My Journey: from History Student to Future Trainee Solicitor

Suha Alwan, a future trainee solicitor at Baker McKenzie, uses her experience to provide valuable advice for anyone pursuing a career in law.

Applying for vacation schemes and training contracts can be a draining and difficult process. It is a process that often leads to a fair share of rejections and disappointments, but, hopefully, my journey illustrates that it is possible to overcome challenges and setbacks if you are willing to invest the time and effort into making sure that you learn from them, and become a stronger candidate and person as a result of your experiences.

Watch out for complacency

In my second year at University, I joined the ‘Law for Non-Law’ Society and attended the law fair at my university. I met firm representatives at Mayer Brown and BCLP who had an impact on me; I had meaningful conversations with them, made notes while at the event, took down their names and made sure I mentioned the conversations I had in my applications to both firms.

The result? I made only two applications that year and gained an insight scheme at one firm and a vacation scheme interview for the other. Firms really do value applicants that can demonstrate they have gone out of their way to meet them and learn about what they do.

In that year I discovered the amazing work they do at Rare Recruitment to increase diversity in the legal profession and made a successful application to become a Rare candidate. They invited me to firm events and offered application sessions where future trainees gave feedback on applications and coached us ahead of any interviews with their partner firms. Being part of Rare was a big boost to my confidence. Aspiring Solicitors was also an immense help, as I was selected to attend an event at Hogan Lovells with Barclays, which then led me to get legal work experience at Barclays.

However, I left university with no vacation scheme and no training contract offer. The reality was that I thought I had done enough, and only after graduating did I realise that I had become complacent. It is easy to go to open day after open day (an almost bi-weekly occurrence) and rack up a long list. But when it came to Training Contract interviews, I still could not put into words what a lawyer *actually* did.

Graduating without a TC is more common than you think

Having invested nearly all of my spare time into making training contract applications, I had not even considered other graduate jobs. I left university with an offer to do an MA or to do the GDL as a self-funded student. I worked in retail for four months after my graduation to save up money and think about my options, and decided that working part-time and self-funding the GDL would be my best option if I was seriously committed to law. Come January, I was a GDL student at BPP and had a new part-time job as a residence receptionist. There were other self-funding students with me at BPP who were in the same boat (and we all eventually secured a training contract).

In that time, I was still getting invited to Assessment Centres but with no offer to show for it. I knew that my experiences and my application writing skills were not the problem. Whenever I received feedback, I always made sure that I made notes, but in reality I did not need a graduate recruiter to tell me why I’d been rejected. During an interview, whenever I was asked a commercial question, my brain would freeze and I would panic, blurting out something I had revised meticulously but which did not necessarily answer the question that had been asked. In short, I didn’t know how to think ‘business’ when put on the spot.

Commercial Awareness, Commercial Awareness, Commercial Awareness!

So many students underestimate this.

Many students think that following the business news a few weeks prior to the interview will imbue them with all the necessary commercial acumen to ace an interview, but that is not the case. You can’t develop commercial awareness until you first understand why a lawyer needs to be commercially aware in their day to day job. Once you understand this, you can begin to read the news in a very different way, always thinking about things from the legal point of view. The experience of working in-house helped me to see things from the perspective of the client, which then allowed me to understand the importance and the place of the private practice lawyer within the commercial process.

I found out about the AS Commercial Awareness Competition and applied as a team – which was the previous format. We took it seriously, revising before each round and arranging Skype sessions to discuss commercial stories. I learnt a lot from my team members and from the process. I presented on commercial topics and found holes in my knowledge which I could work on in my own time.

If you are at university, take any opportunity you can to write about commercial legal topics, or to discuss them with others as this is an excellent and non-passive way of developing such a key skill.

Seek mentoring and support

I would not have reached the position I am in without incredible support from an incredible variety of sources. Someone I worked with in a non-law-based society at university eventually became a trainee. I had kept in touch with her and she was kind enough to advise me about how she prepared for her assessment centre at another firm, which eventually landed her the offer. Until I spoke to her I did not know that there was a fool-proof way to prepare for the case-study element, and that there were fundamental concepts I needed to learn in order to be ready for anything that was thrown at me. This grounding helped me to tackle the aspect that I found most challenging at interviews. I also credit my managers at internships and in my paralegal job who were excellent mentors.

This advice also applies to vacation schemes. You have two or three weeks to meet as many people as you can, so make the most of it! If you do a vacation scheme and you don’t naturally hit it off with your supervisor or trainee buddy, seek out someone else who is willing to help you. Speak to as many people in your departments and find trainees who are going to advise you. I built up good relationships with trainees I met in my departments and associates who were all willing to give me advice because I showed that I was enthusiastic to learn. Anyone that you work with will also be reporting on your performance and attitude so make sure you are always making a good impression. This is how I succeeded in converting my vacation scheme into a training contract.

Deciding to pursue a legal career as a non-law student can end up being a fantastic choice, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. I realised it was a blessing when I spoke to a second-year law student who was feeling hopeless for failing to secure a training contract, because of the competitive nature of law school. Studying History, I was shielded from a lot of this. It is so important to remember that everyone is on their own journey; you should spend time at university exploring whether commercial law is for you and focussing on developing yourself and exploring your interests to make you a more well-rounded person.