Vacation Scheme (virtual) Review

We had a series of sessions from solicitors across the firm, giving an overview of their different practice areas via Teams. Several of these involved a task that we worked on around the sessions. We also had sessions on diversity and inclusion, and business development, as well as several social events.

The tasks were really useful to put the knowledge we'd learnt from the sessions into practice.

It was great to hear from different people about how they got into law and their motivations for choosing their practice areas.

Everyone was really friendly and welcoming. They all seemed to want to help and support us throughout the week, which was reassuring. The social events were a good way to bring people together in a more informal setting (less pressure!). Gateley clearly do lots of charity work which is great.

I found it really useful - meeting people and learning about their areas of practice was invaluable. It was a good insight into the company culture and it was reassuring to find everyone extremely friendly and helpful. We were encouraged to speak to people outside of the arranged sessions, which made it feel like we were important to the firm.

Yes

Let your personality come through in the process and make sure you take advantage of all the opportunities having access to the firm gives during the vacation scheme. Ask intelligent questions whenever you can! Doing it virtually is hard work though - take breaks to walk around and ease your legs (mine got a bit numb sitting down all day).