TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2024-25

[Amakaa]

Hey @Amakaa ,

Very well done on getting to both stages. My tips are more on soft skills.

For the telephone interview, I recommend knowing your competencies very well and avoid preparing too heavily on verbatim answers. This is because you want your answers to sound very natural. The best way to do this is to know your passions for commercial law and Akin well, such that any question you’re asked would not necessarily trip you off.

For the AC with RS, perhaps I’ll be able to provide more guidance on that once they inform you what the AC is comprised of.

My general few interview tips are as follows;

• Smile and be confident. At the end of the day, law firms are not just hiring for lawyers, they are hiring for people.
• Keep building your commercial awareness up until then. As you would have heard many times, this is a skill that needs constant developing. You do not need to spend hundreds of hours every week doing this as that would even be counter-effective. Take little strides every day to learn something knew. It would amaze you how those little industry trends or buzz words would be weaved into your interview by you, without you even knowing it. You want your commercial awareness journey to be a natural one, not a forced one as this is what would help out more through the process and beyond.
• With regards what you can ask GR, provided you have any questions on the specifics of the stage or are not clear about anything, GR would be the best to speak to. Don’t hesitate to reach out when in doubt.
• With regards what to ask Partners, don’t ask questions just for the sake of it as most times such questions tend to be those you can easily get by deep-diving into the firm‘s website. The best questions at the end of interviews are those which talk about a topic discussed in the interview itself, or an area of your interviewers specialisation you want to learn more about and why.

Hope this helps, and best of luck!

it does help. Thank you 🙏🏾

 

[helloj]

Just received Milbank AC (spring). At 9pm on a Saturday. Strange ...

anyways any advice?

Congratulations! When did you apply?

 

[ayiiii05]

the way i was absolutely yapping in my clyde & co vi was so funny lol, i feel so bad for whoever watches mine. i think the first 3 questions were fine but i honestly gave up for the rest sigh.

i finished everything but it just sounded like basic answers

 

[Cool pigeon]

Just received Milbank AC (spring). At 9pm on a Saturday. Strange ...

anyways any advice?

Congrats!! Random time ahaha. When did you complete the WG?

 

[Amakaa]

Hey guys, I did my W&C VI on the 2nd Jan (9 days ago). I've seen some people have heard back but no clue when they did their VIs. I'm going out of my mind having heard nothing (also didn't get a confirmation email to say I'd completed it but it says it's completed on their AllHires website). Is it normal to not hear back this quickly or should I expect a PFO by now?

Is this for spring or summer. I haven't heard anything from them since submitting my app in early December

 

[xxx]

none at all, just know well about the team/(seats if you applied for tc) well and what makes you interested and about your strengths

Just for references how many questions should I expect? And how long do we have to prep/ speak. I saw the last year they only had 15 secs 😔

 

[l789]

the way i was absolutely yapping in my clyde & co vi was so funny lol, i feel so bad for whoever watches mine. i think the first 3 questions were fine but i honestly gave up for the rest sigh.

i finished everything but it just sounded like basic answers

What kind of questions did they ask for the video qs, if you don’t mind me asking?

 

[trainee4u]

Just did the NRF Arctic Shores. Worse than my previous attempt, lol.

They had the face emotion game, the top/bottom even/odd round/straight shape game, the arrow direction left/right/x game, and the rotate the shapes game. No safecracking.

I hope Arctic Shores dies soon.

 

[tcla02]

@Amma Usman @Jessica Booker do recruiters look at how long it took you to finish an untimed assessment? I just finished my trowers assessment in about 2 hours will that be looked down upon ?

 

[Gg2001]

I’m wondering the same thing. I did the Mayer Brown job simulation a couple of weeks ago. I have seen that a fair few people on this forum have received AC invites as long as a week ago, so I’m guessing it’s likely a PFO for us.

I don’t think so? I got the job sim link a week ago (Friday 11:30pm to be exact lol)

Here's the full Forsters PFO, which is very good:

• Eligibility: Some candidates applied too early. To be eligible for the 2025 vacation scheme or 2027 training contract, you need to be able to complete your degree, law conversion (if needed) and SQE before September 2027. Therefore, if you are studying a history degree finishing in 2026, you would not have sufficient time to complete the PGDL (one year) and the SQE (one year) prior to commencing your training, for example.
• Firm name: we saw many people spell the firm name incorrectly e.g. Fosters, Foresters. It is also Forsters’ rather than Forster’s. Some applicants used the wrong firm name, e.g. Farrer
• Grammatical errors: we saw a lot of American spellings where it was not expected e.g. organized, prioritized and realized. This can be a sign that AI has written the answer and shows the answer has not been thoroughly checked before copying into the for
• AI sentences: Some applicants left sentences in their applications which made clear the answer had been created in AI. For example, the paragraph would start with ‘here is an updated version with more information on…’.
• Length: many applications were too short, we provide a relatively short word count to encourage applicants to be efficient and succinct with their answers, however you should be aiming to reach within 10% of the word count. If you do not provide enough information, it limits the number of marks you can achieve.
• Marylebone: some applicants mentioned that they are excited by the idea of working in Mayfair, however we moved to Marylebone in January 2024

