Is a conversion course necessary for a non-law undergrad to secure a TC?

[EastSatsuma57]

Hi all.
I am a third year non-law undergrad and have only begun my law journey within the last year. I applied for a couple of vacation schemes but wasn't successful, so I am wondering what to do next. I will be moving back home to Nottingham in the summer, and have been considering enrolling on the University of Nottingham Law LLM, or a law conversion course at the local ULaw campus (I can't afford to self fund so I would need to do a course that has government/sfe funding available). However, I also think I could spend a year applying for vac schemes for Winter 25-Summer 26, hoping to secure a TC through these. If I did this and did not sit a conversion course, I would try to find some sort of legal work – maybe secretarial or something that wouldn't require law experience – obviously this may be rather hard given the current jobs market nationally, and the commercial law market in Nottingham.
I am looking for advice as to what my next steps should be. I understand that a law conversion course is not strictly required in order to secure a TC, but would it help my application at all, over the second option? My main worry is that I am unable to find legal work and have less on my CV to show my interest in commercial law.
Thank you all for your help, I look forward to hearing back.

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hi all.
I am a third year non-law undergrad and have only begun my law journey within the last year. I applied for a couple of vacation schemes but wasn't successful, so I am wondering what to do next. I will be moving back home to Nottingham in the summer, and have been considering enrolling on the University of Nottingham Law LLM, or a law conversion course at the local ULaw campus (I can't afford to self fund so I would need to do a course that has government/sfe funding available). However, I also think I could spend a year applying for vac schemes for Winter 25-Summer 26, hoping to secure a TC through these. If I did this and did not sit a conversion course, I would try to find some sort of legal work – maybe secretarial or something that wouldn't require law experience – obviously this may be rather hard given the current jobs market nationally, and the commercial law market in Nottingham.
I am looking for advice as to what my next steps should be. I understand that a law conversion course is not strictly required in order to secure a TC, but would it help my application at all, over the second option? My main worry is that I am unable to find legal work and have less on my CV to show my interest in commercial law.
Thank you all for your help, I look forward to hearing back.

Hi there! Firstly, I want to empathize that beyond the fact that a law conversion course is not a strict requirement for securing a TC, it is not close to even being a 'soft expectation'. I have known many non-law students who got VSs and TCs at top firms without having completed it - in fact, though of course acknowledging that my sample size was limited, I met more non-law students who secured TC without it. However, I would not go so far as saying that completing the conversion course would provide you with no advantage in applications. It certainly underscores your commitment to law and also reduces the financial cost of offering you a TC, both of which could be attractive from a recruiter's perspective.

Now, as I said before, I do not think these advantages are decisive, and there's many other ways you can go about showing an interest in commercial law. Among them, some easily available and highly useful ones include:

• Firm and commercial law events: even if you will go back to Nottingham, a lot of them are available online, and for open days some firms will pay your transportation costs.
• Forage Virtual Work Experiences: A lot of firms offer these virtual internships which will allow you to complete usual trainee tasks in a variety of practice areas. These will demonstrate both a general interest in commercial law and an interest in specific firms.
• Competitions: there's are a number of commercial law related competitions you can sign up for, such as negotiations and commercial awareness competitions.

Besides this, if you choose the option of focusing on next year's application cycle, you can invest a lot more time into (i) researching firms in a lot of depth; which will enable you to write significantly better applications; (ii) writing a significantly higher number of high-quality applications - given how competitive VS/TC applications are, you want to have as many horses in the game as possible; and (iii) improving your commercial awareness. In my experience, these are the three features that are most essential for success.

While I cannot give you a straight recommendation as to what option to choose, I hope thinking through these considerations will be useful for you. I also thought to tag @Jessica Booker here as she will be able to give you a more informed take.

 

[EastSatsuma57]

Hi there! Firstly, I want to empathize that beyond the fact that a law conversion course is not a strict requirement for securing a TC, it is not close to even being a 'soft expectation'. I have known many non-law students who got VSs and TCs at top firms without having completed it - in fact, though of course acknowledging that my sample size was limited, I met more non-law students who secured TC without it. However, I would not go so far as saying that completing the conversion course would provide you with no advantage in applications. It certainly underscores your commitment to law and also reduces the financial cost of offering you a TC, both of which could be attractive from a recruiter's perspective.

Now, as I said before, I do not think these advantages are decisive, and there's many other ways you can go about showing an interest in commercial law. Among them, some easily available and highly useful ones include:

• Firm and commercial law events: even if you will go back to Nottingham, a lot of them are available online, and for open days some firms will pay your transportation costs.
• Forage Virtual Work Experiences: A lot of firms offer these virtual internships which will allow you to complete usual trainee tasks in a variety of practice areas. These will demonstrate both a general interest in commercial law and an interest in specific firms.
• Competitions: there's are a number of commercial law related competitions you can sign up for, such as negotiations and commercial awareness competitions.

Besides this, if you choose the option of focusing on next year's application cycle, you can invest a lot more time into (i) researching firms in a lot of depth; which will enable you to write significantly better applications; (ii) writing a significantly higher number of high-quality applications - given how competitive VS/TC applications are, you want to have as many horses in the game as possible; and (iii) improving your commercial awareness. In my experience, these are the three features that are most essential for success.

While I cannot give you a straight recommendation as to what option to choose, I hope thinking through these considerations will be useful for you. I also thought to tag @Jessica Booker here as she will be able to give you a more informed take.

Thanks very much for the in-depth reply Andrei. I think this definitely confirms what I hoped to be true, I’ll look into what you’ve said. Cheers!