TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2023-24

[AlexJ]

I have just graduated and I’m struggling to find a legal job

I was wondering what your thoughts are on the Burlington Row paralegal training programme. The way it works is you enter a paralegal course where you have to complete 4-12 weeks of online paralegal training. You are also given 12 weeks guaranteed legal work experience and you are given support with your cv, cover letters, interviews etc. Finally, you are given a CPD certificate upon completion.

To pass the course, you have to pass an MCT.

The reason why this programme is good is because your trained and given legal work experience, which a lot of paralegal jobs offer. But I’m sceptical if I should join because the programme costs £1,995 (which is a lot of money for me) and it seems like a lot just to get into an entry level paralegal job.

I am a part of upreach which is free and helps me with my cv/applications too so I’m not sure if Burlington Row programme would benefit me

Has anyone tried the programme or have any advice for me? Should I go for it?

Please don't pay for work, these are money making schemes and not really designed to benefit their participants

 

[stressedtraineeee]

Hey there, I wondered if anyone could give me some honest advice.

I just completed a VS at a firm and absolutely loved it. I don't want to overanalyse or be hypercritical of my own performance because I think on the whole I did well, but I think I made two grave mistakes that will likely be fatal to my chances. I wanted someone to advise if I should forget about a successful conversion.

The first mistake was I arranged a coffee chat with an associate two days prior. I should have made myself multiple reminders, written it down, or done something, but I had a graduate recruitment organised event we had to attend, and I completely forgot to go to the coffee chat. I remembered as soon as I returned from my desk with a message from the associate on the internal messaging system, saying he was waiting in the office cafe. After 15 minutes he sent a follow up message saying he had returned to his desk. I scrambled to send an apology and explained, while asking if he could please rearrange. He responded that it was "no problem, these things happen" but said he was unfortunately too busy the rest of the week to schedule another chat in. I know he did explicitly say it wasn't a problem, yet I know how valuable their time is and it makes me look disinterested and disorganised. He can obviously feedback to grad recruitment too.

The second mistake was we had to submit three assessed tasks during the two weeks. One of these tasks had three separate documents you had to submit. However, upon submission, I realised that I had failed to submit one of the three documents. Once you'd submitted, you couldn't go back and resubmit, so one of my documents didn't go through. I messaged grad recruitment about this but they said sadly there wasn't anything they could do, but that they "take a holistic approach".

I know everything is looked at holistically (or so they say) and I shouldn't overly focus on these small mistakes, but will they be detrimental?

 

[amy2002]

I have just graduated and I’m struggling to find a legal job

I was wondering what your thoughts are on the Burlington Row paralegal training programme. The way it works is you enter a paralegal course where you have to complete 4-12 weeks of online paralegal training. You are also given 12 weeks guaranteed legal work experience and you are given support with your cv, cover letters, interviews etc. Finally, you are given a CPD certificate upon completion.

To pass the course, you have to pass an MCT.

The reason why this programme is good is because your trained and given legal work experience, which a lot of paralegal jobs offer. But I’m sceptical if I should join because the programme costs £1,995 (which is a lot of money for me) and it seems like a lot just to get into an entry level paralegal job.

I am a part of upreach which is free and helps me with my cv/applications too so I’m not sure if Burlington Row programme would benefit me

Has anyone tried the programme or have any advice for me? Should I go for it?

I get it completely. The paralegal job market (and the job market in general) is incredibly tough, and you want to stand out. But please, do not go for this scheme. Paying around £2,000, which is a substantial amount of money for someone in your position, for a course which won't guarantee a job, isn't worth it. Employers won't have heard of or care about this course, and I am sceptical what "paralegal training" you get for £2,000 across 12 weeks. Almost any paralegal job you would pick up the skills on the go, and this won't put you in any better position.

This is a pure money making scheme, and I'm positive it won't help with your CV or applications. If you apply for TCs, I don't think any firms would see it as advantageous.

Perhaps apply for legal secretary roles or something as a stepping stone to do for a few months if you're struggling to get a paralegal job. Volunteer at a law clinic or CAB. This is not worth it, trust me.

 

[Jessica Booker]

I have just graduated and I’m struggling to find a legal job

I was wondering what your thoughts are on the Burlington Row paralegal training programme. The way it works is you enter a paralegal course where you have to complete 4-12 weeks of online paralegal training. You are also given 12 weeks guaranteed legal work experience and you are given support with your cv, cover letters, interviews etc. Finally, you are given a CPD certificate upon completion.

To pass the course, you have to pass an MCT.

