TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2026-27

[Mace2121]

@Antoni Trochimowicz I was wondering if you could offer some guidance on this application question:

“Aside from your work experience and academic studies, which other experiences have helped you develop skills relevant to a career as a commercial lawyer?” (250 words)

What sort of experiences are they looking for here? Would volunteering/extracurricular experiences be appropriate even if I have already included them in the work experience section of the application, or would you recommend using completely different examples that do not appear elsewhere?

 

[Antoni Trochimowicz]

hi @Antoni Trochimowicz i was just wondering what your approach was to comm awareness - in terms of keeping up w the news but also technical knowledge? also how would you research a deal as i often find that difficult to navigate

Hi, of course, I think commercial awareness is definitely one of those things that is explored weirdly over the internet with many people suggesting other things.

Ways to keep up with news:
Create a brand new email, one that you do not use for anything else and using that, sign up to a bunch of newsletters. A lot of them cover the same news stories but often with slightly different reporting styles. I would recommend, as a start, to sign up to all of the ones I list, then picking and choosing what works best for you. The ones I signed up to:

• Finemize Daily
• Morning Brew
• The Daily Upside
• Economist
• International Intrigue (More focused on geopolitics)
• Non Billable (Definitely sign up to this one no matter what as it's different & legal related)
• Little Law (Didn't really use this but I'm pretty sure it has some good legal knowledge)

Technical Knowledge:
I don't usually like suggesting paid resources but "All you need to know about the city" is fantastic. Some of it is outdated but generally it's very useful as a beginner's guide to what you need to know.

Beyond that, I would learn:

• Inflation & interest rates and how they affect eachother and what they affect & what they're affected by
• Pros and cons of Share Sale vs Asset Sale
• Why companies acquire others
• Issues to do with Competition, IP, Tax, Employment et al. that could arise after a transaction
• Pros and cons of Equity vs Debt Financing
• Pros and cons of the different financial instruments/financing (bonds etc.)

Then for the big city firms I would try to learn a bit about PE, you don't need to watch law-specific videos but there's some great explanations of PE online. You can also learn a little about Private Credit and its differences to traditional lending if you want to particularly impress. This guy is pretty interesting about PE:

Then finally about a deal:
Check if the internet's usual news sources have the deal posted (FT etc.), they might not mention the law firms but they will go into the wider rationale of the deal (especially if it's a big deal)

Check the individual company's websites as sometimes they issue a press release about it. Then of course read the firm's websites about the deal. If you need further explanation you can always put in your sources and have a little conversation with AI about it.


Hopefully this was helpful, let me know if you have any further questions

 

[Antoni Trochimowicz]

@Antoni Trochimowicz I was wondering if you could offer some guidance on this application question:

“Aside from your work experience and academic studies, which other experiences have helped you develop skills relevant to a career as a commercial lawyer?” (250 words)

What sort of experiences are they looking for here? Would volunteering/extracurricular experiences be appropriate even if I have already included them in the work experience section of the application, or would you recommend using completely different examples that do not appear elsewhere?

Yes, of course
Volunteering and extracurriculars would perfectly fit here. Yes, it would be appropriate to include them despite their mention in the work experience section. However, I would be careful about not rewriting the same things. Make sure you try to highlight a different part of the experience. The sort of analogy I always was told "a different slice of the same cake". Try to make it specifically tailored to to the skill in question.

(However, if you have completely different examples which are also strong, it would also be great to mention them if they do not fit here. But I'm assuming the extracurriculars/volunteering fit more naturally. I certainly had overlap in my applications.)