Vacation Placement Student Review

Got a lot of interesting and varied work, not a lot of admin work, and was well supported by my team - though I do think this was highly dependant on your team and some other students seemed to do quite a bit of admin work or not very much of anything.

I felt valued by my colleagues - the moment that springs to mind was when a senior associate just dropped me an email out the blue saying quick, I have a very important research task that I need done asap, can you do it? I felt like what I was doing actually mattered.

My trainee buddy and my supervisor were excellent. I have nothing but praise for them. They made me feel involved, had me doing very interesting work, gave me responsibility whilst supporting me, and seemed to actually care about how I was getting on.

I had a little bit of downtime, but I always had work to do. I rarely had short deadlines however, and was able to proceed with work at my own pace.

Slowly as the placement went on I got more and more work and responsibility, culminating in doing some drafting starting from a blank bit of paper which was great. I also had full access to files and systems which I didn't have at other firms.

I wouldn't say I learned a whole lot about actually how to do the work, but my understanding of the legal world and how a commercial law firm operates has definitely improved.

It was quite serious in the workplace, which was to be expected, though there was some good banter. My main criticism was that lunch was often taken at desks so you didn't really develop the same camaderie as elsewhere as you spent most of your day sitting at your desk alone!

Due to the recent merger the firm went through, there was a lot of issues with IT integration, office integration, team integration, etc. Phones and IT systems didn't work fantastically between the legacy McGrigors and legacy Pinsent Masons colleagues. There was issues in receiving accurate emails about what was happening in relation to the scheme. A number of plans changed last minute.

We had practice presentations from every team, were shipped off to Glasgow (a different city as I was based in Edinburgh) for our induction, I was over to Glasgow with my team for a team presentation, we had a few free lunches, taken out with partners once, and had a couple of nights out paid for. Not as flash as another firm I was at, but definitely no complaints.

Fairly positive - I think about 50-60% may get a job through the scheme and they are quite keen on recruiting from it (though this is from the outside looking in so it may be off the ball a little). They had a ridiculous number of recruitment hoops to jump through however - psychometric tests, intray exercises, an interview, a SWOT analysis and presentation (the last three were all with partners). This made the second week rather intense.

Had two nights out with a few trainees, office drinks as well, could perhaps have been better attended but I suppose people are busy.

In Edinburgh, in Summer, during or in the run up to the festival, is ridiculously expensive due to all the tourists. Short term rents are extortionate (think 3-4 times as much as a normal long term let).

Edinburgh has a fantastic night life, very vibrant, loads of pubs, bars and clubs for all different types of people. Cannot commend Edinburgh enough for being a fantastic city to live and work in.

If I really wanted to, I could have played hockey, got involved in the football team, and also I did do a variety of social evenings and events.