Question One was

"Work experience: Tell us about any paid employment, position of responsibility or volunteer work you think is relevant to your application (up to three separate roles). We want to understand your role, what you learnt and why the position was of interest to you. Please include dates for the role. (approx. 100 words per item)"

the feedback:

• Dates: some disregarded the element of the question asking for the dates.
• Lack of explanation: some applicants didn’t actually explain what their job was.
• Lack of variety: two or three very similar examples were given. You would have benefitted from selecting a wider variety of experiences e.g. rather than 3 1-week legal internships. The selection of similar examples limited the skills and achievements you spoke about. You may like to choose examples of different types (e.g. paid, unpaid, voluntary, position of responsibility), and different lengths (e.g. 1-week, 3-month summer placement, holiday job you return to, gap year work experience).

Question Two was
"Why Forsters: What are two things you have personally found interesting about Forsters through your research? Please explain why these are interesting or matter to you."

the feedback:

• Options picked considered too safe: many candidates avoided talking about clients, cases, lawyers and departments. In summary, they avoided talking about anything legal. We want to know which areas are of interest to you, and be able to see you have researched them thoroughly. We would advise you aim for a legal element, as well as talking about the easier elements to talk about, such as values, culture, D&I and CSR (which required less research
• Six seat training contract: the rotation system was one of the most commonly listed answers. To avoid a generic application, it would be better to choose something less obvious from the website. Some people made the mistake of calling it a four-seat training contract.
• Variety of legal areas: many applicants said they were attracted to the wide variety of departments on offer, but they did not go into detail as to which appeal the most/why they would like to sit there/what they know about the team.
• For insight, the most common answers were the Tate case, Art and cultural property, an interest in private wealth (without further details) and our value of We take happiness seriously,

Question Three was
"Tell us about one goal you have set for yourself recently and describe the steps you are taking and skills you are developing in order to achieve it."

the feedback:

• Need to break down the steps further: often steps were too broad e.g. ‘I am focusing on my health’, this needed further clarification of the steps e.g. I have designed a meal plan, I have designed a weekly gym schedule, I have challenged myself to 10,000 daily steps. You may like to make the steps more measurable to add detail.
• Lack of skills identified: many candidates missed identifying the skills they have developed.
• For insight, the most common answers were running, learning a language, building confidence, improving public speaking, time management skills.

I like their PFO letter very much because it does make it clear that in reality if you so much as make as one bad spelling "decision", e.g., "judgement" for "judgment" or "prioritize" for "prioritise" you WILL be PFOed and there's no mincing of words or pretending that things like this won't get your application tossed instantly.

thank you for sharing this

 

[Jessica Booker]

@Amma Usman @Jessica Booker do recruiters look at how long it took you to finish an untimed assessment? I just finished my trowers assessment in about 2 hours will that be looked down upon ?

Did the assessment say it was untimed? If so, then no.

If it said there was an unlimited amount of time, then there may be some form of element of reviewing time completed into the assessment, but it’s hard to know this for definite as it will vary from firm to firm.

 

[CG_101]

Milbank AC for Summer!

 

[johnnysins]

Milbank AC for Summer!

Congrats! Did you just get it? And was it also for the Lev-Fin track programme?

 

[Miss Chocolate]

Someone here posted they got a TC with NFR (congrats!!) -- do most firms hand out TCs on a rolling basis?? I thought the ACs for direct TCs would be like in the summer.

 

[mx.jsn]

Hi, does anyone know if the linklaters fast track guarantees you an Ac place?

Yes- unless they have changed the process. I was on this track last year.

After the open day they send the AC invite.

 

[badmintonflyinginsect]

@Jessica Booker Hi Jessica! In one of my applications, I have not filled out the equal opportunity monitoring questions (gender/birthday/etc). Will this affect my application?

 

[futuretrainee101ac]

Nope I’m taking it today !!😭 I’m just going to try my best good luck to you

Honestly, best of luck to both of us!! I'll keep you posted on how I get on, let me know how you get on too!!

 

[Zaraa.x]

Someone here posted they got a TC with NFR (congrats!!) -- do most firms hand out TCs on a rolling basis?? I thought the ACs for direct TCs would be like in the summer.

I believe the individual got the offer after completing the winter vac scheme.

 

[Jessica Booker]

@Jessica Booker Hi Jessica! In one of my applications, I have not filled out the equal opportunity monitoring questions (gender/birthday/etc). Will this affect my application?

No - these questions are optional (either by non completion or by choosing “I do not disclose” and are used for reporting purposes across applicants. Answers are not accessible in terms of seeing an individual’s answers in the recruitment process.

 

[Jessica Booker]

Someone here posted they got a TC with NFR (congrats!!) -- do most firms hand out TCs on a rolling basis?? I thought the ACs for direct TCs would be like in the summer.

I am fairly certain this was off the back of their winter scheme. They will purposely still hold back opportunities for their summer process.