Conflicting open days

[Esporia]

Two questions. Firstly, how many open days until it stops improving your CV. I was thinking about 5 would be sufficient?

Secondly, I have confirmed attendance at two upcoming open days, however, the days clash, very silly on my part, however I'm not sure what to do. Should I just email grad recruitment to say unforeseen circumstances have meant I cant come? I don't want to give a poor impression for future opportunities with the firm.

 

[George Maxwell]

Two questions. Firstly, how many open days until it stops improving your CV. I was thinking about 5 would be sufficient?

Secondly, I have confirmed attendance at two upcoming open days, however, the days clash, very silly on my part, however I'm not sure what to do. Should I just email grad recruitment to say unforeseen circumstances have meant I cant come? I don't want to give a poor impression for future opportunities with the firm.

Hi @Esporia,

Tagging @Jessica Booker for her thoughts on your open day query. Personally I would suggest doing open days to gain an insight into a particular firm (rather than more broadly demonstrating interest in a career in law. How many firms would you like to gain an insight into? Which are you currently drawn to? I didn't put any of my open days on my CV. Instead I mentioned them, where appropriate, in my answers to application questions/in my cover letter.

I was applying in my 3rd and 4th year, so had a fair amount of work experience, which I felt was more substantial. For example, for a first year law student with little other substantive work experience, I would have thought open days would be appropriate for a CV. Jess may have entirely different thoughts on this though!

With regards to your clashing open days, I wouldn't worry this happens to the best of us! Emailing the firm that you can no longer attend would be fine. I would not worry about being blacklisted for this sort of thing. Just make sure that you are grateful for being offered the opportunity and that you would like to interact with the firm again in the future if it were possible. One idea is to ask whether the firm is holding an open day on a different date that you could be transferred to.

Hope that helps 🚀

 

[Jessica Booker]

Two questions. Firstly, how many open days until it stops improving your CV. I was thinking about 5 would be sufficient?

Secondly, I have confirmed attendance at two upcoming open days, however, the days clash, very silly on my part, however I'm not sure what to do. Should I just email grad recruitment to say unforeseen circumstances have meant I cant come? I don't want to give a poor impression for future opportunities with the firm.

I don’t think there is a number where it necessarily improves a CV, and therefore there won’t be a number where that stops either.

It really depends on the rest of your profile as to how much an open day adds. Even someone with a lot of legal work experience might benefit from a specific open day that gives them exposure to a firm with a certain type of practice or if they haven’t got the opportunity to engage in vacation schemes (for instance if they are currently in employment)