Hi
@CupOfTea17 I think working on building your profile and knowledge and preparing for the next cycle over the summer is a great idea. For some reason, the majority of people concentrate the vast majority of their efforts in the normal applications cycle, which is also the time they tend to be busier with university and other commitments. However, starting preparation early can be hugely beneficial. A friend of mine who was previously unsuccessful took this very seriously over the last summer (treating it almost like a full time job towards the end) and now has several VS offers.
I would advise you to do the following things:
- Start writing applications early: The first and most important thing is to start working on applications early. Some firms already open their applications in early August, and even for the ones that do not, you can (i) do the research work and determine what would go into your why the firm reasoning; and (ii) if the specific firm's applications questions stay constant between the cycle, you can have a go at answering them already. The most important thing for maximizing chances of securing a VS/TC is to send as many high quality applications as possible. Since researching and writing an application takes a lot of time, particularly before you have built your skills in this regard, it will be very difficult to attain this when you have other commitments and when you have to get many of them done over a short span of time. If you can do some of the work in the summer, this should enable you to improve both quantity (as ideally you can have many of them already completed by the time most people start - my friend had around 20-25 done by late September) and quality (as you will have more time to invest to ensure each one is up to standard).
- Work on your commercial awareness: as you may have heard other people say, commercial awareness is a skill that you can only build over a longer time span. If you can invest time daily to read articles or listen to podcasts discussing the business world, this will pay huge dividends when you reach the interview stage.
- Do Forage Work Experiences: these work experiences are very useful for a number of reasons - they help you learn about practice areas, give you proof you can mention of your interest in them, show commitment to pursuing commercial law, and can be used to showcase interest in a specific firm. The more you can do (ideally across a wide spectrum of practice areas and firms you are interested in), the better.
- Try to find other work opportunities: I know this is quite difficult, but if you can get any work experience at law firm or in house legal department, even if not in the commercial sphere, or if merely a shadowing opportunity, this could be also very useful. A method that I have heard sometimes work with smaller firms and businesses is simply cold calling and emailing. If you do not necessarily ask to be compensated and want the experience more as an insight opportunity, given enough tries, I think this could work.
