TCLA Direct Training Contract Applications Discussion Thread 2024-5

[hmevey]

Any tips for the Irwin Mitchell video interview and online assessment. How many questions do they ask about your motivations for the firm etc. Is it a get to know you then assessment or is it more of the typical application questions in a video format? Any help would be so appreciated

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hi @Jessica Booker @Ram Sabaratnam
When Goodwin ask "Which other firms are you applying to and why? Max 200 words" what are they looking for? Do they want you to list firms and their qualities, or write in detail and link back to Goodwin?

They want to hear what your application strategy is and what’s important to you. They will be assessing then how they fit into that strategy.

 

[ellastevens]

This was exactly how the CMS WG felt. I was selecting the same answer for a while. I passed. Go with your gut.

How long did it take you to hear back?

 

[Ram Sabaratnam]

Hi @Jessica Booker @Ram Sabaratnam
When Goodwin ask "Which other firms are you applying to and why? Max 200 words" what are they looking for? Do they want you to list firms and their qualities, or write in detail and link back to Goodwin?

Hi @lawstudent523

Completely agree with @Jessica Booker. You should use this question as an opportunity to show Goodwin the thought process behind your applications, rather than just listing all the firms you’re applying to. There's also a risk that, if you name several firms that don’t seem to have much in common, it can make your application strategy appear unfocused and leave your motivations seeming unclear. Instead, try to highlight the key considerations that guide your choices and how these relate to Goodwin.

You can also use this question to demonstrate that you understand Goodwin’s position in the legal market and what makes it stand out. When I answered a similar question, I focused on my interests and experiences in the life sciences and technology sectors (sectors in which Goodwin particularly stands out), as well as my preference for firms with smaller trainee intakes. This approach helped me present a cohesive explanation for why I was applying to certain firms, including Cooley and Ropes & Gray, alongside Goodwin. Again, I’d recommend reflecting on what really matters to you in a firm and using this question to show how Goodwin fits alongside others on your list in a thoughtful and considered way.

 

[Zaraa.x]

Hi @Jessica Booker @Ram Sabaratnam @Andrei Radu

I’ve come across this question and would like some clarification please - If you could work with any client as a lawyer at Lewis Silkin (even if they are not currently a client of ours), who would it be and why?

Is the best way to approach this question will be identify an individual/organisation that can properly utilise LS services so essentially LS would be a one-stop-shop for the client? Would I also need to mention whether or not the client resonates with LS values?

If I want to choose a celebrity for instance and they own a brand - do I mention the celebrity as a client or their brand.

E.G - Krept (musician) he owns Nalas Baby - do I chose Krept as my client or Nalas Baby?

I could be overthinking this simple question.

 

[Ram Sabaratnam]

Hi @Jessica Booker @Ram Sabaratnam @Andrei Radu

I’ve come across this question and would like some clarification please - If you could work with any client as a lawyer at Lewis Silkin (even if they are not currently a client of ours), who would it be and why?

Is the best way to approach this question will be identify an individual/organisation that can properly utilise LS services so essentially LS would be a one-stop-shop for the client? Would I also need to mention whether or not the client resonates with LS values?

If I want to choose a celebrity for instance and they own a brand - do I mention the celebrity as a client or their brand.

E.G - Krept (musician) he owns Nalas Baby - do I chose Krept as my client or Nalas Baby?

I could be overthinking this simple question.

Hi @Zaraa.x

I think @Jessica Booker and @Andrei Radu would also have some things to add here, but just wanted to jump in before.

Completely understand overthinking questions (guilty of this on too many previous occasions to count)! That said, I think the primary aim of this question is less about what Lewis Silkin could do for the hypothetical client and more about gauging your interests, your commercial awareness, and your basic understanding of the firm’s work. When choosing a client, I'd suggest picking someone (or a business) that aligns reasonably well with Lewis Silkin’s typical client base. Avoid going for something too wild or outside of their wheelhouse. This shows that you have a good grasp of the kind of work the firm does.