The reason why this programme is good is because your trained and given legal work experience, which a lot of paralegal jobs offer. But I’m sceptical if I should join because the programme costs £1,995 (which is a lot of money for me) and it seems like a lot just to get into an entry level paralegal job.

I am a part of upreach which is free and helps me with my cv/applications too so I’m not sure if Burlington Row programme would benefit me

Has anyone tried the programme or have any advice for me? Should I go for it?

Don’t do it.

These are some of the biggest scams around in my opinion, especially if you are not being paid for the 12 weeks work experience because it’s most likely the case that they are being paid by the client for your time.

I have never known any recruiters to look at these courses and think “wow, let’s hire this person” on this basis of the course. The training you get is notoriously basic stuff that you could probably find through other forms of free/accessible e-learning. You could definitely invest most of the £2k into an SQE prep course and get more out of it.

The big red flags I have with these companies are:

- they never highlight the companies they are placing people on the work experience placements with. Look for recommendations not just from candidates, but also from employers.

- they never highlight who their tutors are. If the training was that good/impressive, they would be highlighting their qualified tutors on the subject. But they don’t.

- the employees on LinkedIn seem to have no legal training or legal professional backgrounds themselves. They are predominately recruiters/sales people.

This thread in Reddit stresses how the legal sector views these businesses: https://www.reddit.com/r/uklaw/s/y10kfzHrOX

There are a few things specifically about Burlington Row that makes it more worrying though.

They are a new company. They were only registered on Companies House in May under the name “HC Direct Limited” this year, and yet they have reviews from May and June on both their website and Trust Pilot. So this suggests the reviews are either false or the company has for some reason set itself up under another Limited Company. However, HC Direct Limited only have one Director, an Ashley Beaumont. Ashley has no other appointments/connections to other companies, and was only appointed Director to the company on 22 May 2024.

Ashley on LinkedIn is part of recruitment company called HUG Recruitment though. Although doesn’t have any details of his employment before HUG, where he has worked for the last two years or so. So it’s unclear what his background is.

Except there is another Ashley Beaumont on Companies House who has the same date of birth as the Burlington Ashley who has several dissolved companies but is running at least one other Education/Training company called Alpha National Limited. Except Alpha doesn’t have any employees and Ashley is the sole Director, and it’s difficult to find out what Alpha National’s business is. I suspect it is Burlington but Burlington has been restablished under the HC Direct company. You have to wonder why that would be the case. This Ashley is connected to HUG Recruitment too though!

And yet there is another Ashley Beaumont with the same date of birth who also runs BA Training and Recruitment Limited, who just so happens to be the company behind Morgan Quays. Morgan Quays is mentioned on the Reddit thread (I’ll come back to them).

The reviews for Burlington on Trustpilot are very suspicious. Either people with no other reviews, or where they have reviewed other services/products, it’s questionable why they are doing basic training courses in the U.K. but yet seem to be running businesses outside of the U.K. Suspicious reviews flags are also poor spelling and also people posting reviews for the wrong company (like this version below)



Even if you wanted to look at the positive reviews and focus on them, none of them provide details of the work placements completed or details of the course content - they just say vaguely what a great course it was.

When you look at Burlington Row’s LinkedIn profile, it has no people associated with the company, not even Ashley.

There are no posts on LinkedIn tagging in the company to say thank you for the course or their successful placements either.

And then when we go back to Morgan Quays, there are a significant number of Trustpilot reviews that stress they think it is a scam. And yet they only have reviews from the last 3 months on Trustpilot too despite running for longer than Burlington. Morgan Quays says it’s been running from 2021 on their LinkedIn profile, but was only incorporated under the BA Training Ltd company from 2023….

Morgan Quays website is also basically identical to Bradstone Allington which is another one of these companies, also referenced in the Reddit thread. Bradstone Allington is also registered to BA Training and Recruitment Limited in the U.K by looking at their terms on their website.

The reviews of Bradstone Allington on Trustpilot, although also clearly sanitised or false, do contain more disgruntled reviews which give more context of the quality of the course and their customer service.

And to top it all off, there is another Ashley Beaumont on Companies House with the same date of birth who ran another education company called 9 Direct Limited who were another training and education company that was established in July 2017 only to be dissolved 18 months later…

 

[Jmk]

I get it completely. The paralegal job market (and the job market in general) is incredibly tough, and you want to stand out. But please, do not go for this scheme. Paying around £2,000, which is a substantial amount of money for someone in your position, for a course which won't guarantee a job, isn't worth it. Employers won't have heard of or care about this course, and I am sceptical what "paralegal training" you get for £2,000 across 12 weeks. Almost any paralegal job you would pick up the skills on the go, and this won't put you in any better position.

