TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2024-25

[safari3]

Do law firms look unfavourably on non-law GRADUATES who apply, as opposed to final year non-law students? I was rejected from Bird and Bird post application questions but before the WG test or VI. I got to the K&E AC last year with less experience but slightly better answers to their commercial awareness/ firm specific qs. I'm quite surprised I was so flat out rejected by BB is this likely down to
- being a graduated non-law student currently doing a mix of random shift work and a full-time but non-law related short course currently?
- slightly worse answers to their questions?
- applying mid november to a rolling recruitment system which began in septmber?
- not having gone to a BB open/insight day (I went to a KE one before applying)

Hi (non-law graduate progressed to VI)
Sorry to hear you got rejected post app. I understand how frustrating that can be. To answer your questions:
- B&B are super open to non-law, particularly if you are STEM (which I am not), so I don’t think that could be a reason;
- I attended an insight day with them prior to submitting my app and they did mention that they are very picky at the application stage. I think this is because they only require a 2:1 grade overall (not too fussed with academics), so weigh the content of the written answers very heavily. They would’ve marked your answers against the firm’s competencies which are available on the early careers hub;
- They also mentioned to apply before the beginning of Nov to ensure your app gets screened, so that may be where you fell short, but even then I can’t confirm if that was the case this year. For reference, I applied towards the end of Oct.

Hopefully this gives you a bit more clarity. Again, I am very sorry about the outcome and wish you the best in your other applications

 

[SamiyaJ]

*TCLA in December*

We want to flag this now so people have plenty of notice and can plan application reviews, 1-2-1 calls, and general support over December.

The TCLA office will be closed from Monday 23 December 2024 through to Wednesday 1 January 2025.

Therefore the last date for application review submissions before the Christmas office closure is 19 December 2024 at 4.00pm. As we expect there to be a pre-Christmas rush, any applications submitted on 19 December may be returned on Monday 23 December.

You will not be able to submit applications between 4.01pm on Thursday 19 December until 10.00am on Thursday 2 January due to the office being closed. Other services like mock interviews and written exercises will also not be available during this period.

Please take this into consideration when planning not only your application reviews, but also any 1-2-1 calls and if you think you may need any additional services like mock interviews.

I expect the 18/19/20 December and the 2/3/5/6 of January to be very busy times for the team, so please consider this when thinking about the support you will need.

I will be on WhatsApp and the forums over the Christmas/New Year period for general support usually provided by these methods.

Any questions regarding this, please let me know.

Thanks for the heads up Jessica. Also thanking you and the team for all the support!

 

[BonanzaBih_]

Omgg congrats!!!!🤩🤩 is this for the spring or summer scheme?

Thank you and for Spring!

 

[Aspiringsolicitor01]

CRS Open day PFO

 

[lolasparks]

Hey - I'm not sure if there can be any advice or tips for this but I've realised I kinda struggle with meeting the word count on applications. I always go above it slightly and then have to cut down. There's nothing wrong with that but I was wondering if anyone has any tips, structures or things that have helped them I guess feel like they've included enough and ticked all the boxes!

 

[LawLawLawLawLaw]

im doing a TC application for a firm and they want a personal statement and interests and hobbies. then a CV. i was wondering how long should the personal statement and hobbies sections be as there is no guide word limit. also how should I structure the personal statement section? there's no guidance on their website either

 

[Andrei Radu]

thank you so much! this is definitely really helpful!

just wanted to know if you would recommend putting my address and the firm's address in the start of the cover letter or directly starting it with "Dear Graduate Recruitment"?

While it's always good to check for any extra information about this in FAQs sections, think most firms nowadays are happy with starting directly with 'Graduate Recruitment Team', especially for one-page cover letters. However, my personal preference is to also include addresses at the start - I think it just makes it look so much more like an official document. However, I think you cannot go wrong with either. If you feel you would be able to substantially improve the quality of your written answer by using the extra space that you would have otherwise used for the addresses part, you should go for it.

