Weekly Newsletter #16

Here’s what to expect this week…

Let’s get into it 👇

📍 Work experience, insight days & bursaries

⚖️ Gray's Inn (London)

Interested in exploring a career at the Bar? Gray's Inn's University Advocacy Day gives you the chance to try advocacy exercises, get feedback from practising barristers and learn more about advocacy, ethics and life at the Bar. Travel subsidies are available. Deadline: 8th September.

🔎 Olliers Solicitors (Virtual)

Curious about criminal defence? Olliers' 2026 Virtual Internship runs on 11th September and gives you simulated case files, drafting exercises and case summaries alongside workshops on advocacy, forensic evidence and life as a criminal defence solicitor. Apply ASAP!

🏛️ Deans Court Chambers (Manchester)

Deans Court's 2026 Mini-Pupillage Day puts you through written and oral advocacy exercises in a workshop setting, with feedback from established practitioners and plenty of chat about careers at the Bar. Deadline: 31st August.

🎓 Addleshaw Goddard (Various)

Starting your first year of an LLB in 2026/27? Addleshaw Goddard's Sonia McMahon Award offers a £5,000 bursary to help with the cost of studying law, plus mentoring and a work experience placement at the firm, aimed at students from less privileged backgrounds. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

🏢 Davis Blank Furniss (Manchester)

Their 2027 Work Experience Programme is a three-day placement giving you hands-on exposure across Business Services, Commercial Property, Dispute Resolution and Residential Conveyancing, plus a look at their Employment and Clinical Negligence teams. Apply with your CV and cover letter (plenty of time for this one).

🏛️ St John's Chambers (London)

St John's Chambers are currently offering one mini-pupillage per month, particularly targeted for applicants from underrepresented backgrounds. Your time will include accompanying members to court, attending conferences involving clients and/or solicitors and reading and discussing paperwork. Applications are accepted throughout the year and will be reviewed next in September. Apply ASAP!

✨ Inclusie Club (Virtual)

Got some spare time on your hands over the final weeks of summer? We'd love more of our readers to write pieces for the newsletter and our website. You can pitch your ideas to [email protected]. The piece will need to be around 800 words in total and will reach over 1,000 aspiring legal professionals. Could be a great addition to your CV!

💼  Trainee, Apprenticeship & Pupillage Roles

⚖️ Gold Jennings (London)

Are you passionate about civil liberties and access to justice? This award-winning human rights firm is hiring a Trainee Solicitor/Paralegal for their Public Law team, working on judicial reviews against government departments, police and local authorities, with a particular focus on migrant rights and criminal justice. The role will either be suitable as a training contract (for those undergoing the LPC route) or to count towards Qualifying Work Experience (for those pursuing the SQE route). You must have completed or be working towards the LPC/SQE for this one. Deadline: 13th September.

🔗 Signet Jewelers UK & Ireland (Birmingham)

Just finished your A-Levels? Signet, the jewellery retailer, is hiring a Paralegal Apprentice to support its Legal, Risk and Compliance team, covering everything from contract drafting and trademark support to advising on marketing regulation and consumer complaints. No prior legal experience needed but there are certain grade requirements. Starts 21st September. Deadline: 4th September.

💻 Cartmell Shepherd (Cumbria & Northumberland)

This friendly regional firm is inviting applications for training contracts, with the chance to rotate through seats including Agribusiness (never come across this one before!), Dispute Resolution, Residential Property, Family, Private Client and Business Services. Applications close 31st August, with interviews in October.

⚖️ Paralegal & Entry Level Roles

My response: Great question, thank you! A few thoughts below…

🔍 Start by picking the right deal

Unless it’s particularly relevant to you, consider skipping the biggest, splashiest deal everyone else will mention. Look for one that signals either something about that particular firm (such as the firm building out a new practice area) and give your unique analysis, or choose something which links to your personal experience. This is what will set you apart from the standard AI answer.

🧠 Consider using the "what, so what, why me" structure

What: One sentence on the deal itself. Keep it factual, short and most importantly accurate!

So what: What does this tell you about the law firm or legal industry?

Why me: Connect it to something genuine about you. For example, it could be that you work part-time in a supermarket, so you’ve been reading up on this sector, and can talk about how this type of transaction could impact employees like you. That’s an answer that stands out.

📰 If you’re struggling with the “so what” part…

If you're not already subscribed, it's worth signing up to LittleLaw's free newsletter. Idin built it as a genuine commercial awareness tool rather than just a news summary and he draws on sources beyond the usual BBC Business or Financial Times headlines. He doesn't just tell you a deal happened. He tells you why it matters, which is exactly the "so what" thinking that step two is asking you to practise.

🏢 Map the deal team

Once you're comfortable with the framework, a really useful next step is working out how each department of the firm would actually be involved in the transaction you're discussing.

Take an acquisition as an example. Corporate usually sits at the centre, drafting and negotiating the key documents and pulling together input from everyone else. Employment reviews staff contracts and advises on TUPE where relevant. The Pensions team checks what happens to the company’s pension scheme and whether there's a funding deficit to deal with. Tax works through stamp duty and the wider tax consequences for both sides. Banking and finance puts the funding in place and may negotiate contracts with lenders. The Intellectual Property team checks things like what trademarks are owned.