This is a pure money making scheme, and I'm positive it won't help with your CV or applications. If you apply for TCs, I don't think any firms would see it as advantageous.

Perhaps apply for legal secretary roles or something as a stepping stone to do for a few months if you're struggling to get a paralegal job. Volunteer at a law clinic or CAB. This is not worth it, trust me.

I agree. I have a masters from a Russell group uni and thought it would make me more competitive-it didn’t! Work experience > courses/more education.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hey there, I wondered if anyone could give me some honest advice.

I just completed a VS at a firm and absolutely loved it. I don't want to overanalyse or be hypercritical of my own performance because I think on the whole I did well, but I think I made two grave mistakes that will likely be fatal to my chances. I wanted someone to advise if I should forget about a successful conversion.

The first mistake was I arranged a coffee chat with an associate two days prior. I should have made myself multiple reminders, written it down, or done something, but I had a graduate recruitment organised event we had to attend, and I completely forgot to go to the coffee chat. I remembered as soon as I returned from my desk with a message from the associate on the internal messaging system, saying he was waiting in the office cafe. After 15 minutes he sent a follow up message saying he had returned to his desk. I scrambled to send an apology and explained, while asking if he could please rearrange. He responded that it was "no problem, these things happen" but said he was unfortunately too busy the rest of the week to schedule another chat in. I know he did explicitly say it wasn't a problem, yet I know how valuable their time is and it makes me look disinterested and disorganised. He can obviously feedback to grad recruitment too.

The second mistake was we had to submit three assessed tasks during the two weeks. One of these tasks had three separate documents you had to submit. However, upon submission, I realised that I had failed to submit one of the three documents. Once you'd submitted, you couldn't go back and resubmit, so one of my documents didn't go through. I messaged grad recruitment about this but they said sadly there wasn't anything they could do, but that they "take a holistic approach".

I know everything is looked at holistically (or so they say) and I shouldn't overly focus on these small mistakes, but will they be detrimental?

I don’t think the coffee chat is necessarily an issue.

The assessed work maybe more of a challenge, just because they can’t assess the third document. However, it was one third of the assessment, and there were two other assessments and so it is possible that there is enough strength elsewhere that balances out the lack of evidence from the missed 1/3 of the 1 assessment.

So I don’t think it is definitely a no and I don’t think you can assume you won’t convert, but at the same time these are important lessons to learn from.

 

[dantep99]

I have my first VS coming up on Monday. I've worked hard for this and have tried to do as much preparation as I can.

I've read quite a few articles on how to stand out/how to do well on a VS, but this has led me to become curious about the other side of the coin. So, what are the common pitfalls or mistakes that VS students make that often fail to result in them converting it into a TC?

 

[Jessica Booker]

I have my first VS coming up on Monday. I've worked hard for this and have tried to do as much preparation as I can.

I've read quite a few articles on how to stand out/how to do well on a VS, but this has led me to become curious about the other side of the coin. So, what are the common pitfalls or mistakes that VS students make that often fail to result in them converting it into a TC?

General themes why I have seen people not convert their VS to TC:

Arrogance/over confidence - it’s important to be confident on schemes but there are some candidates who just seem to think they are better than the rest of their cohort and that they will convert.

Lack of interest in the work - not asking questions, doing the work to a basic level, not asking for feedback or follow up conversations.

Spending too much time networking - too many coffee catch ups at the expense of doing work for their department

Over committing - saying yes to everything and then realising they don’t have enough time to do the things they have said they would.

Bad mouthing/manipulation: either talking bad of others (even at other firms) or trying to use their other experiences as a bit of a power trip (for instance bringing their other schemes/offers into conversations when there is no need to).

Not asking for guidance on their work: leading to spending too much time or having too many mistakes in their work

 

[JLaw56]

I’m currently working on an application for the Winter VS. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to secure VS this year. I want to reapply to the firm where I interviewed.

I'm happy with my answers and would just like to change my answer to the commercial awareness question to make it more "up to date" and add a little about my exposure to this law firm. There is also a question about qualities that make a successful lawyer, and I am thinking about leaving them too.

Can anyone help me please; should I change the whole app or is it ok to change some parts?

 

[Law Student]

Thank you all so much for the advice!! I was sceptical about Burlington Row and you all have confirmed my doubts. The reason it appealed to me was because of the legal work experience they offer, as most paralegal jobs require experience. But I’ve realised that it is better for me to volunteer at law firms if I am really struggling to gain experience rather than pay these money-making schemes.

