Advice on How to Secure A Training Contract

Choose your areas of interest below to access expert advice from lawyers, grad recruiters, trainees & law career specialists.

Pre-Application Essentials

There is much more to securing a training contract than firing off application forms and attending interviews. You need to lay the foundations well in advance of submitting your applications. You will need to gather information and acquire new knowledge about the profession and firms' training contracts. You will need to get critical work experience and engage in extra-curricular activities. We break down the most important steps to take and how tackle them in the best way.

Interviews

So you've finally found a way to get past the application stage and now you face an interview. If you haven't had much interview experience, or you have been already unsuccessful at the interview stage, you need to know what the interviewers are looking for. Here we set out advice from our own experts who have interviewed hundreds of candidates and know the exact do's and don'ts that lead to success.

How to Find TC Jobs

There are the obvious places to look for training contract jobs and, because they are obvious, the majority of candidates know about them. There are also less obvious places to look for training contract jobs that fewer people know about. If you have not yet secured a training contract and want to know how to find training contract vacancies with less competition, we set out a simple step-by-step guide to finding these jobs.

Applications

Every candidate knows the importance of submitting a strong training contract and vacation scheme application. However, many still fall short of the required level and, often, these shortcomings are easily fixed. We share our own experts' advice together with recruitment secrets from law firm graduate recruiters and essential tips from trainees who have already successfully navigated the training contract recruitment process.

Assessment Centres

Assessment centres are an incredibly important part of the training contract and vacation scheme recruitment processes. Many candidates just decide to trust they have what it takes and hope that is enough. However, there is much more you can be doing to help you prepare and practice for your next assessment centre. Here we set out a series of articles setting out invaluable advice and practice tests to help you ace these assessments.

Career Change to Law

Every year, we hear from individuals in a range of other careers who want to know how to go about making career change to law. Whilst this is entirely possible, there are plenty of do's and don'ts for how to go about making the change. Here we set out advice from our own graduate recruitment experts plus individuals who have already made a career change in to law from another career.

The Watson Glaser Test is a critical piece of the training contract puzzle.

Each year, more law firms use the Watson Glaser Test to filter our candidates from their recruitment processes.

It's simple, if you don't know how to pass it you won't get a job offer from them.

We teach you the nuts and bolts of this test and how best to practice it to get to the required pass level.

Find Out More

Get a copy of our guide: "23 Common Writing Mistakes in TC Applications" - it's free :)