Weekly Newsletter #18

Here’s what to expect this week…

Let’s get into it 👇

📍 Work experience, insight days & placement opportunities

✍️ POP MART (London)

Fancy getting in-house experience at one of the biggest names in the global trend and entertainment space? POP MART is looking for a Legal Intern to join its UK & Europe Legal Team, giving you exposure to commercial contracts, corporate and regulatory matters, marketing, and counterfeit-product issues across multiple jurisdictions. Previous legal experience is an advantage, but isn't essential. Apply ASAP.

☕ Kennedys Law (London & Manchester)

Kennedys are hosting relaxed coffee mornings at both their London and Manchester offices, where you can meet their Early Careers team, quiz current trainees and apprentices, and get a feel for the culture over tea and pastries. Places are limited.

📅 Mills & Reeve (Various)

Applications for their summer placement scheme are now open (yes, already)! They are offering two weeks of work experience across multiple offices, with an allowance to pay for travel, accommodation, food etc. You’ll be paired with a trainee, given plenty of legal work and take part in presentations and events. The deadline is December, so plenty of time for this one.

⚖️ Becket Chambers (Kent)

The window for Mini Pupillage applications at Becket Chambers is now open again, running between now and 31st December. I’ve attached the LinkedIn post by Emily, one of their barristers, sharing some top tips for applying. Just a CV and covering letter required for this one.

🎓 5 Essex Chambers (London)

Curious about life at the Bar and what it takes to secure pupillage at a leading set? Join 5 Essex Chambers for this in-person open evening, hearing from members at different stages of their careers, including the Pupillage Committee and recent pupils, with practical advice on applications, interviews and early-years practice. Date: 3rd December 2026.

💼  Trainee, Apprenticeship & Pupillage Roles

🌍 Belmond (London)

Fancy getting hands-on in-house experience with a global luxury travel business? Belmond's two-year Trainee Solicitor role offers broad exposure to commercial contracts, consumer law, brand protection and legal tech, while providing the Qualifying Work Experience needed to qualify as a solicitor. You'll need to have passed SQE1 and have some commercial legal work experience. Apply ASAP!

🤝 HM3 Legal (Chester/Liverpool/Wirral)

A certified B Corp with a genuinely values-driven culture, HM3 Legal have just opened applications for their training contract. Areas of law include Corporate/Commercial, Property, Dispute Resolution, Employment and more. Applications close end of October.

🏛️ Ministry of Justice (Cheltenham/Darlington)

As a trainee at the Public Defender Service, you'll gain hands-on experience across all areas of criminal defence, from police station advice and case preparation to court work, while working towards your qualifying work experience under the guidance of experienced solicitors and advocates. You'll need to have already passed the LPC or SQE to apply. Deadline: 21st September.

⚖️ Ben Hoare Bell (North East)

Could you see yourself training with a North East firm from September 2027? You can expect varied experience across different areas of law, working closely with clients under the supervision of specialist solicitors, at a firm that's balanced growing private client work with a continued commitment to publicly funded services. Deadline: 30th November.

🌳 Environment Agency (Various)

This Trainee role could see you working across litigation, prosecution and legal advice seats, with the goal of protecting water, air, land and communities from environmental harm. No previous legal work experience required, just passed or predicted SQE1&2/LPC by November 2026. Deadline: 4th October.

🩹 Carpenters Group (Liverpool)

As a Paralegal Apprentice within their Serious & Catastrophic Injury team, you'll support claims handlers with client, medical and insurer correspondence, drafting legal documentation and case management, all while working towards the Level 3 CILEX Paralegal Apprenticeship over 18 months. It's a solid grounding in litigation and personal injury work at a well known regional specialist. Worth noting the role involves reviewing evidence that can include graphic content, so go in with that in mind. Deadline: early October.

📋 Kennedys Law (Various)

Birmingham, Cambridge and Sheffield offer a specialist Healthcare track for trainee lawyers, working on clinical negligence and regulatory matters for clients like NHS Resolution and NHS Trusts. London and Manchester run a more general programme across Insurance, Liability Defence and Commercial. Plenty of time to apply for this one!