You guys have saved me a lot of time and money ❤️ I usually wouldn’t fall for scams like these but I think I just feel desperate for a job now that I’m not thinking clearly lol. I hope more people read this so they don’t fall for the scam

 

[Jessica Booker]

How do you introduce yourself in an interview (AC with Graduate Recruitment), what is the best way to go about it and what are they key things that you should cover?

Do you mean if you are asked a “tell us about you question” or just a general introduction when you meet?

 

[Jessica Booker]

Thank you all so much for the advice!! I was sceptical about Burlington Row and you all have confirmed my doubts. The reason it appealed to me was because of the legal work experience they offer, as most paralegal jobs require experience. But I’ve realised that it is better for me to volunteer at law firms if I am really struggling to gain experience rather than pay these money-making schemes.

You guys have saved me a lot of time and money ❤️ I usually wouldn’t fall for scams like these but I think I just feel desperate for a job now that I’m not thinking clearly lol. I hope more people read this so they don’t fall for the scam

It’s something easy to fall for, especially when they are pulling your details from job adverts and then say you have to do the course to be put forward for the role.

I will continue to shout at every opportunity at how dodgy I think these companies are. It’s been interesting to see that they are generally all connected to one another too!

 

[Jessica Booker]

I’m currently working on an application for the Winter VS. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to secure VS this year. I want to reapply to the firm where I interviewed.

I'm happy with my answers and would just like to change my answer to the commercial awareness question to make it more "up to date" and add a little about my exposure to this law firm. There is also a question about qualities that make a successful lawyer, and I am thinking about leaving them too.

Can anyone help me please; should I change the whole app or is it ok to change some parts?

I would try to update as much as possible. It’s not that it all has to change but you need clear evidence of your development since your last application and this should try to be reflected in as many sections as possible, even if it’s just tweaking what you wrote rather than completing rewriting the answer with different content

 

[adrk1234]

I’m currently working on an application for the Winter VS. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to secure VS this year. I want to reapply to the firm where I interviewed.

I'm happy with my answers and would just like to change my answer to the commercial awareness question to make it more "up to date" and add a little about my exposure to this law firm. There is also a question about qualities that make a successful lawyer, and I am thinking about leaving them too.

Can anyone help me please; should I change the whole app or is it ok to change some parts?

What firm is this , are the applications already open?

 

[Jessica Booker]

Don’t do it.

These are some of the biggest scams around in my opinion, especially if you are not being paid for the 12 weeks work experience because it’s most likely the case that they are being paid by the client for your time.

I have never known any recruiters to look at these courses and think “wow, let’s hire this person” on this basis of the course. The training you get is notoriously basic stuff that you could probably find through other forms of free/accessible e-learning. You could definitely invest most of the £2k into an SQE prep course and get more out of it.

.…

Morgan Quays website is also basically identical to Bradstone Allington which is another one of these companies, also referenced in the Reddit thread. Bradstone Allington is also registered to BA Training and Recruitment Limited in the U.K by looking at their terms on their website.

The reviews of Bradstone Allington on Trustpilot, although also clearly sanitised or false, do contain more disgruntled reviews which give more context of the quality of the course and their customer service.

Clearly my post has got back to Bradstone Allington! Their terms have now been updated to remove the reference to BA Training Ltd and they have been looking at my LinkedIn profile….

 

[EzeLaylor]

Clearly my post has got back to Bradstone Allington! Their terms have now been updated to remove the reference to BA Training Ltd and they have been looking at my LinkedIn profile….

 

[Deleted member 3712]

Don’t do it.

These are some of the biggest scams around in my opinion, especially if you are not being paid for the 12 weeks work experience because it’s most likely the case that they are being paid by the client for your time.

I have never known any recruiters to look at these courses and think “wow, let’s hire this person” on this basis of the course. The training you get is notoriously basic stuff that you could probably find through other forms of free/accessible e-learning. You could definitely invest most of the £2k into an SQE prep course and get more out of it.

The big red flags I have with these companies are:

- they never highlight the companies they are placing people on the work experience placements with. Look for recommendations not just from candidates, but also from employers.

- they never highlight who their tutors are. If the training was that good/impressive, they would be highlighting their qualified tutors on the subject. But they don’t.

- the employees on LinkedIn seem to have no legal training or legal professional backgrounds themselves. They are predominately recruiters/sales people.

This thread in Reddit stresses how the legal sector views these businesses: https://www.reddit.com/r/uklaw/s/y10kfzHrOX

There are a few things specifically about Burlington Row that makes it more worrying though.

