One of the key things that will help breed success at training contract interviews is preparation.
Thoroughly researching the firm you are having an interview with is a must. The obvious places to start are the firms website and its brochure. Some firms have specific training contract recruitment brochures.
To find on-line brochures for a variety of firms visit the Brochures section of Law Careers.Net by clicking here.
A cursory read through the firms marketing materials however isn’t enough. You also need to get up to speed about the current affairs of the firm. This can be done by regularly reading the legal press but also by searching the archives of the websites of the legal press such as The Lawyer and Legal Week for mentions of the firms.
Another great tool you can use is the Deals section of Law Careers.Net which gives information on the main deals which certain law firms have advised on recently. Click here to read more.
Last but not least there are some fantastic tools available on the web to help monitor all the news relating to a firm. Our favourite is Google Reader which allows you to set up various searches for terms such as the firm’s name as well as subscribing to the news feeds of the legal press, etc. This way you can be sure that you get all relevant news about the firm or an area of the law in one place so that nothing passes you by and potentially trips you up at interview for not knowing.
As well as preparing your knowledge about the firm it is also advisable to prepare skeleton answers to common interview questions and other questions you might be able to anticipate the firm asking.
A discussion of the common interview questions you MUST be able to answer can be found here: Training Contract Interview Questions.
Professional Interview Coaching Now Available
If you have an interview or assessment day coming up and you would like to boost your chances you can do so by getting personalised interview coaching. Founder of Trainee Solicitor Surgery, and legal career coach, Matt Oliver can now help with this via his coaching website – for more details click here.