As for whether to choose Krept or Nalas Baby, I think either of these could potentially work. But it’s important to reflect on why they interest you. Think about what makes them compelling from a legal or commercial perspective. For instance, what challenges or opportunities might they face that would require legal support? How does their work intersect with areas of law that Lewis Silkin specialises in, such as intellectual property, brand protection, or employment law? Would you find it exciting to help a growing brand navigate legal complexities or work with a high-profile individual managing their business ventures and why?

Again, it’s about showcasing your genuine interests and thoughtfulness. Good luck!

 

[Zaraa.x]

Hi @Zaraa.x

I think @Jessica Booker and @Andrei Radu would also have some things to add here, but just wanted to jump in before.

Completely understand overthinking questions (guilty of this on too many previous occasions to count)! That said, I think the primary aim of this question is less about what Lewis Silkin could do for the hypothetical client and more about understanding your interests, your commercial awareness, and your basic understanding of the firm’s work. When choosing a client, I'd suggest picking someone (or a business) that aligns reasonably well with Lewis Silkin’s typical client base. Avoid going for something too wild or outside of their wheelhouse. This shows that you have a good grasp of the kind of work the firm does.

As for whether to choose Krept or Nalas Baby, I think either of these could potentially work. But it’s important to reflect on why they interest you. Think about what makes them compelling from a legal or commercial perspective. For instance, what challenges or opportunities might they face that would require legal support? How does their work intersect with areas of law that Lewis Silkin specialises in, such as intellectual property, brand protection, or employment law? Would you find it exciting to help a growing brand navigate legal complexities or work with a high-profile individual managing their business ventures and why?

Again, it’s about showcasing your genuine interests and thoughtfulness. Good luck!

Thank you so much for breaking it down this way!!

 

[bibss]

CMS WG! Small wins

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hi @Jessica Booker @Ram Sabaratnam @Andrei Radu

I’ve come across this question and would like some clarification please - If you could work with any client as a lawyer at Lewis Silkin (even if they are not currently a client of ours), who would it be and why?

Is the best way to approach this question will be identify an individual/organisation that can properly utilise LS services so essentially LS would be a one-stop-shop for the client? Would I also need to mention whether or not the client resonates with LS values?

If I want to choose a celebrity for instance and they own a brand - do I mention the celebrity as a client or their brand.

E.G - Krept (musician) he owns Nalas Baby - do I chose Krept as my client or Nalas Baby?

I could be overthinking this simple question.

The first thing is to align your interests to the client first. Try to pick out what it is about the work you would do with that client that might be of interest to you, or if they are in a certain sector that interest you mention that. But then make sure it is going to be in areas the firm already covers.

Whether you pick the individual or the client/business will depend on the above factors though. If the firm does more private client type work and that interests you, then the individual maybe the appropriate reference. You could always then make the link to the commercial work that could be brought in by the company they own (and vice versa if you go with the business but then say the firm can refer the business owner to private client services).

 

[Zaraa.x]

The first thing is to align your interests to the client first. Try to pick out what it is about the work you would do with that client that might be of interest to you, or if they are in a certain sector that interest you mention that. But then make sure it is going to be in areas the firm already covers.

Whether you pick the individual or the client/business will depend on the above factors though. If the firm does more private client type work and that interests you, then the individual maybe the appropriate reference. You could always then make the link to the commercial work that could be brought in by the company they own (and vice versa if you go with the business but then say the firm can refer the business owner to private client services).

This is great! Thank you!!

 

[Az]

Hi, does anyone know how quickly Slaughter and May contact referees post interview for direct TC?

 

[g.cl.2020344]

Hi, does anyone know how quickly Slaughter and May contact referees post interview for direct TC?

hey they only contact referees if they r going to make an offer (from experience last year)

 

[Az]

hey they only contact referees if they r going to make an offer (from experience last year)

Thanks . Do you know if that request comes in pretty imminently post interview?

