TCLA Direct Training Contract Applications Discussion Thread 2024-5

[A worried graduate]

Can anyone who has applied for Mayer Brown TC help me? My request to complete the Situational Strengths Test and Verbal Reasoning Test went to my junk mail, so I initially missed it. I have until Monday to do the tests. Do they include any video questions? It seems unclear from the guide that they sent me. Thanks!

First test isn’t

 

[norothrow324]

Ashurst first test will be sent Monday 31 March. Automatic right?

 

[cindywonghk2021]

Does anyone know when HFW start ACs for direct TCs?

not yet,,, also waiting...

 

[Tintin06]

Anything from Hogan Lovells today then?

 

[Chris Brown]

Anything from Hogan Lovells today then?

I imagine they will most likely start getting back to people with AC invites from early to mid April, based on this post from this thread:
​

Just an update for everyone waiting to hear- HL replied to my email stating their ACs for the direct TC will be in late April​

If you have not heard back yet, take it as a good sign! Quite a few people have already received PFO post WGT. Best of luck for HL! 🐐​

 

[trainee4u]

Can anyone clarify whether you can reapply for Mayer Brown in the same cycle, post-VS rejection? There was nothing in their email or on their website, but my "create new" button is greyed out in allhires, so I'm guessing maybe not?

 

[James Wakefield]

Can anyone clarify whether you can reapply for Mayer Brown in the same cycle, post-VS rejection? There was nothing in their email or on their website, but my "create new" button is greyed out in allhires, so I'm guessing maybe not?

I don’t think you can

 

[adrian_nlh]

Is anyone having issues with the Penningtons application form? It first showed me a set of questions, and now its only asking me for work experience and grades...

I had the same issue. There are two application forms. One is grades, uni modules, basic personal info etc.; the other is the covering letter and supporting questions etc. Try accessing the supporting qs in the same way you did initially, rather than through the e-mail.

 

[Ram Sabaratnam]

Can anyone clarify whether you can reapply for Mayer Brown in the same cycle, post-VS rejection? There was nothing in their email or on their website, but my "create new" button is greyed out in allhires, so I'm guessing maybe not?

Hiya @trainee4u I remember graduate recruitment telling me during the 2022-23 cycle that it wasn’t possible to apply for a direct training contract if we had received a rejection for the vacation scheme in the same cycle. They effectively told me to wait until the next cycle to apply again. It’s possible their policy has changed since then, but haven’t been able to find anything online to suggest that it has. If I come across any updated information, I’ll mention it here and tag you

 

[jacksollaf]

Hey everyone, I have an AC at King & Spalding next week and would really appreciate if anyone has advice please !

Anything would help!

 

[mdoeslaw]

y'all did anyone do the Lewis Silkin AC yday? I NEEDA TALK😭

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hey everyone, I have an AC at King & Spalding next week and would really appreciate if anyone has advice please !

Anything would help!

Hi @jacksollaf and congratulations for getting to the AC! I have found a post on TCLA of a candidate discussing their Kings & Spalding AC experience from 2021. While it is quite possible that the firm changed their assessment processes since then, it should give you at least some indication as to what you can expect. Besides this, I have linked here my Complete Competency Interviews Guide (describing my step by step approach for interview preparation) and have quoted bellow some posts with AC advice (one for general interview tips, one for written exercises, and one for group exercises.

My top tip would be to focus on doing well and not on being perfect. Many people go to ACs thinking they need to blow away the partners and the recruiters to succeed, but I think this is the wrong attitude to have. First of all, while your achievements and skills might be impressive for this stage, it is quite unlikely you will manage to overly impress anyone no matter how hard you try - you will know a lot less about any given commercial law subject than lawyer in the firm. Secondly, this attitude will make you feel even more stressed than you would normally be and will therefore likely impact your performance. If you will be assessed for a total time of a few hours, it is impossible to be perfect in every moment. When you notice an imperfection in an answer, the right reaction is to acknowledge it but then to move past it and make the best of the rest. Instead, the overly perfectionistic candidates tend to stress about it a lot more than they should, and in attempting to fix the initial mistake they do a lot more harm to their progression chances. People with this mindset thus often end up creating negative feedback loops for themselves: they make a small error, then they begin overthinking it, which decreases their self-confidence, which impacts their next answer, which in turn further intensifies their anxiety; a series of events which can end up completely derailing one's performance.

To avoid this, instead of aiming to excel everywhere, I would simply aim to perform well - to do a good job on every task and score well on every relevant assessment criterion. This boils down to using your preparation to make decent substantive points and communicate them in a clear and confident manner. If you manage to do this you will have performed better than the majority of candidates and in most cases should be enough to get you progressed - it did for me 4/4 times. If you reframe your task in this way, I think you should feel a lot less anxious about it: while perhaps it is difficult to convince yourself that you will pull of an extraordinary performance, you should feel a lot more confident in being able to respond sensibly to tasks and to cover all your bases well.

