It’s always a lovely feeling when you start as a graduate recruiter and see your first cohort of trainees join the firm and then progress to become qualified solicitors.

My absolute highlight over the past few years, however, has been launching Macfarlanes’ bursary and training scholarship with Brunel Law School at Brunel University London. These are two big, tangible initiatives we have launched in response to social mobility challenges within the legal industry. I’m proud that we offer bursaries for applicants to Macfarlanes’ programmes and events, but we also offer a technology bursary that any student can apply for (though obviously we do hope they apply to Macfarlanes).

We have three in-person vacation schemes a year – one in the spring and two in the summer. Applications are now open until early January. We don’t screen on a rolling basis; we wait until we have all of the applications and then screen each one.

Following the application and online assessment, the next step for the candidate is the assessment day which is done application blind. This means that the only people from Macfarlanes who’ve seen your application are those on the early legal careers team. That way there’s no unconscious bias and it’s all about how you perform on the day. After that, we make our vacation scheme offers.

Our vacation schemes are very hands on – we want to ensure people gain an understanding of the work we do at Macfarlanes. We want our vac schemers to engage in real client work and attend client meetings to get an insight into what it’s like to be a solicitor at Macfarlanes.

We host various talks on Macfarlanes’ different practice areas as well as topics like diversity and inclusion (D&I) and working internationally, that are interspersed throughout the scheme. These talks offer applicants an insight into how the firm works. Of course, there are social elements to the scheme as well, to help everyone get to know each other.

Finally, while all this is going on, there’s also a transaction that vac schemers work on over the two weeks. It’s a fictional scenario that they discuss in teams and have to negotiate at the end of the scheme. We’ve found that it’s a good way for our vac schemers to experience what Macfarlanes does in a more fun and relaxed environment.

While vac schemers are assessed for a training contract at the end of the scheme, we also offer direct training contract applications – we don’t want those who are unable to attend our schemes to miss out.

It’s really important that everyone has the opportunity to apply for Macfarlanes and we understand that it can be difficult for some people to take two weeks off to undertake a vacation scheme – for example, career changers or those with caring responsibilities.

We also appreciate that doing a vacation scheme comes with costs, such as two weeks of accommodation and the cost of travel into London if you don’t live locally. We offer bursaries to help with these costs and to ensure equality of access.

Our direct training contract application closes on 19 July 2024.

One major skill we’re looking for is attention to detail, which we assess in a variety of ways. We also want to see how much you’ve researched the firm and whether you’ve answered the question we’re asking. Often people will see a word and jump on it, without fully considering what the question is asking.

We can’t emphasise enough the importance of really good research. We look for candidates to demonstrate that they understand what makes us different from our competitors, this helps to show that their application has been tailored for us.

Finally, teamwork is a vital skill – it’s very rare that you’d be doing something completely by yourself without support around you. There’ll be times when you’ll need to help other people and times when you’ll need to ask for help yourself. So, it’s important to see teamwork demonstrated throughout the application process.

Absolutely, yes! We can’t discriminate against people who haven’t had the opportunity to secure legal work experience. We don’t think you have to have legal work experience to get legal work experience.

You can demonstrate so many key skills with non-legal work experience. For example, if you spent time working in a shop and were given extra responsibilities, that demonstrates the skills we’re looking for. If you can deal with a challenging customer in a supermarket or restaurant, chances are you can stand up for your point of view and demonstrate resilience. It’s all about demonstrating transferable skills.

The phrase ‘commercial awareness’ means different things to different firms and people. We’re not looking for candidates who can tell us everything that’s going on in the business and legal world. For us, it goes back to research and demonstrating an understanding of why clients are so important, and why we have a client-first mentality at Macfarlanes. Being able to demonstrate that is key.

We adopted the SQE last year, so our trainees who joined us a couple of weeks ago have just gone through the SQE process.

Our future trainees undertake SQE1 and SQE2 before starting at the firm, and the preparation course is in collaboration with BPP University Law School. This is fully funded by Macfarlanes, and our trainees will also receive a maintenance grant. During this time, we get our future trainees into the office too, so that they can put what they’re learning into practice and find out what the firm is up to.

After the SQE, we run a short bespoke course that’s specific to the firm: Macfarlanes Essentials for Practice. This covers those bits that’ve been missed by the loss of the LPC and Professional Skills Course, to ensure our trainees are getting a fully rounded education and preparation for life as a lawyer at Macfarlanes.

D&I is incredibly important to us and underpins everything we do. For example, when we’re looking at campus season, we make sure that all the events we hold are inclusive and that we’re not just hiring out a bar to get people to meet us. We want to ensure that everyone feels included and can enjoy our events.

To help make our events more accessible, we have a participation bursary for those who might need to choose between doing a shift at work and attending an event. If our event clashes with an applicant’s work schedule, we’ll pay them for the cost of that missed shift. We also work closely with Rare Recruitment, Aspiring Solicitors and upReach to ensure we’re recruiting from a diverse pool of candidates.

We work to ensure that all our people have the same chance to develop and advance – and, with this in mind, we’ve invested in our processes. We don’t want unconscious bias at any stage of our lawyers’ careers, so we’ve started using a seat rotation app when allocating seats during the training programme so that the process is as fair as possible.

We’re not attending the classic in-person university law fairs this year. Although we appreciate that they can be a good resource for students, we’ve found that they don’t work quite as well for us. Instead, we’ll be working directly with universities to arrange our own events and attending a number of online legal careers fairs. We’ll also run our big flagship events which include a Q&A with our senior partner, a dinner with our senior partner and our practice area open day.

If you can, you should try and meet us. If you don’t manage to meet us before applying, it’s really important that you do your research and try to understand our culture, and why we’re unique in the marketplace. Learn about our practice areas too – we have a varied training programme where you can complete four different seats, which if you choose can be very different from one another.

Aspiring lawyers shouldn’t be afraid to get in touch with our team and ask for a call about our process. We’re more than happy to talk to anyone that’s interested in a career at Macfarlanes.

I’m still convinced that I could win Wimbledon despite never having had a tennis lesson or showing any promise in the sport whatsoever!