Summer Work (experience at Law firm)

pin

First thing, you need to chill a bit.

Nothing wrong with trying to get experience through your school. I got my first work experience via my school. My first work experience involved me doing the partner's shopping for her dinner party, hole punching to create message pads, making the tea, etc. As you can see not the best work experience, however it looked good when I applied for my training contracts.

Following the secretary around. Don't knock that, the secs are the people who make law firms tick. When you are a trainee lawyer you are at the bottom of the pile, even lower than secretaries.

Re law schools. Its been a while since I was at uni!! Obviously Oxbridge are probably the highest regarded. After that any decent redbrick. In no particular order: Bristol, Warwick, Kings College, UCL, SOAS (yes that's right!), Nottingham, Birmingham are all well regarded for undergrad law. However there are others. I went to Cardiff and got a job with a good city law firm. Many of my friends from Cardiff have had no problems getting jobs with top law firm.

If you want to know what it is like to read law, why don't you contact a few law faculties and have a word with them. Have a chat with some of the lecturers, they will give you an idea of what you can expect. Some of them will even be able to give you lecture notes.

I did a degree in law and politics, meaning I didn't have to the law conversion course, and just had to do the LPC.

Oh, should add, one very useful resource for any law student looking for a law job, Chambers Student. To find it, I suggest you do some research!!

sahun

Thank you for the reassurance on the work experience, i will now start applying for some work experience, but i did seem to have a problem last year for getting the acceptance, but i should be able to overcome this problem bychecking everything i say, so dont try and help me there, sts.

pin, you have been more than helpful so far, and have given me copious amount of information about what to be looking for and what to be researching (obviously i do not want you to be doing all the work for me, but pointing me in the right directions, which you have been doing, and giving me the few bits of information that i would not know how to find out about.

Savvy_Sue

pin wrote:

Following the secretary around. Don't knock that, the secs are the people who make law firms tick. When you are a trainee lawyer you are at the bottom of the pile, even lower than secretaries.

The secretaries are the people who make ANY firm tick! Treat a good one like a goddess (or a god!) and you won't go far wrong! :rotfl:

sahun

im getting a little hint here that sue maybe a secretary, and maybe one that likes being treated as a goddess then, lol

Savvy_Sue

I'm an administrator rather than a secretary, but definitely someone who keeps the place ticking! Be VERY nice to me - my sons haven't got the hang of this yet! :rotfl:

lswwong

I work for this firm: https://www.pinsentmasons.com and we take vacation students both at school and undergraduate level each summer. It is paid! Not a great deal but better than nothing. I will PM you a contact name and number so that you can make a direct approach.

In the case of my firm, they tend to, in most cases, offer training contracts to people who had worked for them in the past as vacation students.

Vacation students are expected to show initiative and be open to new challenges. Those who just sit around and avoid talking to people or take on tasks are not favoured. We had some excellent undergraduate students last year, who were cheerful and helpful and got on well with everyone. We also had 3 girls from a school and they were excellent. Although they didn't know much about law yet, they were willing to make an effort and ask around nicely for help/info.

Secretaries at a law firm nowadays do MUCH more than just typing, believe me! A lot of them are literally paralegals and make the missing link between technical and procedural knowhow. There is much more to the BUSINESS of law rather than just practising law i.e. how do you make your expertise and advice to a client a profitable business? For example, secretaries drive the billing process to ensure that bills are rendered when they can be and this brings cash into the firm that pays everybody's wages.

It is not always possible to decide, at an early stage, what kind of law one wants to focus on eventually. Vacation placements with different kinds of firms would be helpful in giving you a flavour of things to come.

Good luck.

melancholly

Savvy_Sue wrote:

I'm an administrator rather than a secretary, but definitely someone who keeps the place ticking! Be VERY nice to me - my sons haven't got the hang of this yet! :rotfl:

I used to work as an administrator - people did learn to be nice to me if they wanted their paperwork done (whahahaha!).

btw sahun - I don't mean this in any personal way, but prepare yourself for at least some rejections - law is really really hard to get into and i don't know anyone who got 6 offers. Some of them took it badly, even though they were incredibly able students (they got some offers but even one 'no' was the first rejection they'd ever had!). You're obviously on the right road by trying to prepare as thoroughly as possible so good luck. And if you want any specific advice on a cambridge college to pick, PM me - i graduated a few years ago from there and if (like me) you don't have any idea of what the place is like, it can be an overwhelming decision (it nearly put me off applying altogether!).

sahun

thank you for the suggestion Iswwong but the problem with this is that there are actually no offices really near me.

tha_laydee

I empathise with you Sahun as I am also a law student. I live in Leicester and have written numerous letters to law firms with regard to voluntary experience and they either have not replied or do not offer such placements. Understandably they are probably approached all of the time but it is disheartening to know that they were at this stage at one point and cannot even offer a week of shadowing. I haven't been asking for payment and don't mind doing odd jobs so don't see the harm to be honest.

The thread has been enlightening though, so thank you.

tha_laydee x

sahun

I do know some places that will offer me a place, for example the place i was at last year, where i may apply again, and there was another place that offered me a place without even asking for a prior interview.
But personally i do feel that i will maybe get some more acceptances this year because i am older and actually feel stronger into reading Law.