 

[g.cl.2020344]

Thanks . Do you know if that request comes in pretty imminently post interview?

think maybe within 2-3 weeks they should ask referees, just depends on how busy grad recruitment is

 

[lalalala]

Hi I received a VI invite on Tuesday, and the deadline is within 5 days of receipt of the email. Does this mean I have to finish it tomorrow (Saturday)? Thank you!!

 

[sarahfw]

Hi, do you know how exactly we should respond to questions like this in an application?

"Can you tell us anything further about yourself to support your application?"

Not really sure what to do as I've already mentioned the firm's values elsewhere in my application, but thinking I could mention extracurriculars and any other achievements of note and what skills they have developed (plus how that's relevant to law)

Thanks for any help

 

[DesperateForVac]

Any tips for the CMS video interview? Its my first one im so nervous. Please does anyone have advice

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hi, do you know how exactly we should respond to questions like this in an application?

"Can you tell us anything further about yourself to support your application?"

Not really sure what to do as I've already mentioned the firm's values elsewhere in my application, but thinking I could mention extracurriculars and any other achievements of note and what skills they have developed (plus how that's relevant to law)

Thanks for any help

If there isn’t a section for extracurriculars/achievements, this sounds like a good approach.

You just don’t have to tell someone why the skills are relevant to law unless explicitly asked. You are effiectively telling someone what they already know.

 

[CanOz]

I have just done the CMS VI - as others noted, the questions are motivation and competency based, also including a scenario question.

Thanks for the tips - I’d like to think it went pretty well.

Does anyone have experience with how long does CMS take to respond?

 

[Andrei Radu]

Any tips for the CMS video interview? Its my first one im so nervous. Please does anyone have advice

Hi @DesperateForVac while I do not know much about the specifics of the CMS VI but I will quote bellow a useful post I made on the topic. It is from a very thorough guide I wrote about competency interviews which describes the approach I followed (which led to post VI progression 4/5 times), but I only selected the parts applicable to a VI.

Besides this, let me know if you have any other questions and try not to be too anxious. The mere fact that you got to this stage shows the firm identified you as an exceptionally good candidate, as more than 90% of other applicants have likely already been rejected. As such, trust yourself and know you will nail it!

This is a guide for the purposes of preparing for competency interviews, be they in a VI, another intermediary step or an AC/final stage interview. The advice here is based on my personal approach, as I received VS offers from top US/MC firms 4/4 times I implemented it. This will include:

• A general step-by-step preparation guide
• Specific advice on preparing for VIs
• Specific advice on preparing for final stage competency interviews

A. The Step-by-step preparation guide

The essential method and process is the same, though you may want to vary the amount of time you invest in preparation at each step depending on the whether this is a VI, an intermediary or a final stage interview.

Step 1 - Preparing ideas for answers

The first and most difficult step in preparing for interviews is learning how to respond to a wide variety of questions. Of course, you cannot prepare beforehand for all potential variations of all potential interview questions. Furthermore, you do not want to learn answers by heart and then just repeat them in front of the interviewers - they are likely to sound robotic. However, by investing a substantial amount of time thinking about how you would go about answering to as many different questions as possible, you start learning how to describe your motivations and experiences in a flexible manner. This decreases the chances that you will be caught off-guard by any given question. It also increases the chances that, even if you have not prepared for a question you are being asked, you will find a somewhat sensible answer to it.

The first thing I would do when invited to an AC/interview (and for a video interview, but not in the same level of detail) would be to try to build a question bank to practice on. I would create a Word doc with a few big headings (like 'CV based questions’, ‘competency questions'; 'motivations/firm-specific questions', 'commercial awareness questions', situational judgement questions' etc) and firstly write down all the questions I could think of under each relevant heading. I would then look at my CV and find try to think of how I could leverage my experience to answer those questions. Finally, I would write 2-3 short bullet points answers under each question - I have found this helps with memorizing the ideas for your answers. This enabled me to (i) have the ideas ready to go in my mind for a high number of questions and (ii) to still sound natural as I had to go through the though process of formulating an answer in the actual interview (as I would not memorize a particular way to articular the ideas I noted down). It is also worth mentioning that at this step I would prepare particularly well for the questions I thought were very likely to come up (such as Why commercial law, Why the firm, Why me etc).

