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Dropping some advice on group assessments:


1.  Deliver your presentations professionally and maintain character. 

  • Not everyone should be a partner. Some members of your group should be senior associates or associates (this will make your presentation far more realistic as clients often want to see the people who will be leading the day to day work as well. If it is a client pitch, there are often other support staff included in these like project managers.
  • Align the points each person will be talking about with their character/role. For example, a partner will be more likely to discuss something like the firm's strategy and its USPs, an associate may know more about day to day task management, and a project manager may be more knowledgable about value added services like legal tech
  • Reach out to people at the firm who have actually done presentations/pitches like this for clients and ask for advice on how to make your presentation more realistic. Also reach out to trainees that have most likely done the same exercise on their VS for advice on what worked and didn't work for them!

2. Presentation documents

  • Use firm templates where you can. Proof read everything.
  • If that is not possible for whatever reason (sometimes especially if it is a client pitch these templates are confidential), focus on the content rather than the visuals. While tables, charts etc can be very exciting to look at, your time will be better spent working on the substantive content of your talking points. The flip side to this is if you include a lot of fancy diagrams and are unable to explain them in detail when asked, that's not going to do your group any favours.
  • Do your research on everything your including in the slides or handouts. Your assessors will most likely nitpick even the smallest point so don't catch yourself out by including something you're not 100% confident in discussing.

3. Rehearse - make sure you and your entire group know what they are doing.

  • This may seem like very obvious advice but, be very proactive about helping your other group members out where necessary. If someone is more timid during the group's discussions reach out to them afterwards and check in to see if they are understand what's been discussed.
  • Especially on a VS (as compared to an AC) how well the overall group performs is far more important than how well you as an individual perform. So be the person that helps pull everyone together and make sure everyone is presenting to the same high standard.
  • Prepare for follow up questions by questioning everyone in your group on anything and everything they say
  • Ensure that people in your group are designated specific questions to answer so for instance, if someone is responsible for talking about the firm’s international strategy, that persons should answer questions related to that topic
  • If a member of the team is stuck with a question they have been given, don't jump in too quickly to help. Give them the opportunity to answer first. I'd suggest making a rule that if someone in the group is stuck on a question for more than 10 seconds, then someone else can interject.


Hope that's somewhat useful!


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