The full transcript can be found here:  http://www.legal500.com/assets/pages/roundtables/2017-bar-rt.html

Your law fair experience:

“I was pleasantly surprised!”

• You gritted your teeth, dived into the trenches and approached a firm you hadn’t read about in advance and were impressed by the people you spoke to.
• Action: do some homework and find out if an application would be worthwhile.

“They wrote down my name”

• If you felt the interaction went well, do what you can to ensure your application flags the conversation at the law fair.
• Action: include your experience in your application form but avoid dreaded name-dropping for the sake of it!

“I got a business card!”

• Action: if you haven’t already done so, follow this up as soon as possible!
  • You will have been given a card for a reason and that isn’t for a thicker looking wallet – they’re waiting for you to get in touch.
  • Politely ask if they’d be willing to meet for a coffee. Where this is impractical, arrange a phone call to discuss areas you didn’t cover at the fair.

“I spoke to lots of firms but did I make an impression? I only had time for a quick conversation so is it worth including in an application form?”

• Remember: law fairs are not networking events so short conversations are fine – firms will have appreciated your efficiency!
• Action: if you feel the conversation supplements your reasons for applying include it in your application.

“I spent most of my time talking to a couple of firms and didn’t have time to see any others”

• It’s great that you had a long chat with a firm but avoid putting all your eggs in one or two baskets!
• Action: do some more homework on the firms you didn’t speak to.

“I asked specific and got generic”

• Note: law fairs are tough for law firms too – they do almost all of the talking for 3-4 hours – so forgive them for the occasional generic answer!
• Action: think about whether you could have asked your question differently or whether you need to be more specific in future.
  • If the information was available online, you’re not giving firms the opportunity to give insightful answers.

“I had a bad experience”

• A firm that had initially interested you dropped the ball by being rude/hostile.
• Option 1: persevere – a handful of representatives are not the complete picture!
• Option 2: re-assess, are they really the sort of people you want to be working with?
  • Only you can decide between 1 and 2!

“I felt overwhelmed and hated every second”

• Fear not – life in law is not #lawfairwarfare writ large!
  • Law firms are highly attractive employers and naturally attract swathes of applicants so the heat of battle can get very intense!
• Action: Prepare fully for the next one –see tips on maximising your time at the law fair 

If you didn’t go to the law fair – DON’T PANIC! Firm-specific events often provide more information so focus on those you’ve attended and take every opportunity to go to any remaining events.

Practical next steps:

• Download the application forms of each firm you intend to apply to and get a feel for the demands of each one.

• Find out which firms have early deadlines and which make rolling offers i.e. before the deadline for applications – prioritise accordingly!

• Incorporate what you learned at the law fair in application forms – if you followed my advice in the Success at the Law Fair Checklist you’ll have copious notes and detail to draw upon!

• Include conversations from the fair you felt were meaningful in application forms – no matter what level of seniority i.e. a chat with a trainee could be worth including.
  • Include their name and what you took from the conversation – these should link strongly to why you want to work for that firm.

• Capitalise on the hints and tips you picked up at the fair e.g. if a firm has an active social media presence – monitor posts and learn as much as you can; if an employer has taken an interest in a particular aspect of your experience, ensure you include this!

• Heed advice: if a firm has academic requirements that you haven’t quite met, ensure an application is worth submitting. Often firms will still consider your application – ensure that you provide any relevant context for your grades where possible e.g. in a cover letter.
  • Complete every other section of the application to the highest standard.

• If you’re in your final year, check that you are eligible to apply for the summer vacation scheme. Some firms have winter schemes to cater for final year students – check whether it is still possible to apply for these.
  • If not, assess other options as increasingly vacation scheme places are awarded to final year students as well as graduates – contrary to popular belief, gaining a place in your penultimate year is not an absolute necessity!

• Do some further reading: deepen your knowledge and understanding of what you learned at the fair.

• “Sick stash” as a reason for applying should probably be left out of application forms.

Once you’ve submitted your application

•  **Read acknowledgment e-mails carefully – many firms require you to take a verbal reasoning test before considering your application within a deadline and instructions will be included – do not miss these!

• Continue to monitor developments in the industry and any news stories about the firms you have applied to.

Remember

A positive meeting at the law fair could be the beginning of an exciting career – this has been the case for many successful solicitors!

No matter how good an impression you made at the law fair, applications are a tough process – ensure you pull out all the stops to maximise your chances of getting a vacation scheme/TC!

