Our Prioritisation Guide shared a few inside truths on how to differentiate law firms. Next, we want to help you with your overall application strategy.
You know that it’s tough to secure a training contract. You know that there are thousands of other applicants like you applying to the same few firms. You know that you can’t simply be “good enough” to win the training contract race – you need to be truly exceptional.
But how can you prove that you are exceptional? The truth is that it’s hard: you need to excel across your degree, your extracurriculars, your work experience and then bring that all together at an assessment centre.
We can’t make you exceptional through an email newsletter. But we can give you 10 Insider Tips to speed up the process.
- You need at least a 65% average in your degree to compete. Law firms want the best and brightest. Your exam result average is the perfect quantitative measure to rank candidates. Given the volume of applicants, a strong 2:1 (which we consider a =>65% average in your second year or overall degree result) is a key metric for law firms. Of course, if you have important mitigating circumstances, law firms will take this into account provided that you convincingly explain why it affected your performance.
- Do you actually want to be a lawyer? Lots of lawyers don’t like their jobs. They often earn plenty of money and work a manageable amount of hours, but they still feel like something is missing. We’re not convinced these lawyers properly considered alternatives before they applied. Sure, they were smart enough to say something convincing about “why law” at interview. But they weren’t smart enough to actually research other careers, carry out other internships and truly consider whether other paths were a better fit for them.
- Don’t make the same mistake. Consider your career choices deeply. Come up with a positive case for wanting to do law and actively test whether the balance of pros and cons outweigh other career choices (e.g., strategy consultancy, civil service fast stream, product manager at a start-up, tech sales, etc.).
- Career choices are low-frequency, high-stakes decisions. Making the right decision for you matters. And we promise, if you do decide to pursue law, your answer for why you are doing so will be 10x stronger as a result.
- Small town law can lead to big City law. Prior legal work experience at a local law firm will help you a lot. It sounds silly - isn’t that the whole point of a vacation scheme? But a week-long scheme at a high street firm will help you to evidence that a career in law is a longstanding ambition. If you have graduated but have not yet had any legal work experience, we recommend a paralegal position. You can read our separate guide on the benefits of paralegalling here.
- Vacation schemes are harder to secure than training contracts. The very best candidates carry out multiple vacation schemes. But they can only accept one training contract. Law firms know this, but their vacation scheme intakes are usually about the same size as their trainee intakes. Don’t be too disheartened if you don’t secure a vacation scheme on your first attempt.
- Apply early. Most law firms recruit on a rolling basis. You are more likely to get rejected if, like most candidates, you leave your application to the end of the cycle.
- Think about it from the law firm’s perspective. They’ve got 25 spots to fill. They receive 2,500 applications with c.70% submitted in the last two weeks of the application window. Of course it makes sense to review the first 30% as they’re received. They might not actually interview these candidates prior to deadline day, but they’re still adding candidates to the “yes” pile and filling their interview calendars before you have even applied.
- Not convinced? Here’s an example: I received my second year grades in July one year; I applied to a Silver Circle firm in the same week; I attended their first assessment centre of the cycle and, within two hours of leaving, I was told unofficially that I’d secured a training contract. So that was a great day for me, but one one fewer TC place for everyone else to fight it out over.
- We’ve listed all known firms that interview on a rolling basis here.
- Commercial awareness is less important than you think. In the hierarchy of things to worry about, commercial awareness should sit below your studies, your applications and your extracurriculars.
- You need a limited amount of commercial awareness at the application stage. You need to convincingly explain why commercial law, but it’s not until interview stage that it comes into sharper focus.
- At this point, you should select one recent news story that has business and legal elements. You should read widely about the topic and compare viewpoints from left-, centre- and right-leaning media. You should write and memorise your personal view on the matter. You should be ready to defend your position at interview, but this isn’t hard: through targeted research into a specific topic, you will know much more than the interviewer, which makes it easy to handle their questions.
- Of course, we’re not telling you to shut out the commercial world. We’re fond readers of The Economist and are genuinely interested in business. But we think you should invest your spare time carefully: passively reading the FT might make you feel good, but it won’t materially improve your chances of securing a TC.
- Positions of responsibility aren’t just for show. When the founders of Next City Lawyer were applying for training contracts, we were pretty cynical about positions of responsibility. We knew law firms preferred candidates who had taken on these roles, but we saw them as a tick box exercise - simply something to do to improve our chances.
- We were wrong. We learnt a lot more than we thought we would from helping to run societies and organise events. We became more organised; we started to work in teams; we became better communicators; we improved our self-awareness and resilience. We stretched ourselves, failed at things and learnt a lot.
- Did it make us more attractive candidates to law firms? Yes, 100%. Did it give us lots of relevant examples for applications and interviews? Absolutely. But after we secured our training contracts and started our jobs, did it make us better lawyers? We actually think it did.
- Don’t just go through the motions of getting a position of responsibility for your CV. Choose one or two positions to focus on and do them super well.
- Don’t talk yourself down. Too many candidates choose not to apply to the best firms because they don’t think they’ll succeed. Instead, they apply to less prestigious firms in the hope that the best candidates won’t bother.
- This is a bad strategy. Firms with larger intakes can afford to take more risks on applicants. In many ways, they’re often more open-minded about who they hire than some smaller firms. Our Prioritisation Guide crunched the data on success rate by firm type (p.11). In 2022, applicants were about twice as likely to secure a TC from an application to a Magic Circle firm vs. a smaller commercial firm like Lewis Silkin.
- Now, we’re not saying that you should base your application strategy on statistical probability of success from a single previous year. But we are saying that you should not let imposter syndrome put you off. If you are on course for a =>65% average, have relevant extracurriculars and the ability to write a compelling application, you should have the confidence to consider the full range of firms when applying.
- Build your confidence. Law is a client-facing profession. At the start of your career, your internal clients are key: the associates that you work for, the partners who win the work and lead the teams. As you build experience, more of your time is dedicated to interacting with clients. Since clients are people, they want to work with amiable and professional lawyers who inspire confidence.
- Law firms are looking for this confidence in their hiring processes. They may say that they hire for potential rather than polish, but the polish helps a lot. No one is born with confidence: it’s the product of our environments and experiences. You can build yours by stretching yourself - putting yourself in testing situations before the real-life test.
- Practice is key to building confidence. Not sure about a presentation? Film yourself delivering it 20 times and force yourself to watch it back and improve. Nervous about commercial case studies? Rehearse through mock case studies to improve your chances and build confidence. You wouldn’t walk into an exam hall without taking past papers. The law firm assessment process requires exactly the same sort of preparation.
- Learn from the best. Like our point about past examination papers, you need to understand the difference between success and failure before you start writing your applications. You need to understand what the best candidates did and why they succeeded.
- We can help you with this. Our Application Database includes 100+ successful, up-to-date applications to leading commercial firms. Our team of US, Magic Circle and Silver Circle lawyers has reviewed every application. We’ve provided line-by-line, detailed commentary on each successful application.
- We explain why the application was successful. We set out how we would have taken it to the next level. We identify how you can apply the same best practices to your own draft.
- Ultimately, we can help you become part of the 10% of candidates that secure interviews. We can speed up your journey to securing a training contract.
You can learn more about our Application Database here.
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