- Sep 9, 2024
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Hi @pepsicola96 I just wanted to say that I do not think having a graduate job in another field would make it seem like you are not committed to law. In my vacation schemes I have met people who had had a wide variety of graduate jobs, from sales & trading and consulting to pharmaceuticals. Firms are well aware that (i) getting graduate law jobs, particularly from a STEM background, is extremely difficult, and (ii) that many people simply need a graduate job in one field or another to fund their cost of living. As such, I doubt having such a job would ever count against you. I am actually tempted to affirm the opposite. Having applied for, secured, and worked in another role will show firms you have the right sort of attitude (in that you do not want to be idle and "waste" a gap year); and secondly, you will probably be able to leverage the work itself to demonstrate you have formed valuable transferable skills.Out of curiosity, is anyone planning to apply for non-law related grad jobs/schemes alongside TCs/VSs in the next cycle, or has anybody this cycle?
As a non-law (STEM) student, I've heard it can be very difficult to get paralegal positions and other legal roles without having done the GDL. So while I'm absolutely manifesting a legal career, I am naturally thinking about what else I'd do after graduating. The way I see it my options are:
1) go broke and self fund the GDL,
2) pure gap year, keep working in hospitality (and try to get a paralegal position)
3) in final year apply for some other grad jobs and hopefully secure one.
I guess the main difficulty in 3 is that it makes vacation schemes much more difficult, and just going for interviews/ACs in general I suppose, and might make it seem like I'm not committed to law. But with 1 and 2 I'd just feel so much less secure, if that makes sense. Of course at this point it's all moot, and non-law grad jobs are hardly easy to get anyway! Just curious to see how others have approached the (potentially) unemployed graduate life.
I think your decision-making should therefore not be impacted to much by your view as to of what a firm's perception of it might be. Rather, I would try to compare the benefits of the increased expected job security with the potential decrease in chances of securing a VS (assuming such a decrease would result from a lower amount of time you are able to dedicate to VS-related efforts).