™️ Bird & Bird (London)

Could your next career move shape the future of global brands? Bird & Bird are looking for a Trainee Trade Mark Attorney to join their Brand Management team. Open to graduates from any degree discipline, this is an exciting opportunity to build a career in the Trade Mark profession, gaining hands-on experience advising on brand protection, managing global Trade Mark portfolios, and supporting contentious matters. Apply ASAP!

⚖️ Paralegal & Entry Level Roles

⚖️ Spotlight on Corruption (London)

Looking for something a little different from the usual law firm opportunities? Spotlight on Corruption is offering a Legal Fellowship focused on corruption, economic crime and strategic litigation, giving you hands-on experience with legal research, court cases and advocacy work. It's a great chance to get involved in public interest legal work from a different angle. No prior legal experience required. Deadline: 13th September.

🏥 Options for Care (Birmingham)

A slightly different but genuinely interesting entry point for those interested in mental health law. You'd support the Mental Health Act & Admin Team, scrutinising documentation for legal accuracy, arranging Tribunal hearings and Hospital Managers Panels, and liaising with solicitors, care coordinators and social workers. No legal qualification required - just GCSE English & Maths and solid administrative experience. A great way to get exposure to legal processes within a health and social care setting. Deadline: 11th September.

🛍️ ASOS.com (London)

ASOS are currently advertising two roles - a 6 month fixed term contract for a Paralegal and a 12 month fixed term contract for a Legal Admin Assistant (full or part-time). Both have different requirements so worth a read through on their website if you’re interested. Apply ASAP - these are bound to be popular!

📋 Bindmans LLP (London)

Fancy a foot in the door at one of the UK's top public law and human rights firms? Bindmans is hiring a part-time Administrative Assistant (2 days a week) to support their Education and Court of Protection/Mental Health teams. No previous law firm experience is needed, making this a genuinely accessible way to gain exposure to specialist human rights work.

💻 Keoghs (Remote/Bolton)

Keoghs are hiring a Small Claims File Handler, a great entry point into litigated file handling, managing your own caseload of Small Claims Track cases under the guidance of a lead File Handler. You'll get hands-on with witness statements, telephone negotiations, and drafting court documents, at a firm working alongside leading insurers. Mostly remote, with just 1 day a week in the Bolton office. It does require some prior experience. Apply soon!

⚖️ Penningtons Manches Cooper (Basingstoke)

PMC are hiring a Court of Protection Paralegal at their Basingstoke office. Your responsibilities will include assisting with Deputyship applications, preparing budgets and annual reviews, authorising payments and drafting correspondence. No prior experience required and flexible working on offer. Apply ASAP.

⭐ Swinburne Maddison LLP (Durham)

Swinburne Maddison are recruiting for a Legal Assistant to support their Private Client team. They're looking for someone who is organised, detail-oriented and enjoys building positive relationships with clients and colleagues, in a friendly and collaborative team where professional development and exceptional client service are at the heart of everything they do. Some prior experience required for this one. Deadline: 18th September.

My response: Thank you so much for this question - you are exactly the type of person that the Inclusie Club was set up to help! Human rights is not my area of law, so I asked my network to chip in with their thoughts too. I hope this response is helpful.

🧭 Start by working out the “why”

"Human rights law" potentially covers a huge range of work: asylum and immigration, public law and judicial review, prison law, community care and international humanitarian law to name a few. As Melanie Arens (Lawyer and Founder of Later On Lawyers) put it, it's worth thinking wide and drilling down into your own "why." If what you're really after is meaningful, people-centred work that has real impact, that can show up in all sorts of practice areas, not just a dedicated human rights firm.

Human rights cuts across many areas of law, so keep an open mind as you figure out where your version of that satisfaction lives.

🔍 Look beyond the firms everyone talks about

Commercial law dominates the conversation because those firms have the biggest recruitment budgets and the most polished grad schemes. To gain meaningful work experience, you could look at:

We post about entry-level opportunities in this area, so keep an eye out on the newsletter too! This week we shared an opportunity at Bindmans. It's an admin role rather than a legal one, but it's exactly the kind of foot-in-the-door opportunity that can open doors into a firm or company doing genuinely impactful work.

Alwyn Jones (Associate Professor of Law at De Montfort University) volunteered with Liberty as a student and helped research a Parliamentary inquiry submission. He suggests looking at volunteering opportunities and choosing a human rights topic for your dissertation or final year project if possible.

