anyone have any advice for ACs? my first one ever is tomorrow and I am quite nervous that im just gonna blank and forget everything I know or smth like that will go wrong
TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2024-25
- Thread starter Jessica Booker
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I had an interview recently which was going to be held on Microsoft teams in groups of 5. I was offered a 1-1 telephone interview as an adjustment. 🙂🙂
The interviewer asked me the exact same questions as others but with extra thinking time and additional time to deliver my answers. 🙂🙂
Yeah 100% it’s definitely worth it. I have now passed the application stage for White & Case and didn’t go to their open day. 🙂🙂
I went to several of their virtual events and completed multiple forage internships. I guess the most important thing is to demonstrate your interest in the firm, which can be done by doing some of these things if you have not had the chance to attend an open day. 🙂🙂
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An open day is just a means to an end - the end is a well-researched answer, which you can definitely get in other ways. I think speaking to one of the solicitors is even better, their insights are often much deeper than what you'd get at an event. If you reach out to more trainees or associates on LinkedIn, and make the messages a little personalised and friendly, they might get on a call with you - I've found this much more helpful.
I've skipped applications in the past thinking I didn't have enough events with the firm to show - but I think that's a mistake. All my successful apps this year were without an open day
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Did you have legal experience too? I think that’s where my application lacked and was therefore rejected
I don’t actually have any legal work experience. I have a legal mentoring scheme and virtual internships + open days. I have never worked in a law firm or a professional environment before! 🥲🥲
The bulk of my work experience is all non-legal, which is just as (or even more) valuable than having legal work experience. This is because of all the transferable skills you are able to gain from them. 🙂🙂
The only time legal experience might be wanted is for a direct TC application, but even then it’s highly unlikely because the TC is designed to train you up to become a newly qualified solicitor! 🙂🙂
I think it depends on how you leverage your varied work experiences and skills gained that makes the difference! Perhaps @Jessica Booker can provide more insight into this! 🙂🙂
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- Sep 9, 2024
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My top tip would be to focus on doing well and not on being perfect. Many people go to ACs thinking they need to blow away the partners and the recruiters to succeed, but I think this is the wrong attitude to have. First of all, while your achievements and skills might be impressive for this stage, it is quite unlikely you will manage to overly impress anyone no matter how hard you try - you will know a lot less about any given commercial law subject than lawyer in the firm. Secondly, this attitude will make you feel even more stressed than you would normally be and will therefore likely impact your performance. If you will be assessed for a total time of a few hours, it is impossible to be perfect in every moment. When you notice an imperfection in an answer, the right reaction is to acknowledge it but then to move past it and make the best of the rest. Instead, the overly perfectionistic candidates tend to stress about it a lot more than they should, and in attempting to fix the initial mistake they do a lot more harm to their progression chances. People with this mindset thus often end up creating negative feedback loops for themselves: they make a small error, then they begin overthinking it, which decreases their self-confidence, which impacts their next answer, which in turn further intensifies their anxiety; a series of events which can end up completely derailing one's performance.
To avoid this, instead of aiming to excel everywhere, I would simply aim to perform well - to do a good job on every task and score well on every relevant assessment criterion. This boils down to using your preparation to make decent substantive points and communicate them in a clear and confident manner. If you manage to do this you will have performed better than the majority of candidates and in most cases should be enough to get you progressed - it did for me 4/4 times. If you reframe your task in this way, I think you should feel a lot less anxious about it: while perhaps it is difficult to convince yourself that you will pull of an extraordinary performance, you should feel a lot more confident in being able to respond sensibly to tasks and to cover all your bases well.
A final piece of advice I have for calming down on the day and to avoid blanking out is to take your time:
- Firstly, taking your time before starting your answer. Instead of just jumping into a response the instance the interviewer stops speaking (which is a very natural temptation) take 3-4 seconds to think about and structure your answer. This will significantly decrease the number of times you find yourself blanking out mid-answer or having difficulty finding the right way to end a sentence.
