Just to add into the conversation about vacation schemes and the investment into training, law is a complete anomaly compared to any other office based job that the training is upfront and before someone starts a job. The training costs can easily be £70k before the individual even starts on their first day. You just don't see this upfront cost in other professional services or regulated industries.
Most other industries are providing training on the job and the costs are nowhere near as high where they don't need to provide maintenance grants. However, these graduate programmes are also ruthless in getting rid of graduates within the first 6-12 months if they don't pass professional qualifications or are not performing on the job. Historically law firms haven't had that luxury and had to make a two year commitment (although the SQE has changed that), making them very risk adverse.
From my experience, I am very aware that vacation schemes generally limit diversity on a number of levels and that is why I encourage firms to have more short insight programmes (e.g. 1-3 day programmes) as an alternative for those who cannot do vacation schemes. But I also see why firms use vacation schemes so heavily to reduce the risk of hiring the wrong person - they aren't fool-proof, but they are far less fool-proof that relying on a 2-3 hours of assessments.
