Report this comment to a moderator

Pitching your bent

An interesting article in some respects, but the real 'meat' of it just seems to be something that gets dragged out every year by general and specialist careers advisers. My experience in law is such that the majority of career advice offered in articles such as this is so repetitive as to be taken to the extremes of obviousness! - Want to stand a better chance of getting a training contract? Make sure you try to do something 'lawlike' like joining the law-club at university and then expanding upon the truth of your involvement during your time as a member (never being interested in corporate law I recall being bored senseless as they came in to talk about how exciting it was being forced to work overnight to 'close a deal', but that these experiences were often offset by the wine provided by the society). I suppose the focus of this article is to consider what can be viewed as directly relevant experience - particularly when shadowing a solicitor or organising a pupillage can be either difficult or very competitive. I'm very much of the opinion however, that despite their image lawyers are also humans and like to see the fullness of the candidate and the broader strengths that they can bring to a firm. Finally, those that shout the loudest tend to be heard. I wonder if there's any disparity between what huge City players expect of a candidate (a pound of flesh?), and to what extent this is the norm amongst smaller companies? By definition almost, platforms such as Lawyer2B and Prospects are driven by what the larger firms want from their trainees, but we shouldn't forget that there is a world outside of the City.

13-Sep-2012

4:15 pm