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TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2022-23
- Thread starter Jessica Booker
- Start date
- Status
Has anyone heard anything from Linklaters about non-fasted tracked Spring VS? Still on hold and heard nothing! Has anyone emailed?
I got an AC with NRF this cycle with 56% in Contract and Tort combined. I am a non law student and those were my electives but i dont think it mattered. You should be fine!
They just finished interviewing for the spring scheme so i guess still some time no no need to stress
Thank you! I hope so tooThank you! 26th Jan, hoping you hear some good news soon!!
- Feb 17, 2018
- 4,723
- 8,661
Hi all,
For those of you who saw the discussion that happened yesterday, I think it’s important for you to know how @Jessica Booker and I are managing this situation and that we are taking it seriously.
I want members of this community to be able to have conversations about important issues related to entering the legal industry. This includes diversity and representation in the sector.
But we won’t tolerate any posts that breach our terms and rules. This means personal attacks, inflammatory language or posts intended to anger other members.
Your language matters in a forum, especially when it discounts the lived and past experiences that underrepresented groups have faced. It’s one thing to have an honest discussion about representation and another to be intentionally provocative and/or act like history didn’t happen.
There were several posts yesterday that breached our terms and rules, some of which have since been deleted. One user has been permanently banned after we received a report about the nature of their private message in response to the situation.
As you will have seen, where discussions derail a thread, we will direct the discussion to continue in our General Discussion thread because this prevents candidates from getting answers to their actual questions about the vacation scheme process.
Finally, thank you to those of you who reported these posts. We read all of the reports and will delete, warn and potentially ban any members who breach our terms and rules.
I’m very open to feedback about how we handle these situations. You can email me at [email protected] if you do.
Jaysen
For those of you who saw the discussion that happened yesterday, I think it’s important for you to know how @Jessica Booker and I are managing this situation and that we are taking it seriously.
I want members of this community to be able to have conversations about important issues related to entering the legal industry. This includes diversity and representation in the sector.
But we won’t tolerate any posts that breach our terms and rules. This means personal attacks, inflammatory language or posts intended to anger other members.
Your language matters in a forum, especially when it discounts the lived and past experiences that underrepresented groups have faced. It’s one thing to have an honest discussion about representation and another to be intentionally provocative and/or act like history didn’t happen.
There were several posts yesterday that breached our terms and rules, some of which have since been deleted. One user has been permanently banned after we received a report about the nature of their private message in response to the situation.
As you will have seen, where discussions derail a thread, we will direct the discussion to continue in our General Discussion thread because this prevents candidates from getting answers to their actual questions about the vacation scheme process.
Finally, thank you to those of you who reported these posts. We read all of the reports and will delete, warn and potentially ban any members who breach our terms and rules.
I’m very open to feedback about how we handle these situations. You can email me at [email protected] if you do.
Jaysen
Jessica Booker
Legendary Member
TCLA Moderator
Gold Member
Graduate Recruitment
Premium Member
Forum Team
- Aug 1, 2019
- 14,666
- 20,360
Further to @Jaysen 's post, I wanted to share my thoughts on last night. It's a long post, but something very important to me, hence the detail.
It took me a while to consider whether to even post this and then also what I wanted to say. But after last night's debate on diversity, racism, gender diversity, and disability last night, I felt something had to be said looking at this from a professional perspective. It is not that I want to reignite the debate, but more that I was so closely associated with the discussion, I wanted to make my opinions clear. This is especially important for me as someone who is publicly known because of the forums and because of my professional reputation in this subject.
I know why the conversation was so unproductive, often completely insensitive, and at times even had unnecessary personal attacks. And that is because the one downside of us having a forum where everyone can post anonymously, is that people can hide behind that anonymity. I very much doubt some of the posts last night would have actually been said in front of people in a face-to-face setting. I very much doubt people would be willing to stand up in a room full of people at a law firm event and say these things out loud over a microphone. The safeness of the anonymous forums makes this place comfortable and safe for many, whether it be a funny GIF, a rant about how long a firm is taking to come back on an application, or just the ability to "text" out loud that you are feeling demotivated/upset/down - and we don't want to lose that. And although this leads to the forum's success, we have to recognise it occasionally also allows people to bring such negative behaviours to the community and feel safe that there are no repercussions for owning them. As someone who is very publically recognisable from the forums (I have to own every word, gif and reaction I post here because my reputation is on the line), I would encourage everyone to take time to reflect on their posts. Particularly when directing your opinions towards others, and think about whether what you are saying is something you would be happy to be associated with you publicly.
What I really wanted to stress is that, all the stats, photos and facts in the world don't represent people's individual lived experiences. The people attending an open day might have successfully obtained a place, but it doesn't mean they didn't experience discrimination or difficulty in getting there, nor that they didn't experience it at the event itself. Whether it's discrimination, prejudice, or difficulty, it is not just about output/result, it's about what you experience to get there.
And that difficulty is not exclusive to minority groups, especially when we consider the intersectionality of diversity and how most diversity strands are things we don't see. Just because you perceive someone as something doesn't mean that is an accurate reflection of who they are or what they have experienced, especially if we label them by their most obvious characteristics.
Also, your own personal experience is a unique one - it is not a boiler template that every person within a demographic, let alone those across them, would experience or react to in the same way. Therefore, if someone is telling you their anecdotes or those of people they know, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss them. The combination of the assumptions you are making, the lack of information you have, and a few general statistics that you are trying to use to prove your point will never paint an accurate picture. Even if it could, it is only your interpretation of that anecdote.
