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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abbie Whitlock" data-source="post: 226471" data-attributes="member: 42112">Hi!In my view, it's not necessary at all - plenty of people secure vacation schemes and TCs without paralegal experience. It can be helpful for building legal awareness or proving commitment to the profession, but it is definitely not required in order to be successful. In many of my vacation schemes last cycle, I was often one of the only people with paralegal experience (and that is simply due to my placement year, which a lot of universities do not offer). Even in my direct TC cohort at Reed Smith, there are a few people who don't have any prior legal work experience!What firms really look for is transferable skills, motivation, and evidence that you understand commercial work. You can demonstrate this through uni societies, part-time jobs, mooting, volunteering, open days, insight schemes, or other non-legal work. Even if paralegal roles tend to be more common at small-mid size firms (as you have seen on LinkedIn), this tends to be as they sometimes recruit trainees internally after getting to know them through support roles, so the pathway can be more common. That said, it's not a requirement - plenty of students go straight from uni to VS / TC without paralegal experience, especially if they can show the same core skills and motivation in other ways!If you can get legal experience in some way, that's great - but don't worry if you're starting out. Focus on building skills and exposure in whatever way is available to you, and use applications to show why you're well-suited to their firm.I hope that helps! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification: Our company is called, "The Corporate ___ Academy". What is the missing word here?

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