Have law fairs given you a case of the freebie jeebies? The best and worst of 2016

With every autumn comes a new round of university law fairs, inevitably accompanied by a cornucopia of branded free stuff which law firms give away to students. LCN’s Bethany Wren sorts the triumphs from the tat in our review of 2016’s giveaways.

The autumn term brings with it a plethora of holidays and events to celebrate. From Halloween to Christmas there is much to look forward to, yet no event is as eagerly anticipated as the university law fair. The chance to meet and chat with trainees and graduate recruitment managers at your favourite firms should not be underestimated; nor should the wealth of information you are able to collect and assimilate in one go. There might, however, be another reason why you so are so excited to attend your law fair this year, and it may have something to do with all the freebies.

Every year marketing teams at law firms sit down and brainstorm the best ways to entice students to apply to their firms, and to help them to remember their brands. Sometimes the best they can come up is with the same old post-it notes (not looking at anyone in particular, cough), and yet sometimes they really do excel themselves and create items that provoke excitement and joy, among us sad legal publishers anyway.

This year I was given the arduous task of collecting and compiling all of the best freebies from the 25 law fairs that the LawCareers.Net team attended. It’s a hard job, but somebody’s got to do it. After consulting seriously for several hours with my fellow LCN colleagues, we have created this comprehensive list of the good, the bad and the ugly from this year’s freebie haul.

Edible goodies

I suppose we have to start with the real reason any earnest and well-prepared student comes to a law fair: free food. The LCN team too enjoyed a range of law firm sweet treats on our long train journeys home, and although we were most excited about Taylor Wessing’s cake pops, we discovered unfortunately that they did not taste very nice at all. LCN’s Sinead questioned if they were left over from last year, and editor Josh positively reviewed that they may come in handy after a nuclear war, but even then – no.

We weren’t particularly big fans of Blake Morgan’s ‘naff and flavourless’ jelly beans, nor Bristow’s not-real-chocolate smarties (although the test tube they came in was cool). Straying away from the boring jelly bean and smarties route, Browne Jacobson opted this year for a stick of rock as one of their freebies. ‘Does anyone ever want a stick of rock?’ we questioned, and with that we were left disappointed (and hungry) with this year’s food offerings.

Vessels and receptacles

There’s an easy way to tell a law student apart from any other subject, and no, it’s not the tear-stained pages of Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence or the ability to reasonably argue themselves out of any situation – I’m talking about the branded mugs lining your kitchen cupboards. The worst of this year included the Irwin Mitchell mug described by the panel simply as ‘so ugly’ and with ‘rubbish buzzwords’, as well as the ‘too small’ and ‘hideously orange’ Simmons & Simmons travel mug. Favourites had to be the Bristows mugs which Isla and myself eyed up greedily for many hours at Nottingham law fair before pocketing on our way home, and the bright and colourful Ropes & Gray receptacles which provoked the following response from one of our panellists: ‘Ooh! The shape!’

In terms of water bottles, it really was a one-horse race from the beginning and that was led by Herbert Smith Freehills’ wonderful bobble water bottle, which I had my eye on from the start. ‘People will buy this in real life’ mused Josh, but what real life he spoke of I did not know. After 12 law fairs in two months, I couldn’t imagine a life past stale coffee, wide-eyed students, and stalls laden with The Training Contract & Pupillage Handbook.

Tech

Powerbanks, memory sticks and headphones have always dominated the tables of law firms at fairs, and this year was no exception. Baker & McKenzie’s snazzy powerbank wasn’t the lightest, but it does have a built-in lightning adaptor to charge your phone on the go, which we thoroughly approved of. For memory sticks it was a weigh-off between CMS’ weighty metallic contender and the Taylor Wessing light-as-a-feather-memory-stick-come-paperclip which we loved, but had also lost several times due to the fact that it is so very teeny tiny.

Stationery

Because we seem to be mainly just sad stationery addicts here at LCN, we were extremely excited to discuss the highs and lows of this year’s haul of post-its, notebooks and fancy pens. Mills & Reeve’s pack of post-its were the same old, but Norton Rose Fulbright’s faired a bit better among our judges, with Sinead’s sage words of wisdom: ‘I know they’re boring, but they’re useful.’ There were nice notebooks from Latham & Watkins and great highlighter post-it pens from Shoosmiths, but the real star of the stationery show was the Slaughter and May pen which Sinead wouldn’t even let us touch beforehand, so coveted was it. It garnered all 9s and 10s from the panel as we admired the weight and feel of it and declared it king of pens, before Sinead quickly snatched it back and placed it onto the shrine on her desk.

Oddballs and bits and bobs

As we come to the end of our freebie round-up, there’s just time to discuss the more (and I use this word loosely) interesting items that decorated firms’ fair stands. We have to talk about Baker & McKenzie’s strange travel pack containing all manner of travel-sized toiletries from toothpaste to foot gel, and which split our panellists in half. Isla wasn’t ‘totally anti it’, whereas Sinead wondered why on earth they thought it was a good idea. Josh was more interested in musing whether a razor is a bit too intimate for a freebie. Yes Josh, I think it probably is.

Blake Morgan’s stress ball was branded boring by the panel, and although Isla’s kids loved the Burges Salmon pink squishy fish, we wondered if perhaps young children weren’t the target audience for the product. From Morrison & Foerster we had nabbed a strange Lego brick set which even the trainee on the stall seemed bemused by. ‘What is this for?’ we asked in vexation. ‘There’s nothing even to build!’ The Travers Smith automatic umbrella, however, highly impressed us. Great branding, great quality and a great product – what more could you want in a freebie?

 

What’s the best law fair freebie you’ve picked up this year? Let us know in the comments below, or share with us on Twitter!