We all know that training contracts are not easy to get. Law firms often receive well over a hundred applications for each available space. And of these hundred applicants, the vast majority will all look excellent on paper: good universities, high grades, and a raft of extra-curricular trophies and titles.
Law firms will have to cut down the numbers of applicants who make it through their first round of paper applications. The next stage might be online tests, a telephone interview or a face-to-face assessment centre. It can be very time-consuming (and expensive!) for a firm to assess and interview so many applicants. The brutal reality is that many applicants won’t even be considered past the first round. HR will need to quickly cut the number of applicants down to a manageable number. To do so, they’ll look for some basic mistakes that applicants make.
Applications with basic mistakes on will be rejected outright. So, if you think you’ll shine in an interview or at an assessment centre, make sure you’ll get through the first cut by avoiding the following mistakes.
Triple-check your spelling, punctuation and grammar
This is blindingly obvious – yet so many students will slip up. Even one innocuous typo can bring down an entire application. Lawyers are obsessed with attention to detail and take a dim view of errors. And you certainly won’t be able to claim you have a strong attention to detail if you make basic errors in your application!
The solution? Check, check and check again! Once you’re happy with your application, try leaving it in draft for a day before coming back to it with fresh eyes. The brain has a tendency to skip over spelling errors when it becomes too familiar with a piece of text. Let your brain reset and come back to it. It might also help to have a friend read your application.
Don’t waffle
Contrary to popular opinion, practising law is not about long, complicated sentences and “big words”. Law is all about persuasion. To be persuasive, it is much more important to be able to convey a point clearly and concisely.
Convoluted sentences, even if they are grammatically correct, are more likely to see your applications rejected than simple sentences that make your point cleanly and forcefully. We’ve written a guide to legal writing skills as part of our free PDF guide to Take Home Assessments. If you’re looking for more information (such as on why you should use the active voice rather than the passive voice), then we recommend you look at our guide. To get your free guide, join our mailing list and it will be emailed to you after you confirm your subscription.
Be specific
It might be true that you think “litigation is a really interesting area of law.” But why exactly are you interested in it? Statement unsupported by specific examples are largely meaningless to someone reading hundreds of similar applications. Try to link such statements back to something from your studies, work experience or something you learnt at a talk or open day. You can also use this as a way to let the firm know about your skills and achievements – but avoid the temptation to boast or come across as arrogant.
Get the firm’s name correct
We know that many applications have very similar questions about your achievements and career motivations, so it’s tempting to keep a copy of your applications to other firms in case it speeds up future applications. But take care! If you’re copying and pasting answers from prior applications, make sure you read the pasted text carefully for any errors to make sure that there is nothing in there that is inappropriate for this application – the most obvious example being the wrong firm’s name!
Also, a few firms are quite picky about their name and brand. One famous example is Slaughter and May, who are rumoured to instantly reject any application that refers to “Slaughter & May” with an ampersand rather than “and”.
Talk about yourself – not just the firm you are applying to
There is a fine balance to be struck here between talking about yourself and showing that you have properly looked into the firm you are considering. Don’t simply fill up your application with information that you’ve found on the firm’s website – the person reviewing your form already knows about their own firm. They want to learn about you.
You can strike the right balance by linking information about the firm back to your own experience and achievements. For example, many applicants might write: “I want to work in the firm’s banking litigation department, because it was recently recognised as a Tier 1 firm by Chambers and has many blue-chip clients.” A better sentence would be: “I want to work in the firm’s award-winning banking litigation department, because I recently undertook two weeks’ work experience at [x] and found it to be an intellectually stimulating area of law.”
Show that you understand what a trainee does
Application forms might ask you to describe why you think you are suited to being a trainee or what the key skills needed for the role are. The reality is that a lot of trainee work is mundane and routine: document review, compiling bibles, proofing contracts, researching procedural rules, and so on. If you talk about winning disputes for the firm’s clients or negotiating mergers and acquisitions you will look like you learned about law by watching TV.
Reviewers will be more impressed if you show that you have a good grasp of what typical trainee tasks entail, and that you have the skills to do them. Organisation, attention to detail and good basic communication are valuable skills in a trainee.
Finally, don’t leave it to the last minute!
If you do, you’re far more likely to make mistakes or give over-long, spur of the moment answers.
This shows why it is important to get as much contact with lawyers as possible, whether it be at open days, law fairs, or other university events. Try to talk to trainees and find out what they actually spend their time doing. As explained below, backing up statements in your applications with real life examples from trainees you have spoken to will make them stronger.
See here for a list of training contract deadlines.