so a year ago i made a video about how to prepare for the next application cycle now this video is
an updated version of that but i'm also going to be talking about the little things that you can do
that will not only help you in this application cycle but in your legal career going forward my
name is simranjeet kaur mann and i am a trainee solicitor for a uk top 20 law firm i'm currently
in my second seat and i make videos for aspiring solicitors like yourselves i make videos for law
students i talk about personal development and i vlog my journey to becoming a qualified solicitor
and beyond so i'm going to be a bit annoying and interrupt this lovely video with a small
ad break i'm going to talk a little bit about mindful learning and the various products and
services that they have delivered so one thing that mindful learning have produced are three
really really great resources for commercial law applicants including an applications guide
an assessment centre study guide and lastly the law firm profiles guide which i don't think
i've talked about yet on my channel because it's quite a new thing that's been released
so i'm really looking forward to talking about that as well let's talk about the
law firm applications guide really really briefly first so what this e-guide does
is it talks a lot about how to tailor applications how to talk about commercial awareness in your
applications and there's also 28 successful cover letter or application examples that you can use
in this study guide as well to really help you out similarly the assessment centre guide provides a
lot of hints and tips as the name suggests for the assessment centre so really talking about
how to tackle those case study interviews talking about answering technical questions
researching commercial news stories and law firms and also includes the most challenging interview
questions and how to tackle them as well as some exemplar responses as well so what i really want
to talk about is what mindful learning have spent the last six months working on and it's
the law firm profiles handbook so in the last six months what mindful learning have been doing is
meticulously interviewing people from several law firms and collecting data on this to then
create a bespoke handbook now the law firms that are included are around 30 law firms
ranging from magic circle silver circle American law firms as well the purpose of this book is to
help aspiring solicitors with their applications it can form part of your research the reason
why it can really help you out is it provides exclusive insights into the different law firms
by industry professionals themselves so what does each handbook include it includes the following
a detailed analysis of the firm's business model a review of the firm's unique selling points
a year-long timeline of the firm's activity recent deals and the firm's yearly performance
and a further reading section so i can only just imagine how helpful this would have been if i was
in the process as well so definitely definitely worth looking into if you're interested now the
last amazing thing that i want to talk about with mindful learning is their e-learning
platform so what their e-learning platform is is tailored one-to-one coaching on things like
mock interviews application master classes commercial awareness classes cv reviews cover
letter reviews essay reviews a whole range and broad scripts yeah it's great spectrum i don't
know why i took i started saying skepta like the artist skepta and then sceptre like james bond
just what was i saying spectrum yeah spectrum so if you are looking for an additional pair of
eyes additional piece of help that can really help you out then the e-learning platform is definitely
something to consider as well these one-to-one sessions are around 90 minutes long one reason
why they're so great you will have your questions answered also by trusted legal professionals
each of these commercial law coaches who will be helping you out have a minimum of three years
experience within the industry and have had a minimum of two training contract offers as well
collectively these coaches have written successful applications and gone through the interview
process for around 90 different law firms and what more what makes it really great is you will be
paired up with the coach who is specific for your needs as well so it's not that you get randomly
picked a coach you talk about what you want to mindful learning and they will try their best to
cater for that in their e-learning platform now on all the things i've mentioned of course there's a
little discount here in true influencer style uh what other codes what are the codes so the
exclusive discount codes are sims 35 for books and sims 15 for the e-learning platform and the
coaching services right now let's move on to the juicy stuff so the first point i'd like to make
is my youtube channel and i'm not gonna act like i'm plugging my youtube channel but
i am i am i've made a playlist on youtube of all my videos that talk about the training contract
process it's called training contract 101 and a lot of people message me saying sim how can
i do this how can i do that how can i navigate the application cycle do you know about what's
in glazes do you know about case study interviews and it's like all of my tips are in that playlist
that's all i know that's all of my tips like everything has been packaged into that playlist
everything i know now the next thing i'd like to mention is potentially trying to find a mentor now
there's loads of mentoring schemes out there grow mentoring is one that's really popular
and i really like i like their ethos i love the objectives i love the people behind it
i love what they stand for and that's one that you can definitely apply to there's also other
