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TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2021-22 (#1)
- Thread starter Jaysen
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It depends which firm? Allen you can’t but I don’t know if Slaughter opens again!
I have had a Spring VS offer this week, but my friend applied for summer and has not heard anything. Also some people got Spring AC offers this past week so I would say if you applied for Spring to email graduate recruitment!
I applied for an A&O winter vac scheme and got rejected after the AC. Applied for a direct TC this year and got invited to the AC again, which is coming up soon
Congrats! Would you say the application for the direct TC is very similar to the winter vac scheme?I applied for an A&O winter vac scheme and got rejected after the AC. Applied for a direct TC this year and got invited to the AC again, which is coming up soon
The application is exactly the same most of the time, same questions. Also worth noting that I've never done a vacation scheme and still got the interview. I made sure to highlight transferrable skills in my work experience section.
I'm not sure if they expect more of me and a clearer "why law" motivation in the interview though. But A&O grad rec have said before that if you're quite sure you want to work at the firm then they recommend a TC because vac scheme places are limited.
Not sure what it's like for the other firms, but a lot of them do encourage you to apply again the next cycle.
Hey does anyone know if any applications for any firm for summer vacation scheme are still open after from Gibson Dunn? Any reply will be helpful, thank you.
Has anyone heard back from Mischon de Reya yet? I applied in early October and haven’t heard a peep…
yep, there’s loads. Dechert, Ropes & Gray, Cooley, Cleary, Sidley Austin, and a bunch of others with deadlines in late January
If they let you and you want to, sure. As noted above, some don't re-interview - I think this is fairly common across MC and large-intake firms generally (small-intake firms tend to be more forgiving) but you'd have to dig up the particular firm's policy or email their grad rec.
In the interest of being strategic about time & effort, though, I'd have a think about why you didn't clear AC and whether that's really something you can remediate.
If it's because you were having an off day, or stumbled on commercial awareness or didn't have your motivations fully articulated, these things can be improved between now and next cycle. Go for it.
That said, it's also possible that you and the firm simply weren't the right fit - and there's nothing wrong with that. It could be that your working style or ambitions don't match with their training methods, or any of a number of 'cultural fit' mismatches. I don't know your personal circumstances - or which firm it was - so I won't speculate any further. But if the rejection post-AC comes down to this kind of alignment issue, I'd think about whether that's somewhere you really want to be. Would you actually get on in that environment, in that type of programme? If the answer to that is ultimately yes, then sure take another crack and have a think about how you can better show your alignment with the firm (without compromising yourself). If it's no, there are plenty of fish in the sea - you've made it through to AC at a MC firm, you've clearly got the chops to make it through plenty of other places.
Tl;dr - do you vibe with this firm?
Like... there are a bunch of firms who are top-notch in the practice areas I really want to pursue, great comp, prestige, whatever, but I don't bother applying simply because I do not gel with their vibe.
Don't think there's a new consolidated list but the one from last year(?) still seems fairly accurate. All MC recruit meaningfully for direct TC, as do most firms with intakes >30-40. Smaller intakes lean more heavily on vac schemes though I know that SullCrom, at least, reserves a couple direct TC spots - I imagine though that those spots are competitive at a level over and above the vac scheme. Travers notionally has a direct TC option but last year filled all places from vac schemes - they take I think like 80 schemers over the year for 30 TCs so on odds they don't have a real direct option.
Lol Rob93 your replies are iconic. Thank you, that’s very very very very very very helpful to know.
Haven't done kennedys but did Links and Latham on Capp. If you've done other SSTs/SJTs, they tend to all be quite similar. Capp is usually modular, there are a series of sections that you do in order but that are kind of discrete units. Otherwise the only thing in Capp that I haven't seen elsewhere is that there's a component of like, self-assessment where you have to place yourself on a spectrum between two ostensibly conflicting values or mindsets. These are awful, because I constantly find myself going 'I am committed to/good at both these things, or think in both these ways' (good lawyers being flexible and containing multitudes) and just putting yourself in the middle feels like a copout. But you just gotta do it. As far as advice goes, be honest with yourself - I have a strong, albeit unfounded, suspicion that self-awareness factors in here, if your self-rated self-concept is totally out of whack with the behaviour you display in the judgment Qs I imagine that must raise eyebrows.Has anyone had any experience with the SST with Kennedys? I'm not quite sure how to prepare as I've never done an SST on the Cappfinity platform so any guidance would be great
also, as I believe Jessica has noted before, the answer on judgment questions isn't always 'I will work more/harder/through the night' though sometimes it is. Think about who is best placed to handle the issue, what the stakes are, who would own it. This is obviously tricky cause as an outsider it's hard to know how workflow is managed inside of firms, and you have to make some assumptions about your own experience, competency and knowledge in a situation (pretty sure I often tank these because I have a more flattering view of my competence than the firm does).
Further, look at the firm's approach to training - if it's more structured and hierarchical the bounds of 'I'll do this myself' are likely to be narrower compared to the entrepreneurial/lean firms where trainees are 'treated like associates from day 1' or that sort of thing.
Also bear in mind that these things can be wildly capricious and imo quite inaccurate so don't sweat it too much.
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