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TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2024-25
- Thread starter Jessica Booker
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- Sep 9, 2024
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Hi @Cool pigeon my advice would be to go with the last option and be honest about your approach, although I would perhaps focus a bit more on the US firm with the larger trainee intake when making comparisons. Firstly, that's because I think any disadvantage vis a vis the interviewer's impression as to how much you want a Slaughter and May TC will be offset by the comparatively much greater advantage of showing yourself as a very desirable and successful candidate. To take them one at a time: the disadvantage of you seeming US firm-focused is not likely to be very great, particularly if you mention other UK firms you have applied for. Partners all well aware as to how competitive it is to get a TC nowadays and that it would not make sense to put all your eggs in one basket. Furthermore, my impression from my time spent at the firm is that many partners at Slaughter and May find it difficult to conceive that anyone would reject them to work for a US rival; and that they are still at the very pinnacle of prestige in the London market. As such, they would likely find it hard to believe you would not sign their TC offer if they were to give you one. At the same time, I cannot imagine many things that can better portray you as an extremely successful and desirable candidate than mentioning 3 VS offers. In my cohort at UCL Law I know of only two people besides me who got 3+ schemes, and across universities and cohorts I have not met more than around 10-15 people in total who had achieved that. Thus, I think you would be doing yourself a huge disservice by not mentioning the accomplishment.
The second reason why I think you should go with this approach is because (i) the strategy you mentioned sounds plausible; and (ii) if the interviewers believe it, there is a plausible argument you can make as to why Slaughter and May would be your first preference. Firstly, the strategy sounds plausible because there are only so many UK firms that consistently working on the very high end corporate transactions: the Magic Circle, to a lesser extent the Silver Circle, and a couple of the other large international and profitable ones (such as Hogan Lovells). Outside of that, you are increasingly looking at mid-market transactions with a very occasional high-end one. However, you have a substantial number of US firms operating in this space, which although have comparatively smaller practices, still focus on high value matters (which in many cases originate from their US-based clientele). As such, if you selected firms to apply to with this criterion in mind, it is not so unexpected you could end up with more US firm offers. Moreover, factoring in the firm interaction criterion and being conscious of the fact that US firms have a tendency to be more active on the marketing and events front, it does not look implausible to me that you could end up with these offers without a strong preference for US firms.
As for (ii) - if top tier corporate work is of central focus that should work out in your favour, as I know Slaughter and May still considers itself to be the best firm in the market for that. Whether that is actually the case is more debatable; the important factor is that if you make a good argument to that effect then it looks plausible that you would choose Slaughter and May over the others. What could that argument be? Well, firstly, you could focus on the (relatively uncontroversial fact) that Slaughter and May is considered to be the best firm for UK public M&A work, and then explain why public M&A is more attractive to you than private M&A. Alternatively, you could focus on the idea that Slaughter and May arguably has the deepest institutional relationships with UK corporations (for a number of years they advertised that they represent more FTSE 100, 250, and 350 clients; and also of being the default 'boardroom advisor' of UK corporates) and then explain why that kind of market position attracts you. However, I would be research and aim to be able to defend the claim that Slaughter and May will be able to keep its position despite its lack of international offices (particularly in New York, where the other MC firms are heavily investing into) and dwindling best friends network (particularly having increasingly lost its US best friends as they moved into London - Davis Polk a number of years ago, and now Paul, Weiss, and to an extent Cravath as well).
Finally, I do not think you have anything to worry about regarding an extension of the TC offer. Last year their TC offers only expired in September, as the firm is choosing to follow The Law Society's voluntary trainee recruitment code.