They are a new company. They were only registered on Companies House in May under the name “HC Direct Limited” this year, and yet they have reviews from May and June on both their website and Trust Pilot. So this suggests the reviews are either false or the company has for some reason set itself up under another Limited Company. However, HC Direct Limited only have one Director, an Ashley Beaumont. Ashley has no other appointments/connections to other companies, and was only appointed Director to the company on 22 May 2024.

Ashley on LinkedIn is part of recruitment company called HUG Recruitment though. Although doesn’t have any details of his employment before HUG, where he has worked for the last two years or so. So it’s unclear what his background is.

Except there is another Ashley Beaumont on Companies House who has the same date of birth as the Burlington Ashley who has several dissolved companies but is running at least one other Education/Training company called Alpha National Limited. Except Alpha doesn’t have any employees and Ashley is the sole Director, and it’s difficult to find out what Alpha National’s business is. I suspect it is Burlington but Burlington has been restablished under the HC Direct company. You have to wonder why that would be the case. This Ashley is connected to HUG Recruitment too though!

And yet there is another Ashley Beaumont with the same date of birth who also runs BA Training and Recruitment Limited, who just so happens to be the company behind Morgan Quays. Morgan Quays is mentioned on the Reddit thread (I’ll come back to them).

The reviews for Burlington on Trustpilot are very suspicious. Either people with no other reviews, or where they have reviewed other services/products, it’s questionable why they are doing basic training courses in the U.K. but yet seem to be running businesses outside of the U.K. Suspicious reviews flags are also poor spelling and also people posting reviews for the wrong company (like this version below)

View attachment 6149

Even if you wanted to look at the positive reviews and focus on them, none of them provide details of the work placements completed or details of the course content - they just say vaguely what a great course it was.

When you look at Burlington Row’s LinkedIn profile, it has no people associated with the company, not even Ashley.

There are no posts on LinkedIn tagging in the company to say thank you for the course or their successful placements either.

And then when we go back to Morgan Quays, there are a significant number of Trustpilot reviews that stress they think it is a scam. And yet they only have reviews from the last 3 months on Trustpilot too despite running for longer than Burlington. Morgan Quays says it’s been running from 2021 on their LinkedIn profile, but was only incorporated under the BA Training Ltd company from 2023….

Morgan Quays website is also basically identical to Bradstone Allington which is another one of these companies, also referenced in the Reddit thread. Bradstone Allington is also registered to BA Training and Recruitment Limited in the U.K by looking at their terms on their website.

The reviews of Bradstone Allington on Trustpilot, although also clearly sanitised or false, do contain more disgruntled reviews which give more context of the quality of the course and their customer service.

And to top it all off, there is another Ashley Beaumont on Companies House with the same date of birth who ran another education company called 9 Direct Limited who were another training and education company that was established in July 2017 only to be dissolved 18 months later…

Even if you look at the profile of this supposed reviewer, here:https://uk.trustpilot.com/users/664d88a13062a0f5befa587f she’s left reviews for Bradstone Allington and Burlington Row for a business analyst course and an accounting course two days apart, supposedly having gained grad roles in these two completely differently disciplines.

Also, one of her reviews is in speech quotation marks which shows someone sent it to her (or whoever made that account) to copy and paste in and even after seeing Jess exposing them and viewing her LinkedIn, they haven’t even bothered to clean this up. It’s sad that Trustpilot is so ironically untrustworthy.

 

[ashwright]

Hi guys - hope you're all well! Just found this thread and am excited to hear from you all
I am going into my final year of a law degree. Certain situations meant I was not able to apply for VSs in year 2 so I'm looking to apply for a winter VS.
If anyone has any advice on things I should be doing right now to be best prepared, I would really appreciate it. Bit confused on the timeline of applications and open days etc. so if anyone has any insight on what I should be prepping for and when (or can signpost a resource), I would be eternally grateful

Hope you're all having a happy Monday

 

[Smart water 0403]

I recently completed a Vac scheme at an international city firm in London but I didn’t get the TC. I was firstly wondering how this will be perceived on applications going forward- will it help me get past the application stage or will it be seen as a red flag ? Also, is it realistic for me to get a VS/TC at a bigger firm- like SC/MC- for context i have a 2:1 (63%) from a RG uni and have decent extracurriculars and A-levels and obviously this vac scheme under my belt.

 

[arvpandya]

Anyone got experience doing the Vinson & Elkins (V&E) summer vac scheme? Any insight / tips would be greatly appreciated!