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

Hey - I'm not sure if there can be any advice or tips for this but I've realised I kinda struggle with meeting the word count on applications. I always go above it slightly and then have to cut down. There's nothing wrong with that but I was wondering if anyone has any tips, structures or things that have helped them I guess feel like they've included enough and ticked all the boxes!

This post might be helpful.

How to get your applications within their word limits

After reviewing applications over the last 7-8 months, one of the most common issues for candidates is getting their answer within word limits. Often people find it difficult to cut their answers down, and in doing so usually cut out interesting content or points to ensure the answer meets any...

www.thecorporatelawacademy.com

I will have a think about updating this over the Christmas period as there are probably a whole load of other phrases I could add to this.

 

[lolasparks]

This post might be helpful.

How to get your applications within their word limits

After reviewing applications over the last 7-8 months, one of the most common issues for candidates is getting their answer within word limits. Often people find it difficult to cut their answers down, and in doing so usually cut out interesting content or points to ensure the answer meets any...

www.thecorporatelawacademy.com

I will have a think about updating this over the Christmas period as there are probably a whole load of other phrases I could add to this.

Thank you so much!!

 

[legal18]

What is the benefit of law firm's with a sector-focused approach for clients?

 

[Andrei Radu]

im doing a TC application for a firm and they want a personal statement and interests and hobbies. then a CV. i was wondering how long should the personal statement and hobbies sections be as there is no guide word limit. also how should I structure the personal statement section? there's no guidance on their website either

1. Word limit: there's no absolute figures to cite here, but for me think the "acceptable" word count range would be anywhere from 400-500 to 1000-1200 for the personal statement and anywhere from around 200 to 600 for the hobbies section. Ultimately, what matters here is (i) extracting as much value from the application form answers as possible by explaining as many of your impressive experiences and achievements is sufficient depth; while also (ii) ensuring you are not overloading the answers with so much information that it makes it difficult to navigate and makes individual points less impactful; and (iii) ensuring you write in as concise and to-the-point manner as if you had restrictive word limits. As long as you respect all three requirements, your answer will be fine regardless of how many words you end up writing. The aforementioned ranges are simply what I think is the case for most answers that observe these criteria, but I am in no way affirming that in individual circumstances it would not be possible to so while writing more/less than suggested.

2. How to structure the personal statement: unless you have the time to reach out to graduate recruitment or other people from the firm, it may be difficult to find out exactly what the firm wants from a personal statement. In this situation, my approach has always been to err on the side of caution and try to do more rather than less. Thus, the way I would structure it is like a cover letter (but without the letter formalities and perhaps more of a focus on your journey): 1. Why commercial law; 2. Why the firm; 3.Why you.

 

[3000to1shoteverytime]

Thanks, but the additional information section is just a textbox it seems, and I can’t upload anything to it.

OK. I remember that one now and typed full transcript available on request if required or similar.

 

[Andrei Radu]

What is the benefit of law firm's with a sector-focused approach for clients?

Hey @legal18 so I think there are a number of associated benefits of a sector-focused approach from both a client and an employee perspective:

Benefits for clients:

1. Ease of service: essentially, a sector-focused firm will deliver legal services in a way that is a lot easier for the client to use. Firstly, if a firm organizes teams more around sectors than practice areas, it looks and is a lot more similar to the client's business. Businesses perceive themselves as players in a certain industry and do not neatly separate their legal needs between the different workstreams of different practice areas. Thus, the legal service of sector-focused firms seems a lot more tailored to the client. Secondly, industry-focused firms tend to have partners with significantly broader expertise. Hence, the firm can provide a 'one-point-of-contact' system to clients, which is easier to navigate administratively.
2. Strategic advice: the idea is that if you spend years and years working on matters in a single industry, by the time you become a more senior practitioner you will have almost as much technical expertise in the sector as the client themselves. Having this kind of deep insight and knowledge of the industry will not only mean that you can give better advice to clients on particular mandates, but it will also mean you will be in a better position to form a client-lawyer relationship which goes beyond that. This way, you will have a good chance of getting to know all the insides of the client's business and becoming their go-to strategic advisor. Thus, the client gets the benefit of exceptional business and legal advisory services simultaneously.
3. Industry reputation: if the firm generally does a lot of high-end work in a particular sector, it will become very reputable with businesses in that sector. The fact that firm will simply be a very well-known name definitely helps in terms of shaping advantageous negotiations dynamics with opposing counsel. A great example of this is Kirkland in the PE sphere. Simply because of the firm's reputation in this area, it is able to obtain advantageous terms for clients by insisting they are "market terms". Because nobody does as many deals as they do in PE, it is sometimes difficult for the other side's counsel to counteract Kirkland's claims.

