SKADDEN WRITTEN ASSESSMENT TIPS?

[TC Chaser]

Hi all, I’ve been progressed to the next stage of Skadden’s assessment process- the written assessment. I’d greatly appreciate any tips or guide on what to expect, format Etc.

Thanks all

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hi all, I’ve been progressed to the next stage of Skadden’s assessment process- the written assessment. I’d greatly appreciate any tips or guide on what to expect, format Etc.

Thanks all

Hi @TC Chaser and first of all congrats on getting through to this stage. I have quoted bellow two different posts that I think may be of use to you. The first is a description of a candidate's experience with the Skadden assessment last year, while the latter is a recent post I made discussing my top pointers for written exercises.

I did it last year successfully catching 18/20 things they were looking for. The TCLA courses on PE and M&A were a big help, but it is very basic stuff. They give you a bunch of docs related to a company, and you have to draft an email, pursuant to a request from a partner, to the client answering due diligence questions, and you have to use the docs (contract and loan agreement) to respond. You are given all the info you need. It is time-crunched (1 hour), so pay attention to the time! Best of luck to you all!

While I think different strategies apply for different formats, there are a couple of pointers which I would say are generally applicable for all or almost all types of written exercises:

1. Time-management: You might have heard this so many times already, but I have to stress that most written exercises are incredibly time-pressured. I remember I was always told this, but it is very easy to forget during the actual assessment. In the first 20-30 minutes I have always to an extent or another allowed myself to be tempted by thoughts such as 'Oh it won't take me that long to read/write that part, I will just speed up a bit later' and I would thus justify being less efficient than I could have been in the first half of the exercise. As I would be entering the second half and nearing the end, I would invariably then find that it was very difficult to increase my working pace to make up for lost ground and my work product would suffer as a result. Thus, my advice is to be on your guard against that and to try to spread out your efforts evenly across the allocated time. Take one or two minutes in the beginning to make a plan and divide your workload, allocate portions of your time to completing the different parts, and try to make yourself to stick to those time limits.
2. Efficient reading: In a substantial number of written exercises you will be given a large number of documents containing overlapping information and also big sections of text containing technical details which are not of great importance to your task. Once again, there is a temptation to ignore the time constraints and to try to read everything closely to ensure you are not missing anything. However, in my experience the main task of the assessment very rarely or never hinges on easy to miss details. As such, my advice for you is to try to quickly read and skim through the documents, and only once you have a big picture go back and look at the relevant sections in more detail.
3. Analysis: Almost all written assessments have an analysis part, in which you are asked to weigh different considerations and make a judgement. I would advise you not to focus too much on trying to "blow away" the reader with the depth of your analysis or creativity of your arguments. Given the time constraints and nature of the tasks, there is rarely scope for that and if you focus to much on this kind of goal you might miss explaining much simpler points that should have been included in your analysis. As such, concentrate on considering the position of all relevant stakeholders (if you have issues doing this, drawing out diagrams can be very useful), having all the main pros and cons properly laid out, and weighing which set of considerations should you give priority to. If you can further support your opinion by making any links to current news stories or commercial trends, try to do so.
4. Clarity and structure: Finally, ensuring your answer is very easy to follow is a point whose importance I cannot overstate. A essential skill for a prospective trainee is an ability for clear communication, both verbally and in writing, and this type of assessment is how they test the later. As such, you should focus on having a simple writing style and structure as much as you focus on the substantive points you are trying to communicate.