Advice for my son wanting to go into law

[Spanishsplendour]

My son is reading History at Cambridge and has just finished his first year. He has recently decided he wants to be a solicitor and has researched the pathway (SQE etc). He wants a reasonable work-life balance (he loves his sports!) so does not want to apply to “magic circle” firms - but he does want to make the most of his Cambridge degree and aim high. He hasn’t yet narrowed down which area of law he will want to specialise in and hopes to do that via an internship (he seems to think firms “rotate” interns around various departments?).

My question is how does he narrow down which law firms to apply to for a) internship next summer (at the end of his second year) and b) a training contract? We live in London which is handy for law but have no legal contacts or knowledge so feel rather clueless!

He can apply to be a paralegal to start with. Firms will have a way to recrute graduates, and yes training contract will last two years where he will be able to spend time in various departments. Some firm i know have it where a seat last 6 month so each trainee get to do 4 seats during their training contract.

Your son at Cambridge should not be a paralegal FGS. I don’t know much about this but so many on this board do - I hope they will offer advice

Has he spoken to student or careers services or the law department at the university? They may have contacts or pathways in place. It may depend on the firm but ime they don't rotate interns in one firm through different specialisms. You choose a firm in an area of interest. For example, there's a massive difference between corporate and CPS - you wouldn't experience both in the one firm.

Hi OP, the Cambridge careers team will be the place to start. There is a law fair at least once a year for students to meet reps from
lots of law firms - he can google for the details.

Other places he can look are:

• The Lawyer magazine's top 200 law firms and Lawyer2B their mag for students (all online)
• Rollonfriday.com - inside info on lots of firms (though salary info prob not up to date)
• Legal cheek online - similarly lots of inside info
• Legal directories - Chambers and Partners and the Legal 500
• Once he's got a basic idea from the above, he can look through firms' own websites, they usually have a decent amount of information about graduate careers
• he can apply for vacation schemes at some firms he thinks he likes the look of - usually a couple of weeks' paid work experience during university holidays, often with the application process for a training contract built in.

There is a shed load of money being paid to junior lawyers in London at the moment so there is a bit of weighing up to do if he wants work/life balance... junior lawyers aren't being paid for their skills alone. Regional firms are worth considering if he really does want a balance.

He won’t get work/life balance in Silver Circle either. West End firms might be better and generally have a wider range of practice areas. Otherwise there’s a whole world outside London. When I was at Cambridge back at the dawn of time I did a couple of weeks work experience at one of the big firms there - think it was Mills & Reeve - in the period between exams and May Balls (!). Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham all have great well respected firms where the pace won’t be quite as hectic (and cheaper cost of living for young graduates!)

Best advice is to apply to all the vac schemes at all the top firms. He will get a few and then he can have a look at them from the inside instead of making uninformed decisions based on assumptions. There is no difference in workload between magic circle and silver circle and us firms at the trainee and newly qualified stage so he might as well get a place in the best possible firm he can, get qualified with the best training and then make an informed decision about his career trajectory and path after that. He can go anywhere if he has trained at Linklaters and spent a few years there - the same cannot be said if he trains at a west end firm or in the provinces. If that is all he can get then fine, but he might as well aim high and get a seat abroad for a bit and enjoy what those firms have to offer. He will also develop a great network for life.

I trained in the magic circle. To be honest, the hours are brutal, but they won't be massively less brutal in the silver circle and the magic circle opens more doors. Most people will leave the MC firms within 5 years of training and fairly brutal hours, but when they do they will be in line for great jobs.

Magic circle (other other city firm) trainees will generally do four or more "seats" in different departments - corporate, finance, litigation, employment etc. All will be very "city" focused though.

If your son wants to see family/criminal/housing law, that won't be something that is available day to day in a city firm, but there are often pro bono projects that people can get involved with to do small amounts generally on top of regular workload. (I know some who have then moved on to work in those areas based on work experience as a trainee). Or he can go and work for a firm that offers that work from the outset (harder but not impossible to go back and join magic circle from there as a trainee later).

If he wants niche specialities like sports law, that can be pursued either by applying as a trainee or later as a lateral hire from a really good firm (so again magic circle helps).

As you can tell, the conservative route is to get a traineeship at the most prestigious law firm going and then trade on that, if you don't really know what you want to do.

“Magic circle”? “Silver circle”?

Do people really use these terms?

Solicitor here. Best thing to do is apply for several vacation schemes as this is the pool from which most firms recruit trainees. Having lots of work experience is a must, so start now. Most firms won’t do informal “work experience” anymore, sadly, but smaller firms might.

If he is unsuccessful with vac scheme applications then become a paralegal. Most paralegals I have worked with have successfully applied for training contracts. It’s a well known back door to the highly competitive vac scheme.

With the advent of the SQE there are more ways to qualify and firms are reviewing their grad recruitment offering, so he should research what is available and what would suit him.

Something to watch out for is where he applies - if he is local to London and applies to, for example, DLA Piper in Birmingham, they may assume he is trying to ‘cheat the system’ and refuse his application on the basis they expect him to eventually return to London. He will need a plausible reason for applying to regional offices of City firms, if he does so.

Happy to discuss in more detail if you want to DM.

I am a solicitor and have 2 solicitor children and 2 trainee solicitor children so have a fair bit of recent experience about the process. My children also have cousins at university stage interested in law too who are applying etc.

End of his first year is a good time to start planning. Even Oxbridge people get a lot of rejections so he will need to do quite a few applications for what are called "vacation schemes" - these are 1 - 2 weeks' long and paid. I really don't think he should exclude bigger firms as if nothing else it will help him discount them. They have more trainee places and are more likely to pay for his PGDL/SQE. On this link is a timeline by the way which is useful to see how the various sponsorship by law firms of their future trainees works. He should try to get some informal work experience and also law things on his linkedin/CV such as law society at university to show firms he is interested in law.