- Secondly, if you have difficulty with finding sensible points for a question, it is perfectly acceptable to request some thinking time - just say 'May I please take a minute to consider my answer?'. In the unlikely case you do not find anything after that, explain that you are unsure what to say; but also walk the interviewer through your thought process of your best guess.
- Thirdly, aim to speak more slowly. When you are anxious, your hear rate goes up and you naturally start speaking at a higher pace, which is problematic in that this simply means taking less time to think as you answer. This naturally reduces how articulate and confident you seem, especially since speaking quickly more often leads you to losing your chain of thought or expressing yourself in unclear language. As such, try to slow down. Also, use strategic 2-3 second pauses in your speech to add emphasis to points and to get valuable thinking time as you are moving between the different parts of your answer.
!
As part of an AC, I've been asked to put together a 10 minute presentation on a current social, political or economic issue currently impacting the UK economy and how that issue impacts commercial law firms (picking out specific sectors affected, what opportunities/challenges there are for law firms in relation to the issue, how it will impact clients etc).
Does anyone have any advice on how to go about picking a topic/issue to present on? Very aware that 10 minutes isn't actually a lot of time to go into much depth on anything so not sure how to go about picking a topic that's not too narrow!
Does anyone have any advice on how to go about picking a topic/issue to present on? Very aware that 10 minutes isn't actually a lot of time to go into much depth on anything so not sure how to go about picking a topic that's not too narrow!
Mine also didn’t but I’ve never had an amberjack where they do :/ it’s frustrating because I otherwise do well with SJT but I think I get messed up by only getting to pick most and least effective opposed to ranking them. It’s so frustrating when the options aren’t ever what you would do or they’re basically the same. My numerical and verbal reasoning were strong at least but now feeling super dejected that I worked so hard on the application for it to probably not be read properly
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Nope the verbal reasoning is answering multiple choice Qs based off a passage on info and a question asked by a ‘client’ and the numerical reasoning you’re given graphs and stuff
This may have been asked already but... I have an in-person AC interview coming up and I believe that there will be (at a minimum) two fee-earners interviewing me. When one of them asks me a question, and I have to respond, should I look at both interviewers back-and-forth when responding? Or should I only focus on the person that’s asked me?
Alternatively, does it depend on the question/who is writing notes on my answers lol💀
@Jessica Booker @Amma Usman
Alternatively, does it depend on the question/who is writing notes on my answers lol💀
@Jessica Booker @Amma Usman
@Jessica Booker Hi Jessica, I submitted my application and interview experiences in the middle of the week, and I assume the forms were not closed as I was able to complete them. The email said the gift cards would be issued by 31 Jan - if I didn't get them, does that mean what I submitted was not valid?
Hi! Is there a VI question at the end of the Paul, Weiss amberjack assessment? Thanks!
Does anybody else compulsively check their emails a day after submitting an application, expecting to hear back🤣
Just did the PW SJT:
Top for verbal, middle for numerical but mixed feelings about the pillars-7,7,6,1 lmao. 1 being applied intellect 💀Never scored so low for empathy/collaboration in other tests so feeling like I’ve bombed this one 😭 On the plus side, the scores are much better compared to the Reed Smith one I did a few weeks back… feeling argh!
If Paul from Paul, Weiss is watching from a distance.. I promise you I’m very friendly, collaborative and have a heart!! 😂😭
Top for verbal, middle for numerical but mixed feelings about the pillars-7,7,6,1 lmao. 1 being applied intellect 💀Never scored so low for empathy/collaboration in other tests so feeling like I’ve bombed this one 😭 On the plus side, the scores are much better compared to the Reed Smith one I did a few weeks back… feeling argh!
If Paul from Paul, Weiss is watching from a distance.. I promise you I’m very friendly, collaborative and have a heart!! 😂😭
was there a set of VI questions at the end? I have been seeing online that amberjack has that as a component of the exam
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