For further insights and advice on writing effective applications, connect with Harri Davies on LinkedIn or follow him @HarriLlDavies on Twitter.

In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, “In my experience, there is no such thing as luck”. And so it is with legal careers: only hard work and sheer determination will secure an elusive training contract. It may also help to give thought to the future of the profession: will demand for lawyers grow or fall in an increasingly technological world? Which practice areas will be heavily recruiting over the next five-plus years? Will artificial intelligence and the mass production of R2-D2s, programmed with the entire collection of Halsbury’s Laws and the ability to bundle at speed, spell the end for trainee solicitors altogether, heaven forbid?

If nothing else, being clued-up on the developments in the profession will impress at interview; at best, it could put you ahead of the game. Of course, short of a crystal ball, it is very difficult to predict with certainty which legal disciplines will be in demand because the legal profession is so intertwined with the economy.

‘Legal services are driven by the economy and whether the economy is buoyant or not,’ explains Mike Smith, associate director at global legal recruitment agency Michael Page Legal. ‘There is always an appetite for corporate and commercial, real estate, construction and banking lawyers, for example, but in a downturn, the demand tends to be for employment lawyers, insolvency specialists and litigators.”

Put simply, when the economy is booming, companies actively invest by buying each other, creating lots of corporate transactions. In turn, transactions generate work in other commercial practice areas, such as real estate, finance, employment, intellectual property and pensions – all the ancillary legal issues when buying a business.

By contrast, during a downturn, companies seek to recover costs by suing each other, reducing expensive workforces via redundancies or even restructuring or breaking up the business altogether.

The B-word

Another issue making the jobs market difficult to predict is Brexit. Alison Pendleton, business director at leading recruiter Hays Legal, reveals: ‘After last year’s referendum, we lost 30% of our jobs overnight, although it has picked up again now.’
On the one hand, if companies, especially the major investment banks, decide to move their operations to Europe, it could have a devastating effect on corporate, M&A and banking work, for example. On the other, if the UK is unable to continue to attract foreign talent, there could be problems filling legal vacancies creating a rise in opportunities.

‘Whatever happens with Brexit, it will impact on the legal market,’ confirms Alison. ‘Presuming everything stays roughly the same for the immediate future, the market should remain steady over the next six months or so. But the major banks may go, in which case the law firms will follow.’

She expands: ‘When the banks do badly, everything freezes in the City; the big deals don’t get done and this spins off into other areas of practice. If things go badly, we’ll go back to how it was a year ago, with very few corporate roles in London.’

According to recruiters, the current practice areas with most vacancies are: financial services, particularly regulatory funds work; technology and media; and data protection, where the demand for lawyers currently outweighs supply due to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) coming into force next year, creating a raft of work. Real estate is ‘making a bit of a comeback’, says Alison, who also notes a rise in banking and litigation vacancies, and ‘corporate is now busy, having dipped a while ago,’ she says. ‘It is already busy outside of London and coming back in London now too’.

Practice areas currently commanding the largest salaries are banking, commercial, construction and real estate, while corporate lawyers ‘with good academics and experience will always get a job with a good salary’, says Mike.

What the tech?

In terms of practice areas of the future, growth markets will most certainly be linked to the fields of technology, media and life sciences, as the world’s ‘fourth industrial revolution’ (‘Industry 4.0’) takes hold. New products are already hitting the market which create complex legal issues, such as robotics, biotechnology, 3-D printing, self-driving cars and the Internet of Things (think Amazon’s Alexa).

Technology will increasingly impact on more traditional fields of law too, such as insurance law, where cybersecurity is a growing niche specialism; and finance – fintech is already revolutionising transactions and new products, including bitcoin and blockchain – see box: The Lex guide to TTT (tricky tech terms).

Jonathan Chertkow is the graduate recruitment partner at Hogan Lovells and a financial services regulatory lawyer who advises numerous fintech companies and banks, for example. He says that the speed of development in his field can be challenging from both a technical and legal perspective: ‘You have to work out what [the product] is and how it works, and become an expert in it. The pace at which everything is changing is growing all the time.’

Technology is also impacting upon how law firms are run and managed. Virtual law firms, such as Axiom, Lawyers on Demand and Keystone Law, are on the rise, enabling experienced lawyers to work remotely as freelancers, while even the most traditional law firms are embracing agile working, even for trainees.

Onshore low-cost centres owned by law firms, which simply means, cheaper satellite offices outside of London but still within the UK, are also on trend, as clients demand more cost efficiency; and the approval of alternative business structures (ABS) within the solicitors’ profession signals a rise in competitors to traditional law firms, such as accountancy and business consultancy companies, for example.