- Sep 9, 2024
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Hi @baj5 and congratulations on getting to the final stage, it is an incredible achievement! Although this has been posted a couple of times on the forum, I just thought to link again my Complete Competency Interview Guide, as it contains my best tips both for preparation and for the interview itself. I have also quoted a post bellow in which I analyse in more depth how you can go about managing your emotions during the big day. Let me know if you have any further questions and best of luck
!My top tip would be to focus on doing well and not on being perfect. Many people go to ACs thinking they need to blow away the partners and the recruiters to succeed, but I think this is the wrong attitude to have. First of all, while your achievements and skills might be impressive for this stage, it is quite unlikely you will manage to overly impress anyone no matter how hard you try - you will know a lot less about any given commercial law subject than lawyer in the firm. Secondly, this attitude will make you feel even more stressed than you would normally be and will therefore likely impact your performance. If you will be assessed for a total time of a few hours, it is impossible to be perfect in every moment. When you notice an imperfection in an answer, the right reaction is to acknowledge it but then to move past it and make the best of the rest. Instead, the overly perfectionistic candidates tend to stress about it a lot more than they should, and in attempting to fix the initial mistake they do a lot more harm to their progression chances. People with this mindset thus often end up creating negative feedback loops for themselves: they make a small error, then they begin overthinking it, which decreases their self-confidence, which impacts their next answer, which in turn further intensifies their anxiety; a series of events which can end up completely derailing one's performance.
To avoid this, instead of aiming to excel everywhere, I would simply aim to perform well - to do a good job on every task and score well on every relevant assessment criterion. This boils down to using your preparation to make decent substantive points and communicate them in a clear and confident manner. If you manage to do this you will have performed better than the majority of candidates and in most cases should be enough to get you progressed - it did for me 4/4 times. If you reframe your task in this way, I think you should feel a lot less anxious about it: while perhaps it is difficult to convince yourself that you will pull of an extraordinary performance, you should feel a lot more confident in being able to respond sensibly to tasks and to cover all your bases well.
A final piece of advice I have for calming down on the day and to avoid blanking out is to take your time:
Finally, know that just by getting to the AC you have proven yourself to be one of the very best candidates out of a huge pool, which means you have all it takes to succeed! Best of luck
- Firstly, taking your time before starting your answer. Instead of just jumping into a response the instance the interviewer stops speaking (which is a very natural temptation) take 3-4 seconds to think about and structure your answer. This will significantly decrease the number of times you find yourself blanking out mid-answer or having difficulty finding the right way to end a sentence.
- Secondly, if you have difficulty with finding sensible points for a question, it is perfectly acceptable to request some thinking time - just say 'May I please take a minute to consider my answer?'. In the unlikely case you do not find anything after that, explain that you are unsure what to say; but also walk the interviewer through your thought process of your best guess.
- Thirdly, aim to speak more slowly. When you are anxious, your hear rate goes up and you naturally start speaking at a higher pace, which is problematic in that this simply means taking less time to think as you answer. This naturally reduces how articulate and confident you seem, especially since speaking quickly more often leads you to losing your chain of thought or expressing yourself in unclear language. As such, try to slow down. Also, use strategic 2-3 second pauses in your speech to add emphasis to points and to get valuable thinking time as you are moving between the different parts of your answer.
- Sep 9, 2024
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Hi @Adithi I completely understand how disappointing, disheartening, and anxiety-inducing it is to end up rejected everywhere as an international student - I have been in the exact same position only two years back. It is a difficult mental state to be in; and I think you should go easy on yourself and take your time to get through it. That said, you should also be conscious of a number of important facts that will make you understand your situation is nowhere near as desperate as you may think:
- It is extremely rare for anyone to be successful in securing a VS/TC during their first applications cycle. Learning how to research firms, to write in the appropriate style, to sell your skills and experiences, to perform well in tests and interviews, etc all take time and experience. Throughout this cycle you have definitely improved greatly in all those regards. That is why when you apply again next year you will start from a much stronger position than this cycle, and your success chances will thus be substantially higher.
- You already have clear proof you have what it takes to succeed. Believe it or not, getting to two final stages in your first application cycle is absolutely incredible, and easily places you among at least the top 5% candidates. I know many extremely talented people who have not even gotten one final stage over multiple application cycles. In my own case, I was rejected at the first stage in every single one of my applications. If I was able to turn it around and end up with 4 VS offers, believe me that so can you.
