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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Carrabino" data-source="post: 94978" data-attributes="member: 16764">DECEMBER WEEK 2Anachronising your motivations‘I first became interested in commercial law during my vacation scheme at X firm’, or ‘My desire to become a solicitor stems from my Open Day at Y firm’.If these experiences were really the root of your interest, then why did you originally apply for them in the first place? I am not just being pedantic – law firms want to get to know you better as a person so that they can put your motivations in context. They want to know where your original inherent curiosity about commercial law came from, before you go about demonstrating how you pursued this interest and enhanced it. A vacation scheme or open day allows you to demonstrate how you began to affirm your desire to pursue commercial law through the things you learnt as part of the experience, but mentioning this by itself would fail to distinguish the sincerity of your motivations from those of other candidates who have also completed vacation schemes/open days.Not reading the nuance of the questionIf the question asks, ‘Why do you want to become a solicitor?’, do not begin with ‘I am interested in commercial law because…’.Sure, it’s often the exact same thing (although not entirely – in the above example ‘solicitor’ explicitly rules out barrister whilst ‘commercial law’ is more broad) but I would still make an effort to use the nuanced wording in the question. Your answer may be excellent but it will demonstrate that you have not tailored your answer to the question. The recruiter will know immediately that it is a copy-and-paste job from multiple other applications. At least use the wording of the application to maintain the pretence of being uniquely interested in the firm that you are applying to (preferably tailor other components of your answer too) 🤣Writing disjointed cover lettersSome cover letters ask for candidates to include quite specific things (for example, your motivations for pursuing commercial law, your transferable skills, your positions of responsibility and an achievement that you are particularly proud of).You do have to address all the limbs of the question, but the risk from what I have read is that many cover letters then become a compilation of competency answers, motivational answers and a ‘Why commercial law’ answer from other applications. Pasting in a hotchpotch of pre-written paragraphs simply does not lend itself to a cohesive cover letter. The cover letter should flow as a well-written and readable letter.This is especially obvious when the last paragraph ends with something unrelated to the firm (e.g. an example of when the candidate demonstrated teamwork), before concluding with ‘Thank you for your consideration’ and a sign-off. You should at least summarise your letter and relate everything back to your excitement to pursue a career at the firm.Some firms say that if you write three sentences in a row which could appear in another application, then your cover letter is not specific enough. Without going that far, I would push you to always make comments relating back to your motivations to work at the firm (e.g. how teamwork would relate specifically to the firm’s work) so that you maintain a sense of cohesion throughout the letter.Making unnecessary comparisonsIn order to talk about why you like one career/practice area/firm, you do not need to say why you think it is better than another. In fact, that can often miss the point, which is to find your motivations for pursuing that career, not to learn about your assessment of a variety of careers.‘The small environment, half the size of X and Y firm, would allow me to….’ – I have seen this a lot. This is sort of talking down on the larger firms as you are implying that the larger office environment is not as desirable. It is great if you want to describe why you would appreciate an intimate firm environment, but the environment of other firms is not relevant and it could seem unprofessional to discuss this. This is especially true because the small office at your firm could be much larger in a decade from now and they would not want to think that this could bother you.‘I want to be a solicitor because I value a team environment and I would not have this as a barrister’. The question is asking at face value why you want to be a solicitor. You do not need to compare it with another career unless you are asked to. If you make an unsolicited comparison, the thing you choose to compare it to might raise more questions than it answers (for example, why you consider the alternative to be a barrister as opposed to an investment banker).Not relating points back to oneselfDo not simply state that ‘I admire the firm’s commitment to mentorship/client service/ESG/diversity’ before proceeding to talk about how the firm excels in the area you chose, without saying why these things are meaningful to you.Perhaps you think that some of these things are so ubiquitously good that you do not need to explain your attraction to them, but if this is the case then they probably do not really distinguish the firm from any other firm (there are very few firms not at least claiming to have strong initiatives in all of the aforementioned areas).You have to dig deeper into what the firm does that is actually unique, why that is particularly important to you as a candidate and how you see it benefiting you throughout your career.Assuming that a claim is self-explanatoryOn the same note as the above point, I would avoid making what I think of as a lazy claim; ‘As a member of x community, I appreciate the firm’s commitment to y initiative.’It is important to go a step further to explain why the initiative is impactful and important to you – I assume that it would not be enough for you if the firm were simply doing lip service to this initiative and so you can really enhance your point here by explaining how the firm has backed up its commitment. By demonstrating that you know the ways in which the firm goes above and beyond in the areas that you are talking about, you can then justify how you see yourself taking advantage of the opportunities which the initiative could afford you.Notes from this week’s spelling/grammar errorsI have seen multiple candidates write ‘orientated’, when the correct word is ‘oriented’.Punctuation should appear outside of quotation marks in British English (as with the comma and full stop in my above example) unless the punctuation was included in the quoted material. This is not the case in American English.‘Got’ is still the strongly preferred past participle of ‘get’ in British English (as opposed to ‘gotten’ – I have done some double-checking on this to make sure that things have not changed since I was in school).When writing two full sentences in close proximity, do not separate them with a comma. Use a full stop or, in the instance that the latter sentence relates closely to the former, you can use a semicolon – e.g. ‘I am very interested in corporate finance due to my internship last summer at a bank; I would like to ensure that I pursue a seat in finance during my training contract’.Avoid writing subordinate clauses as sentences - e.g. ‘I am particularly impressed by the quality of the mentorship, the strength of the practice areas and the cohesion of the culture at the firm. Which is why I want to pursue my training contract at the firm’s London office’. Many of you will know not to do this but incomplete sentences like this crop up a lot, likely with the intention of preventing the previous sentence from becoming too long. Sentences have to have a main clause in order to be fully formed and I would not compromise grammar for stylistic effect in application answers.</blockquote>

Verification: Our company is called, "The Corporate ___ Academy". What is the missing word here?

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