A final piece of advice I have for calming down on the day and to avoid blanking out is to take your time:

1. Firstly, taking your time before starting your answer. Instead of just jumping into a response the instance the interviewer stops speaking (which is a very natural temptation) take 3-4 seconds to think about and structure your answer. This will significantly decrease the number of times you find yourself blanking out mid-answer or having difficulty finding the right way to end a sentence.
2. Secondly, if you have difficulty with finding sensible points for a question, it is perfectly acceptable to request some thinking time - just say 'May I please take a minute to consider my answer?'. In the unlikely case you do not find anything after that, explain that you are unsure what to say; but also walk the interviewer through your thought process of your best guess.
3. Thirdly, aim to speak more slowly. When you are anxious, your hear rate goes up and you naturally start speaking at a higher pace, which is problematic in that this simply means taking less time to think as you answer. This naturally reduces how articulate and confident you seem, especially since speaking quickly more often leads you to losing your chain of thought or expressing yourself in unclear language. As such, try to slow down. Also, use strategic 2-3 second pauses in your speech to add emphasis to points and to get valuable thinking time as you are moving between the different parts of your answer.

Finally, know that just by getting to the AC you have proven yourself to be one of the very best candidates out of a huge pool, which means you have all it takes to succeed! Best of luck !

Hey @AS24 I definitely am, their scarcity here has really taught me their value 🥲. On this brighter note, I will split up my thoughts between how to organize your time and then your ideas.

Organizing Time
To ensure you are managing your time well, before you start working through the exercise I advise you to take a few minutes to make a plan. First, take a look at the number of tasks and read the prompts. Then, briefly skim the annexed briefs and readings - but only very briefly. You want to see how many pages of readings you will have per task and how dense those look. Based on this information, make an estimation as to how much time each task or part of the exercise will take compared to the others - ie you might see the first task as requiring about twice the workload of the second and that the third is roughly the same as the second. Then, you should spend around 1/2 of your time on the first, around 1/4 on the second and another 1/4 on the third. However, before dividing the time using the relevant fractions, subtract around 10 minutes from the initial total time: 5 to account for the planning part at the beginning and 5 for contingencies and reviewing spelling and grammar at the end. I think this should be your basic approach, but do keep in mind these further considerations:

• You may want to make a further separation between the estimated necessary time to do the reading and the estimated necessary time to write your analysis for each part. One of the most significant issues I have had with written exercises has been giving in to the temptation to take more time than I should reading and taking notes; and simultaneously underestimating the time it would take me to write my analysis. In my experience, the materials in these exercises are not that difficult to work through and do not attempt to trip you up, so they do not require that much time. Thus, it might be a good idea to plan ahead how much you want to take on them: it should help you keep yourself in check during the exercise and not let your anxiety and overthinking make you waste precious time by reading the same passages again and again.
• You may not be able to estimate such a simple fraction split as in my aforementioned example. That is fine, and you definitely should not spend time overthinking this element. Simply go with your gut in making some judgement about the relative workloads and move forward with that. The most important part of this planning is not maximum accuracy in representation of the time each should take, but in providing a rough framework which will enable you to keep yourself to account and thus improve efficiency.
• If your tasks/parts of the exercise have different priority levels you should adjust your time allocation fractions. I would still aim to have a rough representation of what the workload of each involves but I would also allow adjustments to that to ensure a high quality work product for the most important ones.

Organizing Ideas
As for structuring your thoughts, it is unfortunately more difficult to give very concrete advice, as the right way to go about it will be highly dependent on the details of the exercise. My main advice is to find multiple distinctions between the different categories of information that you will be presenting ; and to organize them under multiple headings. The last thing you want is a huge block of text. It will almost always be more difficult to read and understand and will often also end up confusing your analysis as well. To give some examples of how you can go about this:

• Split the descriptive part of your writing (where you are essentially summarizing uncontroversial facts) and the analytic one (where you are advancing your opinion based on the aforementioned facts);
• If your argument is more complex, separate the analysis of the different inferential steps necessary to establish the conclusion;
• Separate the pros considerations, the cons considerations, and the synthesis view;
• Split your analysis of the different alternatives based on the facts;
• Separate your analysis of the relevant considerations based on their class (financial, legal, social, reputational etc) and based on the relevant class of stakeholders (shareholders, clients, the government, the public etc).

Of course, no piece of writing in an AC will need or be capable of supporting categorizations based on all the above. I have only listed some ideas to keep in the back of your mind; once you go through the actual exercise, you should be able to intuitively decide which is the most appropriate and easy for you to use.