- There are many things you can do during the summer break to improve your chances for next year. This is an aspect that I think is ignored by way too many candidates, who tend to concentrate all their commercial-law related efforts during the autumn-spring application cycle. Firstly, there are quite a few firms who have direct TC applications open in the summer, and I know a couple of people who secured their offers in that way after an unsuccessful VS cycle. Secondly, you can do many things to improve your candidate profile that you may not have time for during the academic year, from Forage Virtual Work Experiences to working intensely on bettering your commercial awareness. Thirdly, you can start working on your next cycle's VS applications a lot sooner than you would think. A decent number of firms already open applications in August, and for the ones that do not you can pre-prepare answers (assuming their questions are quite constant historically) or at least do the relevant research. This should also give you a lot more time to focus on getting to the very highest quality of writing. A friend of mine who was rejected at a final stage last year and got no offers followed this exact approach; by the start of term time had already completed around 30 applications. He now has just received his 5th VS offer of the year.
- Even if you are not successful in getting a TC next year, this does not have to be the end of the road. Firstly, you can get a graduate visa, which will extend your right of stay and right of work in the UK for two years. Secondly, you can apply for a variety of other jobs that would perhaps make your path into getting a TC easier, particularly paralegal roles. Thirdly, if neither of the above works, you can still apply from abroad - I know of a couple of cases of people who ended up being successful that way.
- Sep 9, 2024
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I think @Amma Usman is completely right that you can either withdraw or ask for flexibility. The only thing you should keep in mind is that it will likely be easier for the firm's whose offer you have not accepted yet to switch your dates if there is another scheme they could take you on. If this is not possible I would then just accept the offer of the second firm and try asking for a change of dates/direct TC interview from the first firm, although I would perhaps not mention the competing offer as being the reason why.
True but I was not sure whether it was rolling or non rolling
. Also to check we just had to email a cv and cover letter to the grad rec right?I have an AC coming up next week and something’s been playing on my mind. I’ve had absolutely no contact with the firm through events or law fairs. I did try connecting with trainees/associates on LinkedIn, but most of them didn’t really accept my connection request. For context, I did my undergrad abroad and while I did attend virtual law fairs, I haven’t really interacted with this firm specifically. Would this really detrimental to my chances of being successful in the AC?
Thank you so much for linking this Andrei!Hi @baj5 and congratulations on getting to the final stage, it is an incredible achievement! Although this has been posted a couple of times on the forum, I just thought to link again my Complete Competency Interview Guide, as it contains my best tips both for preparation and for the interview itself. I have also quoted a post bellow in which I analyse in more depth how you can go about managing your emotions during the big day. Let me know if you have any further questions and best of luck
Congrats on getting an AC! I think if anything, the fact that you have made it to the AC, shows you have demonstrated a high level of interest and potential to the firm in question. This is despite having ‘no contact with the firm through events or law fairs’. I don’t think a lack of in person or virtual interactions with the firm would be detrimental to your chances of being successful in the AC at all! I think if the firm did have any expectations from you to have had previous interactions with them, they would not have progressed your application to the AC stage! 🙂
I think the most important thing at this stage is to make sure that you go into the AC with a thorough understanding of the firm and why you wish to pursue a career there. I think a good way to do this is through completing any virtual internships the firm has (Forage) and watching any recorded virtual events the firm has hosted in the past. I think if you can draw on previous experiences e.g., virtual law fairs, you could identify the similarities and differences between the firms you have interacted with previously, and the firm you are scheduled to do the AC with.
I think @Andrei Radu, @Amma Usman and @Ram Sabaratnam can provide a much better answer than this though to be honest. Best of luck with your AC! 🙂
I think the most important thing at this stage is to make sure that you go into the AC with a thorough understanding of the firm and why you wish to pursue a career there. I think a good way to do this is through completing any virtual internships the firm has (Forage) and watching any recorded virtual events the firm has hosted in the past. I think if you can draw on previous experiences e.g., virtual law fairs, you could identify the similarities and differences between the firms you have interacted with previously, and the firm you are scheduled to do the AC with.
I think @Andrei Radu, @Amma Usman and @Ram Sabaratnam can provide a much better answer than this though to be honest. Best of luck with your AC! 🙂
@Andrei Radu I have an upcoming interview with a really specialist law firm who focus on one thing only pretty much, and the only reasoning I have as to why I like the work is because it's just my personal interest. Do you think it's a disadvantage to use that as my reason given I haven't done a specific module at uni for it, not paralegalled in it, etc?
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