Weaving a little detail into your answer, linking it to that firm’s departments, shows an assessor you understand a transaction isn't just a headline. It's a whole firm working together.

⚠️ One last thing

Don't cram in three or four deals just to prove you've done your research. One deal, properly unpacked using the framework above with something that makes it personal to you, beats a list every time. Depth over breadth!

Q: Thanks for chatting to us today, Jake, and congratulations on your training contract with Irwin Mitchell. Could you tell us a little about what your work for Liverpool’s Family Law Clinic involved?

A: When I started off, I sat in on advice appointments alongside another volunteer, and we had to take an accurate recording of everything that was said between the client and the solicitor. It was very important to remain sharp in these meetings as they could last for a long time, and you had to ensure that no single detail was missed. Afterwards, we would draft an advice letter to send to the solicitor, which consisted of an overview of the meeting, covering the key details of what was said in the meeting regarding the client’s case and recommended next steps.

Once I had completed 3 advice appointments, I moved onto conducting triage calls which was my favourite! I would be tasked to call the client and speak with them regarding their case and whether the Law Clinic would be able to help them. I followed a script essentially, outlining all the key things I had to ask the client. Getting to speak with real clients over the phone was really enjoyable, and it definitely developed my communication skills and confidence!

Q: How did you find juggling your volunteer work, applying for legal opportunities and studying?

A: I definitely found it manageable! In my final year I would volunteer once a week typically and I would pick time slots that worked around my lectures and extracurriculars. Balancing applications around university could be quite tough at times especially when deadlines were approaching. However, if I had an application I needed to do, I would always go into university a bit earlier in the morning to spend time preparing for my applications so that after my lecture, I had time to then spend on doing university work. Also, if I ever had a day off from university, then that would be spent doing applications as well.

I like to do all my work in the day rather than at night so just waking up that extra bit earlier to get some time in for my applications allowed me to do that. I think it’s easy to end up prioritising applications over university work, but I would advise anyone not to do this. It is definitely manageable, but it is not worth letting your grades slip for the sake of an application (we 100% agree with this)!

Q: Do you think your volunteer work helped you secure your training contract and will help you in your future career?

A: Yes, absolutely. I applied for the Legal Services for Individuals Training Contract at Irwin Mitchell, so the seats I complete will mostly be in sensitive areas of law such as medical negligence and even family law.

Volunteering in the Family Law Clinic of course involves quite sensitive matters, so it definitely equipped me with the skills necessary for these different areas of law. It taught me the importance of empathy when working on these cases, which I emphasised throughout each stage of the application process. Other skills it taught me was using a legal software system, which also taught me the importance of workplace confidentiality as well. So many of these skills I highlighted at my assessment centre and final interview. Additionally, in law you need to be able to build a rapport with clients and nurture that client relationship, which is especially important in sensitive areas of law like medical negligence and family where the client will be going through or have gone through a life-altering event. Therefore, I would explain how when I would sit in on client meetings, I really enjoyed witnessing the client-solicitor relationship develop first hand, and that it taught me how I would build a rapport with clients and how this requires an empathetic approach.

However, I think the Law Clinic was only a part of what helped me get my training contract. I utilised non-legal experiences as well such as volunteering, playing for the law football team at university and performing in musical theatre growing up. This displayed how I was an actual person with real interests, which I think the interviewers appreciated. So I would say although volunteering tremendously helped, my other experiences helped just as much.

Q: Do you have any final insight for those aspiring legal professionals applying for training contracts soon?

A: Before the next application cycle starts, I would have a look at what firms you want to apply for and really research them in depth. Factors that I considered were location, practice areas, trainee cohort and seat choices. This helped me because by the time application season came around, I didn’t have to spend as much time researching as I had already done this, so I could allocate more of my time to writing a good application answer or preparing for online interviews.

Go out your way to meet the firm at open days and careers fairs, you learn so much about the firm and it really shows motivation and dedication! I consistently mentioned in applications that I attended a firm talk on X, or I spoke to a trainee about X, which I think really helped me.

Lastly, I know it is easier said than done, but have confidence! Believe in yourself! It is so hard to when training contracts are so competitive, but having faith in yourself and your abilities will get you far. If you don’t feel confident because you don’t have as much legal experience as your peers, this does not matter. Draw on other experiences that make you interesting, even if they are completely unrelated to law, the skills you gain from these experiences are mostly transferrable, so make use of them. I would use so many weird and quirky examples in competency-based questions, so I would recommend this because it makes people remember you and stand out.

Huge thanks to Jake for sharing his experience with us! If you're looking to build similar experience, it's well worth checking whether your university runs a law clinic like Liverpool's Family Law Clinic, or has partnerships with local law centres offering something similar.

If family law is an area you're interested in, or you just want to understand the family courts better, The Transparency Project is well worth bookmarking. It's a registered charity that explains and discusses family law and the family courts in England and Wales in plain English and signposts to useful resources along the way. Their blog covers real cases, ongoing debates around court transparency, and even has a dictionary of family law terms. It’s a genuinely useful way to build your awareness of this area for free.

That’s all for now. See you next week!

^{The careers advice shared in this newsletter is intended as general guidance and should not be treated as formal legal or recruitment advice. I do my best to keep all opportunities and deadlines accurate and up-to-date at the time of writing, but always double-check the employer’s website before applying.}