Reply to thread

Hi [USER=26312]@futuretrainee2025[/USER] to take your questions in turn:

1. There are two elements that I think go into preparation for any AC exercise, including case studies: (i) developing and improving the relevant assessed skills; and (ii) practicing. Of course, the two overlap, in that practicing will also develop your skillset - but the first category is wider than that, and specifically your general commercial awareness will come into play here. As such, I would do my best to work on that before the AC. For the practice part, I think you want to design mock assessments for yourself that are as similar as possible to the known details of the exercise. Based on the information shared here, have (ideally) someone you know with interviewing experience, but if not even just a friend, select an FT/Economist/etc article or set of articles for you to read for a 20-30 minute period. The articles should be around a common topic, and ideally one you can make an argument on (so, something that can be discussed and debated). Then, you can split the presentation between a period in which you simply summarize facts, a period in which you advance arguments for your view, and one in which you are asked questions by the person interviewing you.
2. Markup exercises will mostly engage your attention to detail skills, as they will involve reviewing everything on a legal document. [USER=2672]@Jessica Booker[/USER] made a great post on what to particularly look out for, I will quote it bellow. Besides that, I will link some online resources providing you with proofreading exercises to practice on - take a look here and here.
3. Researching cases can be quite difficult - as you mentioned, sometimes there is not a lot of information online. That said, I think it is normally the case that law firms do not publish a lot of information about their matters on their websites. However, in many cases, particularly for high-value transactions and cases, such information is readily available on the wider web - as both the legal and the broader business press will be reporting on them. As such, I advise you to take a look at the firm's listed expertise and identify the cases that seem most important (whether simply for reasons of the sums involved or because of political/regulator implications etc). Then, take the name of the case and look it up (using different variations of keywords) on Google and LinkedIn (you will find some posts there with information that is harder to find on your own). You should be able to find enough information about it to construct a basic image of what happened and why, which should be sufficient for interviewing purposes. Alternatively, you can try looking up searches involving the name of your firm and keywords like 'case' or 'matter' and see what you find on the web. This could short cut your way into identifying the cases the firm worked on that are in the press. Finally, if you have the time and/or if none of this works (which I think it is quite unlikely), you can always reach out to trainees/junior associates at the firm and ask, among other things, about a case they worked on that they found very interesting.