More useful than chocolate and satsumas
As the world gears up to relax over the festive period, law students are preparing to knuckle down to vacation scheme applications. Here are five things to help make the process a little bit easier and enable your applications to stand out
1. The Legal Cheek Firms Most List
The Legal Cheek Firms Most List benchmarks all the top law firms according to pay, target hours, size, global reach and diversity. The accompanying firm profiles contain individual scorecards, in which firms are graded A* to E for, among other things, their training, quality of work, culture, work/life balance, culture, international opportunities and perks.
2. Law firm average arrive and leave the office times
From our survey of over 1,500 trainees and junior lawyers we have extracted the average arrival and departure times for the leading UK law firms. It’s a good jumping off point for students concerned about work/life balance.
3. The standout law firms for training, nice partners, social life, delicious food and more…
We have highlighted in a series of articles the law firms which scored A*s in the ten categories in the Legal Cheek Trainee and Junior Lawyer Survey. This info is not only useful in selecting law firms to apply to, but is well worth highlighting in applications as a way to show you have done your research and know about what makes firms’ stand out.
Best firms for … training, quality of work, peer support, partner approachability, work/life balance, perks, office, food, social life, and international secondment opportunities.
4. Great quotes for application forms
We’ve started pulling out some of lawyers’ best lines at our Commercial Awareness Question Time events into short video clips. Highlights include Martin Coleman, head of competition law at Norton Rose Fulbright, on the “agility and robustness” that the next generation of lawyers need to show…
…advocacy advice from Herbert Smith Freehills banking litigation partner Harry Edwards…
…and an insight into what you learn from international secondments by Ashurst solicitor Elisha Rai.
5. Practice area information
For a pithy rundown of the skills you need to succeed in the main corporate law practice areas, this collection of short interviews with Burges Salmon lawyers is hard to beat — and is useful whatever law firm you are applying to. Other good practice area pieces include this in-depth look at a major infrastructure project by Pinsent Masons, this interview with a leading real estate lawyer at the same firm, a fintech explainer by a top lawyer in the field at Norton Rose Fulbright, and a piece by one of Shearman & Sterling’s London antitrust partners on how he got into competition law.
We hope that amid the application forms/revision hell you do at least get a few days to relax. From everyone in the Legal Cheek team, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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