TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2024-25

[LawLawLawLawLaw]

Has anyone heard back yet for the Mishcon Open Day? and do you know when we should expect to hear?

 

[Audric_T]

Hi @abhuzaifa! I actually wrote a comprehensive post on this recently, I have quoted it bellow. However, if you have any further questions about VIs or DLA Piper I am very happy to discuss that !

Hi Andrei, apologies it looks like you got cut off. Could I kindly ask for the step by step please?

 

[IneedaTCASAP]

it feels too unethical for me and i already clicked the link

A lot of things in law are unethical 😔

 

[LawyerUpPal]

Nothing from HSF day after my AC… am I cooked…

Don't worry I had mine on Monday and nothing yet.

 

[Zi48]

it feels too unethical for me and i already clicked the link

I think you can just be honest and say you thought it was due today as you didn’t know weekends were included as ‘working days’. The worst that can happen is they say no, I’d say it’s worth trying

 

[KacperLawyer]

Has anyone received an AC invite for NRF Winter Vac?

 

[unknownnn7372]

had my W&C AC yesterday, and the grad rec emailed me today saying that i did not submit my written assessment (When i in fact did, appears to be a glitch or something), hence i have to redo and have an alternative assessment on zoom next week. has anyone been in a situation like this before, and will this impact my chances of getting a VC? also, does anyone have any idea on what the alternative may be. thanks!

 

[Tintin06]

had my W&C AC yesterday, and the grad rec emailed me today saying that i did not submit my written assessment (When i in fact did, appears to be a glitch or something), hence i have to redo and have an alternative assessment on zoom next week. has anyone been in a situation like this before, and will this impact my chances of getting a VC? also, does anyone have any idea on what the alternative may be. thanks!

I think that's very reasonable of them and I don't believe it'll harm your chances. There'll probably wait before making offers.

 

[IneedaTCASAP]

had my W&C AC yesterday, and the grad rec emailed me today saying that i did not submit my written assessment (When i in fact did, appears to be a glitch or something), hence i have to redo and have an alternative assessment on zoom next week. has anyone been in a situation like this before, and will this impact my chances of getting a VC? also, does anyone have any idea on what the alternative may be. thanks!

That is very nice of the firm to allow you to do an alternative. You are probably a very strong candidate and they just want to give you another chance. Congratulations on the AC invite.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hi there, I was wondering about the extracurriculars question for applications - if I've worked on the committee for a ball, would I put this under work experience or in the extras section? also for the work experience sections how should I structure my answers? is it mostly describe what you did in the role or should I put as much attention as for the other questions and adapt these work experience answers per firm?

Anything related to a student society, club or association would be extracurriculars.

Work experience should focus on your key responsibilities and any success/outcomes from your efforts. You generally don't need to tailor most of your work experience to each firm, but may want to prioritise different aspects at the same time. For instance, if you did a vacation scheme and sat in Real Estate and Employment, you may focus more on your employment responsibilities for a firm that is an employment specialist firm, while you may focus more on real estate if a firm has a strong practice or sector focus in this area.

 

[Jessica Booker]

How familiar is one expected to be with Powerpoint and Excel on a vac scheme? Would appreciate insight from moderators and anyone who has completed a scheme before! x

Basic level of knowledge for both would be beneficial. You don't have to be an expert at either though.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hello, just wondering. I attended a firm’s open day last year, can I refer to this when making my application for them this year? I was looking for online events on AllAboutLaw, Legal Cheek etc but couldn’t find any for this year until after the deadline 🥲

Yes, it would be very appropriate to leverage this experience in an application form.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Is there a specific way you're meant to put your mitigating circumstances? I only say that I suffered from severe illness, which had a negative impact on my studies. Should I add anything?

You should include dates and details of how it impacted your studies (e.g. missed lectures, deferred exams).

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hey everyone, for Clyde & Co, are recent graduates eligible to apply for Vac Schemes? They say this on their website which makes me wonder if recent graduates are just not eligible at all...

View attachment 6374

I would tak that if you have graduated, you are not eligible (unfortunately).

 

[Jessica Booker]

Hi @Andrei Radu @Jessica Booker

1. I am currently completing a law firm application that I plan to submit tomorrow. In my work experience section, I have included a part dedicated to open days. I recently secured a place on Paul, Weiss' open day and was wondering whether it is ok to write something along the lines of "I secured an open day at Paul, Weiss, which will take place on 30 October"? On the one hand, I thought maybe it would make me look like a competitive candidate, but on the other hand, I don't have any insights to share from this event yet, so I do not know if it just does not add anything to my application.

2. From a presentation POV, will it reflect poorly if I complete a VI at night time? Do you recommend only doing VIs in natural daylight?