ones out there like the student lawyers one that i've previously talked about in the past as well
and i really found the benefits of mentorship schemes because especially
in the training contract process this is an individual who can read your applications
this is an individual who can guide you towards the right perhaps the right path to take
this is an individual who's got your back and can guide you and answer any questions that you have
i have a mentor in my career right now so it's not only something that you can just limit yourself
for for the application cycle you can continue to have a mentor throughout the process this mentor
can also help you gain a role in the firm that you like because they may be working there or they
have a connection who works there etc so i really do recommend trying to find a mentor not only
for this application cycle but someone who can potentially stay with you through the rest of your
career if you are someone who doesn't want to make applications just yet but you want to get into the
flow of making applications one thing that you can do is draft answers for why commercial law draft
an answer to a practice competency question or a scenario based question it's not like you're going
to then copy and paste that into an application should you apply to a firm that's not the point at
all the point i'm trying to make is that you are then familiarizing yourself with the reasons
for why you even want to do commercial law in the first place i think that's a very personal and
unique response you are then able to practice these kind of questions and maybe just taking
a little bit step further if you've got a mentor you could get your mentor to give them a read and
see what they think you can give it to family and friends and see what they think so you are then
practicing questions before even applying to the firm itself so when it comes to applications and
you're ready to apply for example say if you're a first gen you want to apply to vacation schemes
but they're not open for you yet because i think generally they're open for second years this is
something that you can do another thing that you can do is network so i've been attending quite a
few networking events recently and i've talked i've talked to a lot of aspiring solicitors and
one thing that they've really found useful from the networking events is how much it's helped them
how many tips that they've gained that they've not heard of before and it then motivates them to
continue to do what they do and i think attending networking events is super useful if you are
you know applying or not applying at the moment it's really great to just get yourself out there
in the world there's some videos about networking on my channel and there's also one on the latest
vlog that i do for the law careers net channel so you can check those videos out about how i network
and frequently ask questions about networking but i think it's a really really great and
important thing that you can do throughout your career not just in the application cycle itself
the next thing i really recommend is fixing up your linkedin profile now this is something
that you can do in your spare time while you are waiting for a firm to get back to you or you know
if you're not in the mood to apply to firms you just want to do something career focused
improving your linkedin profile is one thing that you can definitely do and you can watch a
video that i've done about how i've improved mine via the link above another thing that you can do
while you are waiting for firms to get back to you again or if you don't want to make applications
is do free internships or webinars so what i mean by free is those that are you are eligible
to attend without having to go through a stringent eligibility process like bright network like doing
the virtual internships for the forage or forage that sounds like nigel farage let's say forage
the virtual internships the bright network were really great in during the
the pandemic and lockdown so if they're still running those definitely look out
for them there's also things like the legal cheap virtual affairs that all about law virtual affairs
which are super useful in speaking to firms directly and understanding what they're
looking for in their candidates the last thing that i'd recommend to really kind of
get this application cycle running kick started make sure it's organized and making sure that you
you kind of stay on top of it all as much as you can is organization and
back in the day there was a notion available but you could definitely use notion to do so
you can create kanban boards for example which kind of label everything under different statuses
so say if you've applied to a particular firm are you at the research stage or the what's in glazer
stage or are you at the interview stage so you can kind of use that document to track your progress
for different firms you can also use a notion page for a deadlines page of all the different
firms and their deadlines you can really organize yourself in such a way that you are then able to
go back to that notion planner and really set up how you want to go about the application process
maybe i'll make a video about that actually about my notion planner for aspiring solicitors hold
that thought i think i'll do that hopefully you found this video really useful these are just a
few extra tips that really i think helped me when i was in the process and also those extra ones
that i've picked up along the way when i've been content creating which wasn't possible or wasn't
available at the time but i wish i had when i was applying for training contracts as well hopefully
this video is super helpful thank you so much for watching i'll see you all in the next one