Finally, you don't have to agree with everyone on here (would be pretty dull if everyone did). However, I would encourage people to think about why someone may have a different interpretation to you. And if you feel they need educating on something, go in with an open mind and good intentions rather than trying to railroad them to your opinion.
Lastly, I wanted to provide my opinion on last night's discussion, as there were a few things to point out from my experience and knowledge:
It took me a while to consider whether to even post this and then also what I wanted to say. But after last night's debate on diversity, racism, gender diversity, and disability last night, I felt something had to be said looking at this from a professional perspective. It is not that I want to reignite the debate, but more that I was so closely associated with the discussion, I wanted to make my opinions clear. This is especially important for me as someone who is publicly known because of the forums and because of my professional reputation in this subject.
I know why the conversation was so unproductive, often completely insensitive, and at times even had unnecessary personal attacks. And that is because the one downside of us having a forum where everyone can post anonymously, is that people can hide behind that anonymity. I very much doubt some of the posts last night would have actually been said in front of people in a face-to-face setting. I very much doubt people would be willing to stand up in a room full of people at a law firm event and say these things out loud over a microphone. The safeness of the anonymous forums makes this place comfortable and safe for many, whether it be a funny GIF, a rant about how long a firm is taking to come back on an application, or just the ability to "text" out loud that you are feeling demotivated/upset/down - and we don't want to lose that. And although this leads to the forum's success, we have to recognise it occasionally also allows people to bring such negative behaviours to the community and feel safe that there are no repercussions for owning them. As someone who is very publically recognisable from the forums (I have to own every word, gif and reaction I post here because my reputation is on the line), I would encourage everyone to take time to reflect on their posts. Particularly when directing your opinions towards others, and think about whether what you are saying is something you would be happy to be associated with you publicly.
What I really wanted to stress is that, all the stats, photos and facts in the world don't represent people's individual lived experiences. The people attending an open day might have successfully obtained a place, but it doesn't mean they didn't experience discrimination or difficulty in getting there, nor that they didn't experience it at the event itself. Whether it's discrimination, prejudice, or difficulty, it is not just about output/result, it's about what you experience to get there.
And that difficulty is not exclusive to minority groups, especially when we consider the intersectionality of diversity and how most diversity strands are things we don't see. Just because you perceive someone as something doesn't mean that is an accurate reflection of who they are or what they have experienced, especially if we label them by their most obvious characteristics.
Also, your own personal experience is a unique one - it is not a boiler template that every person within a demographic, let alone those across them, would experience or react to in the same way. Therefore, if someone is telling you their anecdotes or those of people they know, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss them. The combination of the assumptions you are making, the lack of information you have, and a few general statistics that you are trying to use to prove your point will never paint an accurate picture. Even if it could, it is only your interpretation of that anecdote.
Finally, you don't have to agree with everyone on here (would be pretty dull if everyone did). However, I would encourage people to think about why someone may have a different interpretation to you. And if you feel they need educating on something, go in with an open mind and good intentions rather than trying to railroad them to your opinion.
Lastly, I wanted to provide my opinion on last night's discussion, as there were a few things to point out from my experience and knowledge:
- The diversity of people on vac schemes or open days is likely to be more diverse than people might expect. I'd recommend looking up the diversity demographics for Gen Z compared to general populations, and you might get an idea why that is the case. These figures are then impacted by factors outside of the law firm's direct control, namely who goes to university and those who study law.
- Looking at a photo hardly tells you the actual diversity of the group. I don't know how people could identify a biracial individual who can pass for white or someone from a Romany Gypsy or traveller community. And that is just race. It is too easy to make assumptions about how diverse a group is just by how they look in your eyes. I recognise that many people want to physically see themselves represented in groups, but if you scratched beneath the surface of how something looks, I suspect you would find someone who represents you in one way or another. Finally, sometimes people are not included in photos for their own personal beliefs.
- Diversity stats for law firms are often skewed by international populations of lawyers. Larger percentages of lawyers from certain ethnic minorities are often influenced by them having offices in international locations. Higher percentages of Asian lawyers/employees are often down to the fact they have offices in Asia.
- Schemes to help get under-represented groups into professions fall under positive action. No matter what your personal beliefs are about such initiatives, they are not discrimination or prejudice in the eyes of the law. I'd recommend reading up about the Equality Act and specifically the positive action provisions to understand it better.
- The Guaranteed Interview Scheme (GIS) is used by many firms because their process is not accessible to people with disabilities. Consider it this very simplistic way - someone who is able-bodied could climb a set of stairs easily to get into a law firm's building to attend an interview. The GIS is the equivalent of having a wheelchair lift outside the front of the building for those who cannot use the stairs. Someone in a wheelchair doesn't get the invitation to attend the interview if they don't meet the minimum eligibility criteria, and they won't get the job unless they perform well in the interview. The lift just allows them to participate in the recruitment process. And consider many of the earlier stages of the selection process, such as psychometric tests, video interviews (and even application forms themselves), as a set of steps that would either stop or make it exceptionally difficult for some people to enter the building.
I still haven't been invited to the VI for them. I suspect a belated PFO is in order......
Anyone knows which firm prohibits you from applying within 12 months after rejection? I know Clyde & Co does.
Thank you! I hope so tooThank you! 26th Jan, hoping you hear some good news soon!!
i think at best you're going to hear about it during march
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