Tomorrow’s people

While it helps to be aware of the areas of legal practice that will be in demand in the future, specialising too early in your career is not advisable. Keeping doors open for as long as possible makes you more flexible to change, and change is rapid.
Jonathan advises: ‘Come in and do a vacation scheme, talk to firms, see how they are set up – but don’t for one minute think that how the firm is set up when you arrive is how it will always be. The law is changing, technology is changing, client needs are changing and you need to be up for that challenge. It can be difficult, but it can also make the job fun.’

If you are genuinely interested in technology, give thought to the technology sector as a whole and the firms that lead in this field, rather than focusing on technology law itself.

‘As an undergraduate, think about what interests you,’ continues Jonathan. ‘If you’re interested in technology, for example, you don’t necessarily need to specialise in technology law; you can get involved in M&A involving tech companies or the regulatory issues they face. So look at firms in that field and more importantly, look at the different types of practice at those firms working with tech companies, because they can be very different.’

When it comes to recruitment planning for the future, law firms are unlikely to factor in predictions of growth areas, preferring to provide trainees with a broad base of training in the key areas of corporate, dispute resolution, banking and finance and property, for example, in keeping with Solicitors Regulation Authority rules.

In terms of trainee numbers, these tend to remain roughly static too, with firms appreciating that economic impact is cyclical: while there may be less need for young lawyers one year, there will be a greater need in subsequent years.
However, where economic impact does tend to bite is retention rates, which enable firms to be more knee-jerk reactive to business needs. This year, retention rates have been down at a number of leading firms, amid uncertainty in the market.

Futuristic trainee

But what of artificial intelligence – could trainee solicitors be replaced altogether by affable androids, happy to work evenings and weekends while never hungover or late back from the gym? Highly unlikely, say recruiters. ‘There is an awful lot of pressure these days to deliver a cost effective legal service and to fall in line with technology,’ admits Mike at Michael Page Legal. ‘But artificial intelligence, for example, will not strip out the demand for actual lawyers to deliver services.’

Hogan Lovells’ Jonathan agrees: ‘The role of the trainee has evolved and there will be even more change. Technology may take away the more mundane tasks but there will always be a real need for trainees to do the work that technology cannot do, and be the future of the firm. It becomes difficult if you say that tech can replace the bottom layer [of staff], because how then do you get the senior lawyers of tomorrow?’

If you’re an undergraduate now, by the time you commence your training contract the legal landscape may have settled, post Brexit. Technology will probably have transformed the way legal services are delivered and products that were once science fiction will demand expert legal analysis and advice. But at least trainee solicitors will always be required, luckily. Perhaps Obi-Wan was wrong after all.

The Clyde & Co Bright Futures programme is a week-long scheme which offers first-year law students and penultimate-year non-law students the rare opportunity to gain an insight into life at an international law firm.

Attendees of the Bright Futures programme spend one week in one of Clyde & Co’s world-renowned departments and shadow a lawyer who is an expert in their field. Over the course of the week, students have the opportunity to observe sophisticated legal transactions, develop an understanding of the firm’s core industry sectors and learn how the firm assists their clients in achieving their commercial objectives. Candidates are also allocated a trainee ‘buddy’, who will be on hand throughout the week to answer any questions.

‘Students need to be conducting their research into the legal industry earlier and earlier. We wanted to offer a longer programme where first and penultimate year students (depending on their degree subject) could come in, actually sit at a desk and see first-hand the work that trainees do at the firm’, says Rebecca Babb, Senior Graduate Executive at Clyde & Co.

It’s not all about work, though. An array of social events take place over the course of the week, giving trainee hopefuls the opportunity to network with colleagues across Clyde & Co and giving an insight into the firm’s culture. ‘We very much see the Bright Futures programme as a way of generating brand awareness and securing students’ commitment to the firm early on’, says Rebecca.

At the end of the week, participants of the Bright Futures programme might be saying goodbye to their desk but they certainly won’t be saying goodbye to the firm. Far from being simply a week’s work experience, students will have the opportunity to continue engaging with the firm right up until they start their second or final year at university. Those who impress will be encouraged to apply for the following year’s vacation scheme and get the opportunity to be fast tracked through to the vacation scheme assessment centre.

This year’s Bright Futures programme will take place between 4 – 8 December. Applications are open now and close on 12 November 2017. To apply, click here.

For more information on the Bright Futures Programme, please visit www.clydegraduates.com.