My Journey To A Training Contract

[LegallyJas]

Hi guys!

Inspired by everyone’s posts, I’ve decided to document my journey to getting a training contract to track my progress and ultimately to hold myself accountable in achieving this goal.

A little about me, I am a recent law graduate working as a legal assistant at a private practice firm and am focussing on submitting applications to the spring and summer VS/ TCs this cycle. After being rejected from every scheme I applied to in my first year, I felt completely deflated and burnt out. And so I decided to prioritise my mental health by focussing the rest of my time at university enjoying studying law, volunteering at my university’s legal advice clinic and taking up new interests and hobbies to boost my extracurriculars.

To meet my goal, I hope to complete one application per week, complete a TCLA course per week, spend at least 20 minutes a day reading a news story and create a daily news summary to build my commercial awareness over time.

To ensure I stay on track, I will post updates every week outlining my goals for the upcoming week and reporting my accomplishments from the previous week

This week’s goal:
- Complete application to DLA Pipers Summer Internship
- Start my research for Clifford Chance
- Complete TCLAs Watson Glaser Course
- Create daily news summaries for this week

 

[axelbeugre]

Hi guys!

Inspired by everyone’s posts, I’ve decided to document my journey to getting a training contract to track my progress and ultimately to hold myself accountable in achieving this goal.

A little about me, I am a recent law graduate working as a legal assistant at a private practice firm and am focussing on submitting applications to the spring and summer VS/ TCs this cycle. After being rejected from every scheme I applied to in my first year, I felt completely deflated and burnt out. And so I decided to prioritise my mental health by focussing the rest of my time at university enjoying studying law, volunteering at my university’s legal advice clinic and taking up new interests and hobbies to boost my extracurriculars.

To meet my goal, I hope to complete one application per week, complete a TCLA course per week, spend at least 20 minutes a day reading a news story and create a daily news summary to build my commercial awareness over time.

To ensure I stay on track, I will post updates every week outlining my goals for the upcoming week and reporting my accomplishments from the previous week

This week’s goal:
- Complete application to DLA Pipers Summer Internship
- Start my research for Clifford Chance
- Complete TCLAs Watson Glaser Course
- Create daily news summaries for this week

Hey @LegallyJas,

Thank you so much for sharing your journey, I am sure that the forum will benefit massively from your path to a legal career and I am excited to see how you progress!

I think TCLA is a great place to start in helping you improve your understanding of the application process and getting familiar with different practice areas and work law firms do. For instance, you could:

• Use the courses provided by TCLA premium: specifically the Mergers and Acquisitions for Commercial Law; Law Firm Practice Areas.
• When researching practice areas on the firm's websites, make sure to look at how they describe what they do, the clients they mention and the nature of the deals. What I personally used to do was going to do my own research after, utilising the clients and deals' names I had come across and trying to understand the overall implications of the practice area on the firm's business.
• For PE specifically, using the BVCA PE slides will be very beneficial as they explain the practice area really well. I also watched a youtube video called What do private equity lawyers do? by Success with Steph which I thought was quite exhaustive.

I used it massively before getting my training contract last year so I hope you will benefit from it too!

In terms of being overwhelmed, I can totally relate to this. I feel like everyone on this forum would agree that applying to law firms is quite stressful, so I would advise you to take some time for yourself and dedicate yourself to your hobbies that you have developed during your time at university and beyond. Setting boundaries for yourself is something that will help you even with your job and applying to law firms, so I hope you focus on them too.

I am sure that this year is your year, believe in yourself and believe in the process and I am sure that everything will work out perfectly!

Best of luck!