TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2021-22 (#1)
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I know someone who had an AC yesterday! Idk when she found out though
Jessica Booker
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Unlikely to get a free lunch. The only way this typically happens is if every employee gets a free lunch allowance from their own canteen.
On occasion, individual people like your supervisor might buy you lunch though. In addition, it’s not unknown for graduate recruitment to put on talks at lunchtimes and provide a lunch with it.
Do law firms still take candidates if they've resat exams (A-levels, LPC, uni)?
Similarly, how do exam retakes actually affect your chances at a law firm and are there any tips to help your chances?
[It would be great to get a graduate recruiter's opinion on this as the information online is quite minimal] @Jessica Booker
Similarly, how do exam retakes actually affect your chances at a law firm and are there any tips to help your chances?
[It would be great to get a graduate recruiter's opinion on this as the information online is quite minimal] @Jessica Booker
There was a really interesting article on the FT a few days ago about City lawyers and the impact of the Russian sanctions. May help with commercial awareness and challenges facing the legal profession:
www.ft.com
City lawyers cannot hide behind ‘the law’ over Russian clients
You do not want to be the one continuing to do business where other industries deem it too politically toxic
Hey @Jellybelly829,
Apologies for not getting to this before!
My advice would be, as best you can, to practice the article interview with a friend/family member. The first question your interviewers will ask is "please can you summarise this article for us?" or "what did the article say?".
A structure for answering this could be:
1. Short one sentence explanation of subject of the article + conclusion
2. Succinct identification of three main points covered in the article (outline that you would happily speak about each, or one of these in more depth if required/your interviewers are interested).
There are also some great resources on the forum with tips about article interviews, such as here and here. I also thought that this post from @James Carrabino might also be useful as he has written out a great list of things to ask yourself when analysing an article for an interview!
When analysing the interview too, think about the strength of reasoning employed. Do the authors make any logical jumps for example? Are they trying to persuade a particular audience of something? Take a look at the first post linked above for more questions like this.
The article interview will, however, only take up a small proportion of your interview. Try as best you can to avoid making broad statements during your interview as, if your interviews are anything like mine, your interviewers will pick you up on them (i.e., they will ask you back up what you are saying or try to discuss the subject with you). One way of using this to your advantage would be to inadvertently bring up a subject that you actually are very knowledgeable about. You might then be able to steer the subject of your interview towards a topic you really want to discuss(!).
The last broad piece of advice I have for you is to think about some classic questions but when you are practicing them, frame them slightly differently. For example, rather than asking, "Why law?", you might be asked, "Why not consulting?". If you have a lot of international experience, they you could be asked, for example, "Why don't you train at Freshfields?".
Be prepared to be asked (and to justify) the firms that you have applied to alongside Slaughters too. If you give a very narrow range of firms (e.g., Travers, Macfarlanes and Slaughters), they might ask you "Well, the US firms pay a lot more, did you consider training at a US firm?", or suggest that it was a mistake to apply to so few firms. All this goes back to is be prepared to justify your decisions under a very tough line of questioning!
I hope that helps! Please let me know if you would like anything clarified 🙌
Not Jessica but I always include my resit on my application even though it’s not visible on my transcript and I’ve found it makes for a really good discussion when talking about failure and resilience. I had to resit my first exam in law school and honestly it was a great lesson that when the worst thing imaginable happens, it won’t kill you and you can come back from it. I still graduated with a first, achieved a merit in my LLM and a commendation in my GDL so ultimately I demonstrated that that was a blip and not indicative of my academic performance. That’s just my thoughts, but I’m sure Jessica will have more valuable insight.
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Jessica Booker
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There are a lot of variables here - it will depend on the reasons for the resits, what qualification it is for, what the grade difference is, and if there were any mitigating circumstances.
For instance, someone resitting their A-levels to increase their grades to get into a particular university with mitigating circumstances will be looked at very differently to someone resitting an LPC module because they just couldn’t pass it on the first attempt.
@Jessica Booker
Hi Jessica, I was wondering if you had the answer to this question... Why do offshore law firms have people as counsel working in their offices? I understand offshore law firms are different than onshore law firms but I just thought that counsel was separate to solicitors and therefore were not working within the same organisation? From counsel, I understand barrister. I think I might be misunderstanding something?
Hi Jessica, I was wondering if you had the answer to this question... Why do offshore law firms have people as counsel working in their offices? I understand offshore law firms are different than onshore law firms but I just thought that counsel was separate to solicitors and therefore were not working within the same organisation? From counsel, I understand barrister. I think I might be misunderstanding something?
For a paralegal interview about that specific department when researching that department should you find out awards of that department or is it not relevant to a paralegal interview.
Jessica Booker
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I can’t be certain on this, but just my thoughts on it…
Counsel is a term that can be used to explain a variety of roles. For instance, Counsel is widely used for people who are effectively working at Partner level but who do not want to/cannot enter the partnership. They won’t necessarily be barristers - many counsels are only practicing solicitors.
Therefore the logic might be that they are working as Counsel because the offshore office is not part of the partnership (that might be for tax or legal reasons).
Also as far as I know in house companies refer to senior lawyers as councels.
Thank you Jessica, that would make sense as the Counsel at that law firm don't have barrister qualifications, only solicitor.
If anyone applied to Pinsent Masons and passed the initial application stage, or was eventually successful, can you please PM me!
It doesn't hurt, when I interviewed for my current role I mentioned the specific niches and skills that the team was recognised for in Chambers. I don't think it's strictly necessary to do this, you're not likely to be questioned on it and I wouldn't recommend forcing it into the conversation, but if you can get it out organically it shows that you actually care about the role.
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