I have a hypothetical situation which may arise which I'd really appreciate advice with as follows:
I have accepted a TC offer from one firm to start in 2023. The contract says nothing about withdrawing applications from another firm/loyalty to that firm. I then go on to receive a VS offer from a much more prestigious firm which I prefer given a variety of things.
My questions are:
1) Am I able to undergo the VS with the other firm?
2) Am I able to renege the TC offer to accept a TC offer from the VS firm in the case that I was offered a TC at the end of it?
A lot of questions like this on the forum recently (side note: I'm loving seeing the TCLA gang securing multiple offers!). I'm going to try to summarise the advice I've seen given on this.
- Yes you can do the VS. Although the offer letter in your case doesn't say anything about withdrawing applications, I'd suspect it would still apply. A popular follow up question to this is if there is any way the first firm will find out, rescind their offer and if you don't secure the offer from the second VS, leave you without any offers at all. Answer is firms and GR teams have no way of communicating these kinds of things to one other as it would be in serious breach of GDPR guidelines. From personal experience, I know so many people who have done this and have not suffered any kind of repercussions. It's not a great move integrity wise (and I would not recommend it), but you won't be the first person nor the last to do it.
- Yes you can renege. There's no effect from reneging unless the first firm has already paid your fees for the GDL/LPC in which case you'll have to return the money. Otherwise, you're all good.
There is a lot to be said about taking spaces away from other deserving people by reneging on offers. Jess and Jaysen have talked about this really recently
here and
here. Ultimately the choice is yours to make and I appreciate it's a difficult situation to be in after having worked so hard to secure multiple offers.
Could I ask someone what happens if you have secured vacation schemes in both spring and summer, but you get offered the TC after completing your spring vacation scheme. Could you then go on to complete the summer vacation schemes (if you've not accepted the TC offer yet)? How long does the TC offer generally last?
If you haven't accepted a TC offer, i.e. you've only been made the offer but haven't signed or committed to it yet, then yes you can go on to do more vacations schemes. How long an offer lasts depends on the firm but generally the minimum I've seen is two weeks. In this case I would recommend you ask the spring VS firm for an extension on the deadline to accept. There is a possibility the firm will say no though. If you're in your penultimate year of university, the SRA code of conduct does give you until September i.e. the start of your final year. However since it is a voluntary code of conduct, some firms may still not be willing to extend the offer long enough to let you do the summer scheme. In which case it leaves you in the tough position of foregoing the latter VS or you can see the above advice on potentially going ahead with it anyway. Again, completely up to you!