Thank you!

1) You can reference future open days - you don't need to say when they will take place though.

2) It really doesn't matter, it won't reflect poorly. Just make sure the room is appropriately lit and is not too dark.

 

[Jessica Booker]

it feels too unethical for me and i already clicked the link

Its not unethical. If they said 5 working days, then it should have still been live today.

You clicked on the link but it wasn't accessible, so this is a technical issue that the firm should be able to resolve.

 

[Jessica Booker]

had my W&C AC yesterday, and the grad rec emailed me today saying that i did not submit my written assessment (When i in fact did, appears to be a glitch or something), hence i have to redo and have an alternative assessment on zoom next week. has anyone been in a situation like this before, and will this impact my chances of getting a VC? also, does anyone have any idea on what the alternative may be. thanks!

It is likely to be a very similar exercise, just a different topic/theme.

 

[l789]

Anyone who applied to slaughters- how much pre firm contact did you have.

The presentation evening is all booked up for my uni and I’m worried I won’t have enough personal insights for my application.

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hi @Andrei Radu @Jessica Booker

1. I am currently completing a law firm application that I plan to submit tomorrow. In my work experience section, I have included a part dedicated to open days. I recently secured a place on Paul, Weiss' open day and was wondering whether it is ok to write something along the lines of "I secured an open day at Paul, Weiss, which will take place on 30 October"? On the one hand, I thought maybe it would make me look like a competitive candidate, but on the other hand, I don't have any insights to share from this event yet, so I do not know if it just does not add anything to my application.

2. From a presentation POV, will it reflect poorly if I complete a VI at night time? Do you recommend only doing VIs in natural daylight?

Thank you!

Hi @KBanana!

1. I think it is fine to write about an upcoming open day - and especially for Paul, Weiss, which has been extremely competitive from what I hear. I think whether the proposed sentence works depends on the context of the rest of answer. When I was listing upcoming events, I would just write something such as "Finally, I have secured a place and will attend open days at ...". However, if you want to try to link this with any insights, you can maybe say something like "I secured an open day at Paul, Weiss, where I expect to improve my commercial awareness by learning more about one of the most remarkable recent developments in the City's private equity legal landscape".
2. I think it is very unlikely his will be taken under consideration in any way. Recruiters are quite aware that people have different schedules and that some will only be able to complete a VI at night. Moreover, in many cases (like for me last year), people will complete VIs in places without much access to natural daylight - so it should not even be noticeable that you are competing yours at night. My advice would be to just complete yours at the most convenient time.

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hi Andrei, apologies it looks like you got cut off. Could I kindly ask for the step by step please?

Definitely, please see it here:

Hi there! My interview preparation approach, which led to a VS offer 4/4 times I implemented it, was essentially split in four phases:

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 not 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/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 how I could leverage my experience to answer those questions. Finally, I would write 2-3 short bullet points under each questions to explain how I would answer it - I have found this helps with memorizing the ideas for your answers. Thus enabled me to both have the ideas ready to go in my mind for a high number of questions and to be able to go through the though process of formulating the answer in the actual interview. 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 the firm, Why me etc).

The second stage 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 stage 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 any 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.


Step 3 - Mock interviews

Especially for any AC/final stage interviews, mock interviews are a really useful preparation tool. After you have improved yourself as much as you could by firstly preparing your best ideas for answers, and then preparing the best way to articulate them, you would now be in the best position to further improve both your ideas and your capacity to communicate them by getting feedback from others. Hence, if you can find someone with VS/TC interview experience (or even just experience with commercial law/interviews in general), it would be really helpful to get them to do a mock interview for you. Moreover, getting more familiar with the 'interview experience' beforehand contributes a lot to your ability to calm your nerves and do your best on the big day. As such, I would advise you to reach out to people who could help you with this, even if they are not part of your immediate circle. You will be surprised how many people will be willing to help you out!


Step 4 - Getting into the right mindset

Finally, although this may sound a bit cliche, try to go into the interview with a positive attitude. Remind yourself that just by reaching this stage, you have demonstrated to be an exceptionally competitive candidate. Acknowledge the fact that since the firm chose to meet you out of so many other applicants, it means you have everything you need to succeed - whether that means success with this particular firm or another. Finally, although I appreciate how hard it may be, try to not put an excessive amount of pressure on yourself. Meditate on your journey and how far you've come and accept that as long as you do your best, you will have nothing to blame yourself for. Going through these thought processes the night and morning before the interviews helped me a lot with reducing my anxiety and my ability to show enthusiasm in my attitude.

I hope this is useful and best of luck with your future interviews!