Benefits for employees:

1. Learning more about the intricacies of the sector as a benefit in itself: if you have a prior interest in a given sector of the economy, working for a firm that has a focus on that sector will enable you to get a lot more exposure to it, which can be a benefit in and of itself. Just as you might have a general interest in commercial law because you have a general interest in learning more about and working with businesses, you might also have a specific interest in sector-focused firms because you have a specific interest in learning more about the sector. This reasoning will be especially persuasive if you have some previous work or other relevant experience related to the sector. Personally, I have seen candidates write persuasive answers based on this type of question in regards to sectors ranging from tech and financial services to energy, pharma and transportation.
2. Becoming a true strategic business advisor: this is similar to the line of reasoning you mentioned but is focused on long-term career prospects. As mentioned before, repeated experience in a single industry means you will in time become very technically proficient in your understanding of it. This puts you in a great position to become a true strategic adviser, which is potentially a more interesting role than just dealing with their legal requests.
3. More high-end mandates: if the firm can generally provide better service than its competitors because of its sector focus, this also means that the firm will be better placed to win the top of the market mandates from that industry. This might be naturally attractive to you, as these mandates tend to be the among the most complex and consequential.

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hey - I'm not sure if there can be any advice or tips for this but I've realised I kinda struggle with meeting the word count on applications. I always go above it slightly and then have to cut down. There's nothing wrong with that but I was wondering if anyone has any tips, structures or things that have helped them I guess feel like they've included enough and ticked all the boxes!

Hey @lolasparks firstly I want to say I completely relate to your struggles. My first application draft would always be substantially above the word count and I would spend hours and hours to think of ways as to how to reduce it. In some ways however that was not bad, as it forced me to think a lot more closely about what is and is not valuable in an application and thus refined my general application writing skills.

As for concrete advice, the first way to reduce your word count is to rethink the substantive points you are making. For any given sentence and word, ask yourself: is this truly necessary for supporting the central point I am making with this paragraph? If I cut this sub-point, will the recruiter's understanding of my main point be substantially reduced? If the answer is no, you can safely cut.

The second and usually more important way to reduce word count is to rethink your style of writing. My top tips besides having a general focus on writing in a to-the-point manner would be:

• Cut down on the adjectives and adverbs - they normally do not add much substantive value, but just more just literary 'flavor', which is not necessary in a law firm application.
• Write shorter and more indepent sentences. You will find that a lot of your natural tendencies towards more verbose expression originates in a tendency to write long sentences with multiple clauses.
• For every sentence and word, once you have already ascertained it adds substantive value, ask yourself: is there any way I can express this point a more concise manner? If yes, take a few minutes considering what you can cut and how you can rephrase.

 

[jojo23]

Do you guys think it's too late to start applying for schemes with early jan deadlines that are rolling?

 

[TCLA Community Assistant]

Do you guys think it's too late to start applying for schemes with early jan deadlines that are rolling?

Absolutely not - it’s still early.

 

[ttyl]

So sorry to hear this! When did you apply. I applied around 5th and haven’t heard back

I applied oct 19

 

[SoonToBeTrainee]

So sorry to hear this! When did you apply. I applied around 5th and haven’t heard back

I think I applied around this time, maybe even the end of September, and I also haven’t heard from Slaughter and May. Very strange

 

[NCTC2025]

That HSF SJT report was the opposite of every selection I made during the test. 😭

 

[kokoprep]

Our application window runs yearly from 1 September to 1 December.

Does this mean it’s end of day on December 1, 2024 or would it close at 12AM on December 1, 2024.

This skadden, please help!