How has it come to this?
1. You know that you shouldn’t have left it until the last minute but somehow it just happened
2. So off to work you go
3. Amid rising panic, you begin to fantasise about how application forms should be
4. Meanwhile, you try to push warnings about the danger of applying late to the back of your mind as you fight the urge to give up
5. But giving up and applying in the 2014-15 recruitment round will mean that — thanks to law firms’ practice of recruiting two years in advance — you won’t start your training contract until far into the future
6. Your boss in your minimum wage summer job does not understand this terrifying aspect of law firm graduate recruitment, and so shows little sympathy to your efforts to draft answers to very hard questions during work hours.
7. Nor does social media offer any solace, because it’s full of a) smug trainees-to-be…
…and b) law firms inanely alerting you to the fact that it’s “deadline day!!!”
It's deadline day!!! Make sure you check your application thoroughly before submitting #TrainingContract #31July #law
— Clyde & Co Grads (@ClydeCoGrads) July 31, 2014
8. The prospect of targeting a smaller firm with an August deadline crosses your mind. But such firms definitely don’t have magnificent Canary Wharf headquarters with firm swimming pools
9. Overcome with regret, you admit to yourself that it may, after all, have been worth doing a vac scheme — from which some big firms recruit all of their trainees
10. Dogged, but resigned to your fate, you press on
11. And, come 11:59pm this evening, you have at least have bought a ticket to the lottery
