their responses or lack of responses
• Insults on personal character
• Badgering, harassment or baiting
• Repeatedly misrepresenting members and misconstruing post
• Posts intended to anger other members or cause a negative reaction (trolling)

Rudeness sabotages conversations. If you debate an issue, you must focus on the substance of the debate and not on an individual’s character. If you disagree, you must think about your tone, and you must respect the decision of others to have a different opinion, or to avoid responding

Use the report function if you feel another member is being aggressive towards you. Do not respond publicly as this derails topics and creates a hostile environment for other members. You will be warned if you act in a hostile manner to another member, even if you did not start the argument.

2. Offensive, harmful or illegal content

TCLA members may not post any messages, or create any avatars or usernames, that are considered to be offensive, obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, racist, hateful, purposefully misleading, knowingly false and/or defamatory, invasive of a person’s privacy, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.

3. Invasion of privacy

You may use private messages when the subject matter is personal, where the content may help to identify individual members, or when an individual encourages you to contact them privately. We generally expect all other content to be posted in the forums, so the wider community can benefit from seeing it.

Members are responsible for their content and communication on TCLA. Whether in forums or private messages, it is up to the individual to decide on the information they provide, where they post, as well as with whom and when they share it. They have the right to change their minds too. TCLA will not tolerate any harassment of members where they are unable to meet other members’ expectations, whether on TCLA or through social media platforms.

Members must respect an individual’s desire not to share their answers. Anyone responding in private messages that goes beyond this guidance does so at their own risk.

Any attempts to harass a member for not sharing their answers will not be tolerated. Some of our members choose not to be anonymous. Before adding anyone on other social media platforms, we encourage you to private message them and ask whether it is ok for you to add them. Using TCLA forum information to pester another member outside the forum will not be tolerated.

4. Multiple registration

If you were banned or given a temporary forum suspension, you may not reregister. Only TCLA staff can reinstate a member.

5. Advertising, soliciting or self-promotion

Members may be influenced by the advertisement of products or services outside of TCLA

Posts containing the following requires prior approval from TCLA:

• Products or services not related to commercial law;
• Soliciting donations or survey participants;
• Products or services that you have a vested interest in (e.g. a financial or reputational benefit); or
• Products or services that primarily compete with TCLA’s offering.

In any case, we reserve the right to disallow any promotional content posted in the TCLA forums.

6. Share information that does not undermine the recruitment process

We expect a balance between sharing information and maintaining integrity. We endeavour to share as much information as possible, so the whole community benefits and the profession becomes more accessible. However, we want to do this without undermining the integrity of firms’ recruitment processes.

We allow the sharing of:

• the structure of an interview or assessment;
• live interview questions;
• General themes regarding individual assessment exercises, including case study or written exercise topics;
• Positive and negative experiences of the interview process; and
• Advice for preparing for interviews and assessments.

We do not allow the sharing of:

• Video interview questions; and
• Specific assessment information, such as the specific scenario of individual case studies, group assessments or written exercises.

7. On-topic discussions

Unless you are contributing to a master thread*, members should only add comments or questions relating to the topic being discussed. This ensures that members can have their queries answered and that newcomers can easily follow a discussion. If you would like to begin a new discussion or debate, please create a new thread. You may link back to the previous thread if appropriate.

Unless you have something new to add to a thread, do not ‘bump’ it for the sake of getting a response. If a discussion has not been active for several months, we encourage you to start a new thread.

Avoid posting the same question or content across multiple threads. Instead, you can include links to other posts, which will redirect people to a thread with a consistent theme. In time, this makes the forums easier to navigate.

If you see any content that you feel go against our terms and rules, please use the report function in the bottom left-hand corner of the post or private message.

*A master threads refers to compiled topic-based discussions, such as vacation scheme threads, training contract threads, and general discussion threads.