📌 Build experience on your own terms

Other ways to build your interest and CV could be…

🏁 Play the long game

Remember that careers are marathons, not sprints. Work will likely be a huge part of your life for many decades to come, so it is absolutely worth pursuing a career you're passionate about, rather than following someone else's dream.

I know many corporate and commercial lawyers who left after only two or three years. They quickly discovered it wasn't what they wanted, often because they were just following the crowd in applying to the big firms. I think you're one step ahead by pursuing your passion from the start.

Thanks to everyone who contributed on this one! Don’t forget that you can drop us a question by clicking the button below 👇

He shares the job that sparked his interest in data protection, how he built a network from scratch through nothing more than curiosity and consistency, and why imposter syndrome might actually be a sign you're doing something right. You can follow Charlie on LinkedIn here.

Q: Thanks for chatting to us, Charlie! I’d love to know what first got you interested in a career in data protection?

I was a late bloomer in finding a career, for sure.

In Canada I did a BSc in Biological Anthropology (aka human evolution) at the University of Calgary and worked long hours to pay my way through. After finishing university, due to the difficult job market at the time, I largely flailed around across a number of part time/seasonal jobs, sometimes working 3 at a time. The highlight ‘dead end job’ being a firewood sales business I ran for a while with a friend.

I moved to the UK during the beginning of Covid, and set to work desperately applying like so many other people at the time. 

I landed a role in sales at a consultancy business that sold penetration testing and various compliance projects, including UK GDPR assistance and outsourced Data Protection Officer services. I found GDPR the most interesting of any of the projects I sold, for a few different reasons: 

I wanted to move into a niche to grow my career beyond sales. I paid £2,600 out of pocket for a GDPR Practitioner course and exam, which at 28 years old was a little over 50% of all my savings at the time (queue panic inducing financial anxiety), I justified it by telling myself ‘’worst case, I’ll sell more GDPR projects and I’ll make more money in commission’’. 

2. You moved to the UK from Canada without any contacts in the industry - how did you go about building your network?

I don’t consider myself exuberantly extroverted, but I’m a serial organiser, and I’m very good at staying (at least loosely) connected with people I’ve worked with or come across. Even people who’ve just interviewed me for positions since moving here.

My most successful career hack has been asking anyone for a ‘networking call’, where I ask questions of people just for the sake of learning something new, and trading my own experiences/knowledge. Just a casual 30 min Teams chat, learn about each other, what the challenges are, our passions, what’s exciting. Invariably I’ve met lots of interesting people, and I’ve learnt an enormous number of things I would never have otherwise. Early on I framed this more so as finding ‘unofficial mentors’. 

3. Was there a particular career moment that stands out to you, and what did you learn from it?

The first time I walked into the office, looked around, and saw my desk. My overwhelming thought was ‘’how did I convince them to let me in here?’’

There have been a fair few moments like these.

The lesson learnt: own feelings of imposter syndrome, and own the vulnerability it brings. Most people feel imposter syndrome at some point in their careers, feeling it acknowledges that you’re out of your comfort zone, and that you’re growing. 

4. What's one practical first step you'd recommend to someone who is interested in a career like yours?

Ask 10 people you see as senior in the industry for a networking call on LinkedIn, expect only 1 person to respond. The template for such a request is super simple:

“Hi [First Name], thanks for the connect!

If you're up for it, I'd be keen to meet you over a little Teams networking call?

[Insert one sentence on your reason why]

[Example: I’m studying Data Protection and I’m looking to meet more people in our space!]

Kind regards,”

Arm yourself with 3 concise, inquisitive questions for the conversation. 

Thank you so much to Charlie for writing this piece, and for reminding us that sometimes all it takes is asking someone for a chat to discover a brand new career you never knew existed.

Got questions for Charlie, or want to share your own "how did I convince them to let me in here?" moment? Reply and let us know, we love hearing from you!

It's that time of year again. The biggest law firms are opening their vacation scheme applications, and you'll see them advertised everywhere.

As mentioned in this week’s Q&A, it can be tempting to follow the crowd and apply to the same opportunities as everyone else. But before you dive in, take a step back. Think about what you actually want from an opportunity, not just what's popular.

Your answers won't just narrow down your list. They'll help you write applications that actually sound like you, because you'll be able to explain why an opportunity is right for you personally, rather than reciting their marketing materials.

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.}