Hi @FutureTraineeMaybe for the group exercise I think you need to strike the right balance between showcasing teamwork and collaboration but also demonstrating your capacity for commercial analysis and leadership. Since there is a tight time limit and since everyone will be aiming to show the same qualities, there is a natural tension between the two. As such, many candidates end up either being too passive (in not getting sufficient airtime because everyone else always wants to speak as well) or too assertive (in constantly interrupting others to get their points across). However, there are a couple of strategies you can use to ensure your individual contributions shine through without undermining others:

• Offer to keep the time: this shows a proactive attitude while not being very demanding as to your mental focus. It also enables you to (i) avoid taking the responsibility of any required writing, which is more demanding; and (ii) naturally intervene at certain points in the discussion to mention time considerations, which is also an opportunity for you to add substantive points.
• Try to introduce structure and organization: although many candidates will want to immediately start the analysis, instead of simply throwing yourself into discussing substantive points, try to introduce a framework: what points will you discuss, in what order, how much time will you spend on each, and what relevant assessment criteria should you keep in mind when analyzing the points? This will ensure a more comprehensive overview and a more clear output.
• Focus on finding more niche/less-obvious analysis points: as you are given a brief for the group exercise task, you will normally have a bit of preparation time during which you can think what points to bring up. You will find some points that are really intuitive which you will know the others likely also thought of. Instead of focusing on those and fighting with everyone to get to express those obvious points, I would use that time (and the extra thinking time in the initial discussion phase when everyone is fighting to say the obvious points) to find relevant ideas that others may have missed. The, as the discussion is winding down on that subpart of the task, I would mention these more niche points. This will avoid making you seem competitive and also showcase ability for more nuanced analysis.
• Focus on synthesis and weighing: another similar strategy for impressive contribution which may not require too much fighting over airtime is to once again seek to contribute as the discussion on the substantive points is winding down. What you can do here is intervene to summarize what everyone has contributed, weigh their points, and then make an informed argument as to what the decision should be.

For the written task, I will quote bellow a number of posts I have recently written with my best tips - but do let me know if you have any follow up questions. Best of luck !

 

[Raspberry44]

I have an AC at Level tomorrow, just wanted to see if anyone has any last minute advice?

 

[Tintin06]

Ashurst sending out Cappfinity test tomorrow. Any advice for passing that test? Not one I've passed to date. So any advice would be great. Good luck to others taking it.

 

[Chris Brown]

Ashurst sending out Cappfinity test tomorrow. Any advice for passing that test? Not one I've passed to date. So any advice would be great. Good luck to others taking it.

I think the best thing you can do is (1) familiarise yourself with the test and what exactly it is looking to assess you on and (2) try complete some practice tests, bearing that information in mind. These links might be useful. Best of luck with the Ashurst test!

Cappfinity Assessments 2025. Practice Tests. Full Guide.

Step-by-step 2025 guide for Cappfinity strength assessment tests and video interview tools. Including key tips from our team of experts to help you succeed.

www.graduatesfirst.com

https://hub.preparationplus.com/prepare-assessments/

https://hub.preparationplus.com/faqs/

 

[James Wakefield]

What a week.

I’ve sent out applications to Ashurst, Baker McKenzie, Mayer Brown, Farrer & Co and Shoosmiths.

Now can enjoy a few hours break this evening. 😅🫡

 

[Chris Brown]

Finally submitted my DTC application to Baker McKenzie - my first one ever! 😅

I am aiming to send around 8-9 more DTC applications from now to July. 🥲​

 

[optimistic_undergrad]

I imagine they will most likely start getting back to people with AC invites from early to mid April, based on this post from this thread:



If you have not heard back yet, take it as a good sign! Quite a few people have already received PFO post WGT. Best of luck for HL! 🐐​

I don't have much hope with HL, but given that I haven't heard back from them since WGT, if I get an invite for AC, I will not be able to attend in person. Can anyone tell me whether HL will provide me with an option to attend the AC virtually, as I am an international candidate and can't travel to the UK on such short notice? Please feel free to tell me anything that can be of help to this concern of mine!

 

[Tintin06]

I don't have much hope with HL, but given that I haven't heard back from them since WGT, if I get an invite for AC, I will not be able to attend in person. Can anyone tell me whether HL will provide me with an option to attend the AC virtually, as I am an international candidate and can't travel to the UK on such short notice? Please feel free to tell me anything that can be of help to this concern of mine!

It might be worth telling them. Both stages are interviews I believe. Easier to do those online right? Well, easier for some I guess. See what they say about it.

 

[badmintonflyinginsect]

@Andrei Radu @Amma Usman @Ram Sabaratnam Hi! Starting a VS soon. I'm aware there's a lot of focus on quality of tasks submitted over the course of the VS. What are the usual tasks assigned/what skills do you reckon would be helpful to hone in on/develop prior to the VS?