How many vac schemes

Just don't forget - the firm are assessing you too! Vacation schemes are open to both law and non-law students. Each firm's policy varies slightly, however, in general, summer schemes tend to prioritise applications from law students whilst winter schemes are open to law and non-law students alike.

Law students should ideally aim to complete a vacation scheme in the summer of their penultimate year, i. However, many firms also accept law students in their final year. Successful vacation scheme applicants are typically offered a training contract for two years' time, so final year law students may find they have a year off in between completing their LPC a one year course following a university law degree. This is not always the case though and it is worth checking an individual firm's website for details of their offering.

Non-law students can complete a vacation scheme in their final year. If you are then successful in being offered a training contract, you will have two years available to complete the GDL one year law conversion course and the LPC one year legal practice course. Webinar: How to get a vacation scheme. Applications for spring and summer vacation schemes open in October and close at the end of January. Applications are often screened on a rolling basis so there is a real advantage to getting your application in early.

We really want people who really want us. For some tips on how to do this refer to our feature on Making successful applications. In addition, alongside each True Picture on this website you'll find a ' Get Hired ' feature for each firm detailing its application process and vac scheme. Try and build your CV up in other ways — say with voluntary work or other legal or commercial experience — and then have another stab at vac scheme applications.

At some firms, vac schemes are structured down to the minute with talks about the firm and its training contract, followed by tasks and social engagements.

At others, vac schemers may be tied to a trainee or qualified solicitor and what they do will depend on that individual. The best vac schemes get students involved in ongoing cases and deals and puts them in the heat of the action — or at least lets them feel that way.

When on a vac scheme, become an anthropologist. Observe your environment and its inhabitants; figure out the social structures, the hierarchies, the shared values that bond people if indeed there are any.

Watch how the trainees fit in with all of this. Try also to get a feel for how different departments work by reading as much as you can. Intelligent questions pave the road to success, so lay as many down as possible without becoming annoying. You might be asked to shadow someone, helping them out with their workload. You might even get to go to client meetings or visit court.

Only apply to the firms that you are interested in and will fit in well. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account.

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. And — what changed that day? I started looking on The Student Room to see if there have been any set questions. I think my research just started to ramp up a bit more.

I put in a lot more effort into preparing for these interviews, and I found that with preparation, you can prepare in enough detail to pretty much guess 45 minutes of an hour interview. I already knew what the questions were. I think what I started to realise was that you can start to navigate that interview process a bit more. And then it allows you to steer control over a lot of the interview. Can I take a minute just to sit down just to think about my response? And I think that radiated across the table to the person interviewing me, because they could see: This guy is confident.

How about the commercial awareness or case study-type questions? How did you stay on top of commercial awareness to answer those questions? It was just reading up the F. Fortunately, when I was going into the KWM interview, there were loads of transatlantic deals going on, and there were some agreements taking place between China and Australia at that time, and, obviously, for a firm that is still headquartered in in China, I had an interest in those kinds of stories. That helps.

And when they asked me in an interview about something like that, it related automatically back to them. But I would say, going back to the original question, I think it is just about finding something you find interesting.

I feel that was probably one of my lowest points in the whole process. I pretty much put my eggs in one basket. And I thought, you know, this is the firm for me. And that can be quite hard to hear. Rejection is hard, kids!

And so, what I did was I took a couple of days to sit down. You know, just process it. I reflected on it a bit. I spoke to my dad, who was really helpful, because we talked through the interview and I think we started to realise perhaps where I had gone wrong. And, you know, there was a tough lesson to learn.

At that point, I had a decision to make: whether I wanted to go to start work to try to get some legal experience or to do the GDL. I had a job lined up with this online dating app in South America called Badoo. It was a really good interview with them, because it was run by two in-house counsel who just wanted an extra pair of hands to help out three days a week, which would have given me the flexibility of also applying to law firms. I got offered a job there, but I thought the best way to learn about law is to start studying it.

It was a big decision for me to make.