Reading time: two minutes

Exams are over (woohoo) and there are a few weeks ahead of you to organise and do as you please. No prep to do, no consolidation to do and absolutely no dissertation writing to do (double woohoo). But how do you constructively use that time if you want to get ahead in your training contract applications?

First, relax. I finished my exams over a week ago and the exhaustion is still there. Weeks and months of stress and sitting at the same place at your desk for weeks is tiring. You’ve been working continuously without a major break, and your body and mind will be shattered. So, rest is important, hard for us law students to understand – I know!

Once you feel rested, I’d advise completing some online courses. FutureLearn runs some good online law courses that you can use to deepen your knowledge of the law and put on your CV in the next application cycle. Kennedys, the law firm, also offer some virtual work experience courses that allow you to complete tasks that a typical trainee may do.

You may be wondering; how will these help me? Well, think about the fact you could be competing with others who've completed these courses as their bread-and-butter preparation for the application cycle. They’ll have these on their application alongside other experiences, so showing that you’ve also put the hours in to complete these should stand you in good stead.

Next, see whether your local firm can offer you any work experience. Real-life experience is essential and shows that you can work in an office environment with colleagues productively. It doesn’t matter which practice area this is in; any experience is valuable.

Now you can think about planning your application cycle. You can start writing your list of firms to apply to and drafting some general answers to questions, such as why are you interested in a career in law? You can alter your answers to fit the firm you’re applying to but it’ll get your mind thinking about what to include in your application. Make a spreadsheet of the firms you want to apply to because I promise you, choosing which firms to prioritise takes longer than you think. A lot of research goes into making this decision and it’s just far easier to do when you don’t have university taking up a majority of your time.

My final tip is to read the news. Get used to picking up a paper once a week and make it part of your routine. It’s so easy to fall out of doing this when exams are on, but now is the time to pick that commercial awareness back up. Firms will be able to tell if you’ve only read one article before your interview or if you’ve consistently been reading the news and understand the current climate within various sectors.

Summer is, of course, for fun! But getting on top of things can be a great way to reduce your stress in the new academic year. Make time for both!