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TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2025-26
- Thread starter Ram Sabaratnam
- Start date
Some GPT notes I had on this if helpful
P.s. Londoners love Northern accents!
What Received Pronunciation ("RP") used to signal
Historically, RP functioned as a proxy for:- Education
- Social class
- Institutional authority
What now signals professionalism
Today, credibility is driven by:- Precision of language
- Logical structure
- Confidence and control
- Situational awareness
In many sectors, regional or international accents are now normalised, including:
- Magic Circle / US law firms
- Big Four and mid-tier advisory
- In-house legal and tax teams
The Actual Standard You’re Being Held To
The real requirement is not RP, but intelligibility + control.You are expected to:
- Be clearly understood by your audience
- Speak at a measured pace
- Use professional vocabulary and syntax
- Avoid slang, filler, or informal constructions
What You Do Need (and What You Don’t)
You do NOT need:
- RP vowel shaping
- Upper-middle-class intonation
- Accent suppression or mimicry
- A “BBC voice”
- Sounds artificial
- Reduces fluency
- Undermines confidence
You DO need:
- Neutralised pronunciation of key technical words
- Controlled pace and emphasis
- Clean sentence endings
- Reduced phonetic ambiguity
Practical “Workaround”: Accent Neutralisation, Not Accent Erasure
This is the professional solution used by many senior advisers.Prioritise Clarity over Accent
Focus on:- Fully pronouncing consonants (especially word endings)
- Avoiding dropped syllables in technical terms
- Separating words cleanly (no rushing)
Control Pace and Pausing
A slower pace:- Increases perceived authority
- Improves comprehension
- Reduces accent salience
The Reality of Bias (and How to Handle It)
It would be naïve to say accent bias does not exist. It can.However:
- Bias attaches more to perceived uncertainty than accent itself
- Confidence + clarity neutralise most bias
- Overcompensating (forcing RP) often triggers bias
- They speak decisively
- They don’t apologise for their voice
- They command the subject matter
A Useful Internal Rule
A strong heuristic for professional speech:You do not need Received Pronunciation.
You need:
- Clear speech
- Professional language
- Controlled delivery
- Confidence in content
What “accent salience” means
Accent salience is how much the listener’s attention is drawn to your accent as a “feature” rather than to your message.If your accent is salient, the listener is more aware of:
- Your pronunciation differences
- Your rhythm/intonation
- Your identity cues
- Your reasoning
- Your structure
- Your confidence
What increases accent salience
- Rushing
- Mumbled endings
- Unstable volume
- Upspeak (rising tone at ends of statements)
- Frequent fillers
- Over-correction (trying to “do RP” mid-sentence)
What decreases accent salience
- Pace control
- Clear word boundaries
- Clean sentence endings
- Structured speech
- Strong content vocabulary
- Calm, consistent tone
Why bias effects feel so powerful to the recipient (imposter syndrome, unconscious bias, etc.)
This is a deep point. Bias is powerful not only because of the external behaviour, but because it interacts with the recipient’s internal threat systems and meaning-making.A. The brain treats social evaluation as a threat problem
Humans are highly sensitive to:- rejection
- status loss
- exclusion
- speeds speech
- reduces working memory
- increases error rate
- makes you second-guess
- you sense bias or dismissal
- your body activates threat state
- your delivery becomes less controlled
- the other person reads that as uncertainty
- they become more dismissive
- you conclude “I’m not good enough”
B. “Attributional ambiguity” is psychologically expensive
When someone treats you dismissively, you often can’t tell:- Is it me?
- Is it them?
- Is it time pressure?
- Is it bias?
C. Identity threat amplifies perception and cost
If you suspect a negative stereotype is in play (accent, ethnicity, background), you may experience:- heightened self-consciousness
- performance anxiety
- over-monitoring of speech
So yes: the recipient impact is not “imagined.” It is a plausible interaction of (i) social threat response + (ii) uncertainty about cause + (iii) identity meaning.
“Reduced phonetic ambiguity”: what it means, and before/after examples
Phonetic ambiguity is when the sounds you produce could plausibly be interpreted as multiple different words or endings, especially in fast professional speech.In conversations - especially with people who are busy or distracted - listeners often:
- half-listen
- look at their phone or screen
- focus on the overall idea, not every word
- make quick judgments about confidence
So if your word endings blur or your syllables collapse, the listener’s brain fills gaps with assumptions. That increases the probability you get misheard, interrupted, or asked to repeat yourself - which then makes you feel more anxious.
Minimal daily practice (non-accent-changing) - expanded
1. The “sentence landing” drill (2 minutes)
What to do
- Read any paragraph aloud.
- Put slight emphasis on the final word of each sentence.
- Let your voice drop slightly at the end (not dramatically).
- Trailing off is often read as uncertainty.
- Clean sentence endings signal confidence, even when content is cautious.
Ask yourself: Did the sentence feel finished, or did it fade away?
Hi, I submitted an application for review before the deadline on the 22nd Dec and no one has got back to me. What should I do? Is there someone I can contact @Abbie Whitlock
Debevoise is kinda odd, I read somewhere that the application is for their Open Day which they recruit Vac Schemers through?? Not sure how accurate this information is.
Yeah, you have to apply for their Open Day to be considered for their vac scheme to then be considered for their TC. Looks like they also conduct interviews at the Open Day.
I've just submitted an application for Milbank but it didn't have any application questions. Does anyone know what the next steps are? Is an invite to an online test automatic?
@Andrei Radu how do you priories tasks in an inbox tray exercise. E.g how would you rank client work a review meeting and a meeting on changes in legislation that were all overlapping. Also for sjt deadline rankings how should you prioritise. When should you push back a deadline/ when should you ask team for help?
Here's the brochure.
I think it is implied the critical reasoning test is automatic. Hard to tell for sure.
Hi! can anyone provide insights into the Bird & Bird AC? Can provide insights into Links AC, TW AC, HFW AC, or Ashurst WE in return!
No, from my experience last cycle HFW is fully rolling and releases their ACs staggered so they will certainly release more! Can I ask when these people heard from them?
Have you progressed past this stage before despite covering/turning off your camera? About to do my amberjack for Reed Smith and I really don't feel like being on camera today hahah
Any time a math question comes on screen they see me laughing (and maybe crying) for a good solid 5 mins before hail mary-ing an answer (I cant do maths).
As for the rest of the test.. if they actually watch it, they probably just see and hear me singing 🤷🏽♂️
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