Vacation scheme applications with little/no legal experience? + any other tips?

[wqueens8]

Hey everyone,

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, this is my first post here.

I'm a first year/going into second year non-law student. I have only very recently begun to consider a career in law, as in since early May. My uni faculty held a workshop encouraging STEM students to consider it and it really intrigued me. After that I managed to secure a place on one virtual insight day with a firm last week. That I also found very informative and enjoyable, but unfortunately that is the extent of my experience.

I feel a bit on the back foot with everything haha, I'm doing plenty of research in preparation to make some vacation scheme applications when they open in the next few months. Is there any expectation to have prior legal experience. I'm not sure what you could be expected to have this early on in uni, but at the same time I feel I have nothing special to really offer. If they're as competitive as they seem, what can someone do to even get to the interview stage? Or am I misunderstanding what vac scheme applications entail?

As for me, I have the one virtual insight day, a part time retail job, 2:1 average for fist year, and subpar a-levels (ABC). I am hoping to get a committee position (either vice president or president) of my academic society too, but don't know of this for sure yet. All in all feeling very undeprepared for applications.

Any tips or advice?

 

[Jessica Booker]

First thing to stress is that you are actually ahead of your counterparts. Most non law candidates don’t come to this until their final year or even after graduation, so you are definitely not on the back foot.

Your virtual programme will be a way to show you are exploring legal careers. You may want to look into virtual programmes like Forage or any other forms on e-learning on legal topics, as this could be a great way to complement what you have already.

Remember you always have your final year to apply for vacation schemes too as a non law student. It’s great to consider applying this year as there are some firms that take on penultimate non law students, but many will not take you on until you are a finalist.