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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TCLA.user0" data-source="post: 248914" data-attributes="member: 43927">Hello I wanted to inform you all about my experience at a Fladgate Assessment Centre for the SOLICITOR APPRENTICEHIP position. Some aspects may differ for VS.In prior correspondence, we are told that no legal knowledge is required,HiI wanted to disclaimer this was for the Solicitor Apprenticeship assessment centre, not for the Vacation Scheme which I imagine might be the stage you are at?So I imagine some of the principles at my AC may differ from the ones at yours. Fladgate is an interesting firm with weird toilets (this will make sense once you get there)My AC had three key stages, a 'group negotiation exercise', a contract drafting summary exercise and a speech from the incumbent apprentices.The group negotiation exercise was watched by the Early Careers coordinator, a partner and the Head of Business Services (who will probably not be involved in VS ACs) and we were given a series of statements (that had nothing to do with the firm or Law) and were told to debate them. These statements are randomly distributed among the group. You would pick a statement you wanted to debate then put it in a position; Agree/Disagree/Undecided. One statement was 'It should be illegal to clone people', the person whose statement this was would open the debate arguing their pov and it was up to others in the group to rebut their arugments or agree with them.In previous correspondence with the firm, they described the following task as a "A written document drafting assessment". We were given a contract and a memorandum, and additional articles relating to the contract. The contract was written up by a client who was renting out a commercial property they owned. This was a contract drafted by the client to set out their relationship with a vendor who would be renting out part of the property. The task was essentially comprehension with about 10 key facts we were asked to elicit from the text regarding the contract (ie; is smoking allowed, what are the hours of operation, etc) and send an email to the client answering these q's (which are featured in the memo). The contract also has some 'logical' and spelling errors and some inconsistencies. The memorandum which is from a partner at the firm will say they are unavailable to complete this task themselves and they need you to do it. As previously mentioned, it features some questions from the client about specific provisions of the contract and then the partner says something along the lines of "Client is not the best with spelling. Can you highlight any errors to them in your response". I tried to highlight all of the spelling errors and inconsistencies in response to the client. These were your blatant, incredibly obvious spelling errors which were indentifiable at a first glance to most of the candidates in my group. The inconsistencies I also mentioned are NOT prompted in the memorandum and candidates were expected take it upon themselves to point these out to the client. In my AC, the address in one area of the contract was different that in the official definitions. And the client also defined one term in the Definitions clause but refers to it as something else later in the contract. I believe we were given about an hour - not that it mattered anyway because our supervisor came in and cut our time short. I was internally upset when the timer on her phone had gone off after she had already made us save the word documents to the cloud and we were dismissed. The task is completed on a word doc on Microsoft Surface Pro's and we are told not to use the internet for the duration of the task. We are not supervised directly during the task.There's also a partner's networking lunch. They will ask you to eat the sandwiches in your room prior to meeting the partners who will be eating the lunch in the main room. They seemed to be incredibly proud that they 'came up' with this method of operation so that you don't have food in your mouth while speaking to a partner. But they have food in their's while speaking to you. The firm produces a lot of its' partners for the AC which is nice (and having completed internships with some large US firms is definitely not 'a given')  but also reflects the culture of the firm and perhaps their workload. One member of the firm's senior management - Claire Cherrington - who worked in a senior management position at Linklaters for 20 years (she will say she worked at a large firm but will not say the name) will discuss some of the reasons why Fladgate is supposedly a nice place to work. This formed part of the long speeches at the start of the day, preceding the aforementioned exercises. During a private speech from two apprentices who detailed more about the apprenticeship programme (which felt slightly boring for anyone who had been awake for a long time at that point already and had already researched the majority of info they were telling us) they told us the firm was a nice place to work because the apprentices had all met each other's partners and they do shots with the partners of the firm (not their personal partners).There is NO interview at the AC, which follows in another final stage.  There are 50 candidates at my AC and 5 groups, 10 per group. There are 2 AC's. I don't remember how many were supposed to be invited to the Interview Stage but we had the impression it would end up being 2 or 3 if they were looking to take an equal amount from each group.This was my first ac and I spent a lot of time learning about the firm's culture ie 'Unlimited Partnership' & SPACE, their best friend network, their extensive international desks including in Israel and their new acquisitions such as their new Head of Africa Desk from Squire PB and another partner poached from Withers, and of course their strengthened teams absorbed from Memery Crystal. I had no opportunity to use any of this knowledge - except during the unassessed? partner lunch - as the AC was not centered around the firm whatsoever and also because I was not invited for an interview. I had assumed that perhaps I would have a chance to work in some of my knowledge regarding the firm into the group negotiation exercise but unfortunately not.Good luck! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification: Our company is called, "The Corporate ___ Academy". What is the missing word here?

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