The second part of my preparation at this step involved searching for interview question banks on the internet - such as the one offered by TCLA here. While reading them, I would spend around 30 seconds on each question thinking of potential ways of answering them. I would then copy the questions I was having particular difficulty with and add them under the relevant heading in my word document. After finalizing this process, I would once again look at my CV and spend a longer amount of time thinking how to best answer each of them. Then, I would note down my ideas in short bullet points.

The final part was similar to the second, with the only difference being that I would search directly for examples of past questions asked by the firm I was interviewing at - resources that were useful were this TCLA forum and Glassdoor.


Step 2 - Practicing articulating your answers

Once I had found the right ideas as to how to answer most interview questions, the second step of preparation involved improving my ability to articulate them. Despite the initial awkwardness of this method, I have found it incredibly useful to simply turn my laptop's camera on, pick one question at random, give myself a few seconds to think, and then record my answer. Subsequently, I would watch the recording with as critical an attitude as possible to see the parts I was struggling with the most. Then I would repeat this process again and again until I was happy with the way I was answering a given question.

A point worth noting is that as I was deciding at random which question to respond to, I would try to tweak the specific phrasing of the question in my mind. Thus, instead of just learning how to answer 'Why do you want to pursue a career in commercial law?', I would learn to answer many variations of the same type of question, such as 'How did your interest in commercial law originate?', 'Why commercial law rather than another area of the law?', 'Why do you want to be a commercial solicitor rather than a commercial barrister?' and so on. Once again, by following this approach, I would learn how to be flexible in formulating my ideas to best suit the exact question the interviewer would be asking me.

B. Additional advice for VIs

Although they do differ on a firm-by-firm basis, VI questions tend on the most part to be more formulaic and predictable than at final stage interviews. This is a factor that is worth taking into consideration when considering how to prepare. The questions that come up in VIs tend to be in one of the following categories:

• The classics: Why you, Why the firm, Why commercial law - these almost always feature in one form or another. Make sure to have a very well-prepared answer.
• Further motivational questions: Why did you initially decide to study law, What other careers did you consider, What do you like and dislike about different types of work, what practice areas/sectors are you interested in etc.
• Competency questions: Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork skills/time-management/innovation/creative thinking/integrity etc.
• Situational judgement questions: What would you do in X scenario (eg. you have multiple competing deadlines and you feel your work product will suffer as a result).
• General commercial awareness question: tell us about a news story you have been following and what are its impacts on the economy/the legal market/the firm/the firm's clients, what is a business you admire, who are the firm's competitors? why do the firm's clients keep coming back to the firm?
• Curveballs: Besides variations of these types of questions, the only other type of question you should prepare for is potential curveballs. However, you can't really predict a curveball, so the only thing you can do it to try to train yourself to think quickly and be flexible in how you leverage your experience. To prepare, search for curveball interview question banks, pick questions at random and do your best to try to come up with sensible answers.

My general advice would be to invest the most of your preparation time in practicing until you have really well-rehearsed answers for the most common questions in each category. Besides that, I have listed here two pointers which were significantly helpful in elevating my VI performances:

• One of the biggest issues most candidates face is being flexible with their pre-prepared answers around the specific time limit of each VI. Try to get to a point where you can, on the spot, answer both the independent questions and the broader combinations of questions in 1 minute, 1.5 minute, and 2-minute timeframes. Then record yourself and assess your performance. The more you do this, the more will you improve your ability to answer different variations of questions in varying timeframes.
• Do not overcommit when you first start answering a question. This was by far the biggest issue for me last year. I would try to be structured and signpost, so I would start my answer by saying 'I will give you three/four reasons why ...'. However, midway through articulating my answer I would realise I did not have enough time to comprehensively state what I indented to. Thus, I would have to either sacrifice on the quality of my explanations, or just not talk through everything I said I would, neither of which is a good look. As such, when in doubt, go for less rather than more. Your purpose should not be to blow away the recruiters, but to simply communicate good substantive points in a clear, concise, and composed manner.

