A question for paralegals doing vacation schemes

[Lumree]

Hey everyone,

A question for those who are paralegals with upcoming vacation schemes and/or have previously done a vacation scheme while working as a paralegal:

How did you go about having a conversation with your boss/supervisor asking for time off to attend the scheme?

It sounds like a particularly daunting conversation so I’d be really grateful to hear how people have approached it!

Thanks in advance.

 

[M777]

Hey everyone,

A question for those who are paralegals with upcoming vacation schemes and/or have previously done a vacation scheme while working as a paralegal:

How did you go about having a conversation with your boss/supervisor asking for time off to attend the scheme?

It sounds like a particularly daunting conversation so I’d be really grateful to hear how people have approached it!

Thanks in advance.

It depends on the firm really.

I'm paralegalling for a big firm rn and they were super chill about me booking time off for interviews, assessment days and so on. Most of the time, I could just do the interviews/assessments during my lunch breaks and then make up the time. Equally, they were chill about me taking a day out of annual leave to do assessments. My firm typically doesn't ask for our reasons for taking annual leave so it's quite easy to just request a day off.

I also spoke to them about the prospect of taking a week or two off for a vac scheme. They were nice about it. They know paralegals are after TCs and are very much used to paralegals taking vac schemes during their employment. As such, they said I could either use my annual leave entitlement on them or just take unpaid leave.

HOWEVER - not all firms are like this. I interviewed with one firm during summer for a paralegal job, first thing they said to me was "We don't like paralegals who stay with us for 2 years and then take the skills we gave them to another firm". A couple firms can also be 50/50 about letting their paralegals work for someone else. If you stick to big firms who are well-versed in the training contract recruitment process, you should be fine.

At this stage in your career tho I'd just focus on paralegalling and worry about vac scheme conflicts of interest later down the line. You can cross that bridge when you arrive at it.

 

[Jessica Booker]

You should check any employment contracts to see if there are any requirements for declaring other forms of employment.

You should also consider conflict checks. Working for a direct competitor is likely to cause many more problems than if the firms don’t work on similar matters.

 

[Lumree]

You should check any employment contracts to see if there are any requirements for declaring other forms of employment.

You should also consider conflict checks. Working for a direct competitor is likely to cause many more problems than if the firms don’t work on similar matters.

What should you do in those instances where there is restrictions in the contract on other forms of employment?

 

[Jessica Booker]

What should you do in those instances where there is restrictions in the contract on other forms of employment?

You will definitely need to speak to your employer to see if any exemptions can be made. It’s not that it can’t be approved, it is just that it will need to be done so.

Working for another employer without such disclosure and approval (and especially with potential conflict checks being need to be done) could be deemed a form of misconduct.