The 2 year training contract in one firm is the best route to go and those firms usually give you experience in 4 different areas of law. This is after his PGDL and SQE studies and exams. www.slaughterandmay.com/media/rs2jvepv/the-city-consortium-solicitor-training-programme.pdf is for the City Consortium firms.

Quite a lot of people even very good Oxbridge people fail to get on a vacation scheme or gain a training contract so he certainly need to get on with applying when the time is right - the firms give the deadlines on their websites eg some start shortly for trainees who might start at the firm in 2026 as 2025 is closed. Your son graduates in 2025. He would presumably ideally do the post grad law courses from 2025/26 academic year an into the 2026/27 year. Some use a masters student loan. Most law firms like the PGDL done before SQE courses for those without an LLB even though in theory you can sit the SQE exams without a law conversion/ PGDL course.

There are lots more choices under the SQE system and more scope for making mistakes.

I applied to 139 firms by the way in year 3 of my LLB and had 25 interviews in London before getting my training contract in the Feb of last year of my degree though time were much harder then - 3m out of work etc and most people nowadays apply for many fewer. It can however be almost like a part time job, keeping track of deadlines, putting in applications etc. Plenty of people work as a paralegal for a year or two after their law exams before being able to obtain a TC.

Agree with all this. I think he’s perhaps trying to make decisions prematurely- he doesn’t need to know the area of law he wants to work in at this stage and the experience he’ll get on a vac scheme won’t be adequate to help him decide- choosing where to qualify comes towards the end of his training, many years in the future.

my advice would be to apply for schemes everywhere but especially at large and prestigious firms, and do as many as he can get. Train at the most prestigious firm he can and then think about work/life balance. He won’t be leaving at 5pm at any of the firms mentioned so he may as well give himself the widest range of options. Far easier to move from Freshfields to Bristows than the other way round.

There isn't enough training contracts. I've got friends who tried for 3 years before getting one, even with masters qualifications etc. Some got on schemes eventually, others did paralegal etc work and managed to form a relationship where they gave them one after a couple years. He might not be able to be picky.

Omg Xenia you applied for over 100 firms in 1989?!?!?! Im stunned. I applied for 5 in 1989, got 5 interviews and 4 offers at linklaters slaughters as hursts and a+o. Ince said no! And I hadn’t even done law… 🤣 my experience was that everyone wanted to go to the city and so bug forms were offering to anyone with a half decent form and signs of intelligence at interview.
no disrespect but you must have been very poor at filling in forms…

Oh Delphigirl those firms must have seen you as the Oracle you assume yourself to be - 🙄 what a nasty post 😐

It’s not nasty it’s funny! 130 applications and we had to fill in all those forms by hand 😱😱😱. I’m sure Xenia would agree that she didn’t need 25 interviews and as she ended up at slaughter & May she didn’t do too badly at interview either! She could have applied to the same 5 I did and ended up in the same place 🤣🤣

I did my TC applications in the late 90s - I applied to 3 firms, had 3 interviews and got my TC at Slaughter and May. Note the "and", not the "&"

As a hiring partner for the last 12 years I'd say it is now a lot harder to get a foot in the door than it was in my time.

Tell your son to take a look at things like Commercial Law Academy, The Corporate Law Academy, Strive and Aspiring Solicitors.

nice @TheWayOfTheWorld ! Bet you didn’t have to fill out paper forms in your best capital letters though 🤣

Apologies but I’m smiling at the very idea of aiming for a work/life balance! My daughter is in a good London law firm, the hours are mind-boggling for a fair few years and there are many other trainees out there who will focus solely on work. Brutally, law is not synonymous with balance.

I actually can't remember - surely it was still paper forms then?!

I don’t think so - I was on the trainee selection committee for another MC firm from about 1998 and I can remember typed standardised forms. I think you downloaded, filled in and emailed back rather than filled in a form online, though.

I was applying in 98 and it was definitely paper forms. Most people didn’t have the internet at home- you’d have had to go to an internet cafe 😂

I think Delphigirl is a t r o l l - and if that’s his/her idea of being ‘funny’/nasty then ‘the city’ is more than suited to him/her but kudos to Delphi for the ‘top trumping attempts’

Oh honestly eveoha, grow up

Delphigirl, it was 1981/82. The UK that year had the worst unemployment for FIFTY years, 3m out of work. I was top of my year just about but only 19. Some graduates in 1982 could not even get graduate jobs. The whole economy was completely changed (due to my heroine Thatcher of course....) by the time I was qualifying in 1985 and I had offers from 3 of the best firms in London when I qualified and moved firms.

I went through my 1982./82 diaries and scanned them and did a list of those 139 firms to which I applied and the 25 interviews. Some days I was going down from Manhcester to London for 2 interviews at a time. By interview 25 I must have been getting better at the interviews. I think it is very important people set out the difficulties they overcame as too many people think we all have easy Instagram type lives.

I had to fill in applications forms, do a cover letter and send in a CV and then typically there would be two interviews if you got through the first interview. I had bought a manual typewriter with savings when I was 15 so I had that on which to type the letters. It was certainly a relief when I had that offer in February 1982. It almost felt like the biggest break I had as it was the key to everything else.

Ah I’m not sure where I got 1989 from. Yes 1982 must have been grim for job hunting. By the late 80s everyone wanted to be trading like Michael Douglas in wall street and few wanted to do law. Hence my offers although I knew nothing. Only one interview for each, too. It is so difficult now, it requires a multi year campaign.