C) Additional advice for final stage interviews:

The first pointer for more specific final stage interview preparation is about further researching the firm. At a final stage interview, you should expect a lot of scrutiny and sometimes pushback on your motivations for why the firm and your understanding of its operations. As such, you should invest time into refreshing and then researching the firm a lot more than you did for the purpose of the written application.

In terms of areas that you should focus on with the further research, I would include the following:

• The basic facts: these include some important pieces of information that you should simply know about the firm, as they can easily come up at one point or another in a final interview. This includes the firm’s London practice areas, spread of international offices, global practice area/sector reputation, core clients, financial results, history in the City and international expansion, any announced strategy changes etc.
• Facts around your motivations for why the firm: research to find out if the unique selling points (USPs) you have identified in your written application are actually truly unique, or it they apply (at least to a certain extent) to other firms as well. If they do, look for ways to further individualize the firm in that regard. You should also just look for any recent news or developments related to those USPs. Moreover, consider whether the personal substantive interests you have linked with the firm’s USPs can withstand scrutiny, and the degree to which any of your experiences support this. Anticipate follow-up questions and pushback and prepare for this.
• General firm-related news: essentially, you want to be informed around any important events that may be of relevance to your understanding of the firm. These include any big new deal/cases that the firm has recently advised, any big clients it has won, top partners poached from rival firms (whether here or in other important jurisdictions), partners the firm lost to its rivals, legal press awards/rankings, financial performance of different practice areas.

Unexpected but commonly encountered questions: I will list here some ‘categories’ of questions that I was personally surprised to see take such a significant part of my final stage competency interviews. In retrospect, I know these are some of the questions I would advise my past self to better prepare for:

• CV-based questions: the general advice here is to be prepared to explain and answer follow-ups about any experience or achievement you have written on your CV, even if you have not referred to it in your application or interview. This applies to experiences in the more distant past as well – around half of one of my VS interviews was based around two non-law related competitions I participated in when still in high school.
• Academic-focused questions: your interviewer will expect you to know your academic pathway well and to be highly reflective about it. Be prepared to talk about your GCSE performance, reasons behind your A-levels subject choices and performance, reasons for your university degree choice and module choices, and an explanation of your performance and general experience in individual modules and in the degree in general.
• Applications strategy: you should be able to explain to the interviewer what other firms you have applied for and lay out a cogent application strategy. The reasons behind your application to other firms should (to the greatest possible extent) also apply to the specific firm you are interviewing with. To the extent they do not apply to the chosen firm, you should be able to explain why your ‘why this firm’ reasons trump the ‘why the other firms’ reasons.
• Practice areas understanding: your interviewer will expect you to understand the operations and basic features of the firm’s most important practice areas. You should understand what exactly the legal service is that a particular practice provides, how it differs from services provided by the other practices, why do the clients need it, who the main clients in the space are, and what the usual tasks are at each level of seniority (trainee, junior associate, senior associate, partner).
• Legal market knowledge: while very detailed knowledge of the legal market is not necessarily expected, it is definitely desirable, and you will get bonus points if you are able to show it off. Regardless, you should still be able to place the firm in the context of the competition in three main ways: (i) know which are the most similar firms to the one you are interviewing with in terms of general features – what ‘type’ of firm it is, and how does it differ from the other ‘types’?; (ii) know who the firms toughest competitors are in each of its main practice areas – who else is a market leader?; (iii) are there any significant shifts happening in the market? Even if not directly related to the firm, moves like Pau, Weiss’ unprecedented London expansion, Allen & Overy’s merger with Shearman Sterling, Latham & Watkins’ string of exists, Slaughter and May’s problems with the ‘best friends’ model, and Freshfields’ US expansion and recent rebrand are all big changes which change the dynamics of the legal market and that you should therefore be aware of.