Vacation Scheme Review

Interesting variety of work, lovely and accomodating people, not left to own devices too much.

I did some initial work for trainees, and once they had seen I was competent more interesting work came in from more trainees and associates with various degrees of responsibility.

Trainees were always on hand, especially my buddy, for advice and chats, and anyone I did work for always took the time to explain the deal and make me feel involved.

It was less about developing skills and more about learning how my personality and my nascent skills would fit in and could be expected to grow.

There was always something to do to break up the time, including workshops, group activities, and presentations and talks from everyone at the firm from partners to trainees on a wide range of topics.

Uniformly lovely people working in a community.

There were some skills sessions and plenty of ad hoc teaching for tasks in the department, but it wasn't a main focus of the placement.

I saw the variety of work for different employees and the kind of hours you can be expected to work; firms don't varnish it in their brochures, but it doesn't REALLY hit home until you see people turning up at 9am smiling and telling you they didn't get out until 4am the night before.

Being in a department for two weeks sat with an associate helped see the flow and movement of internal interaction, and a talk from the managing partner laid out his vision for the firm.

I was already very invested in the law, but the placement helped me think about what kind of law firm I wanted to work at (e.g. a big City practice).

£250 a week. The emergency tax situation was a bit annoying, but perfectly adequate, though perhaps not as much as at other places.

Everyone was very approachable and we were encouraged to visit anyone we were interested in talking to, and trainees, HR (and a partner) attended the social events.

What we had was good, but trainees remarked that there had been more social events in the past.

There was a lot of buzz about the firm's annual football tournament (this year in Berlin) and mutterings about other stuff including CSR, but I missed the talk for other activities.

Great place, great way to get a job here too!