We no longer run a traditional vacation scheme, instead we host the Discover Placement and Mentoring Programme.

Our Discover Placement and Mentoring Programme is an exciting new work experience programme aimed at high-achieving applicants from underrepresented groups in the legal profession.

Discover supports our diversity, equity and inclusion goals, taking a conscious, purpose-led approach. By introducing this placement Shoosmiths is driving progress in the diversity of our trainee cohorts and helping to address the wider challenge in the legal profession.

In advance of your placement, you’ll be matched with a professional mentor who’ll prepare you for your placement. They’ll act as a mentor throughout the placement, providing you with ongoing support right up to the training contract assessment centre and beyond.

The Discover placement is an important part of the recruitment process for us because we want people to experience what life at Shoosmiths is like. However, it’s not essential for aspiring Shoosmiths lawyers to have completed a scheme, at Shoosmiths or elsewhere, to secure a training contract with us.

You shouldn’t feel disheartened if you don’t secure a place on the scheme (there are only a limited number of spots available each year) because there are plenty of other opportunities to get to know Shoosmiths, including insight evenings, law fairs and panel discussions that we attend.

On the one-week placement, you’ll experience a week in the life of a trainee solicitor, which will include real responsibility, working on case files and attending meetings. Your week will be filled with a programme of learning – you’ll be supported by your whole team but a trainee solicitor will guide you through the working week, answering any questions you may have. You’re likely to spend time with one or two teams, in one office, over the duration of your placement.

In addition to this, we’ll task you with completing a business development project, which will help you to develop and showcase your innovative thinking. 

We know you’ll have lots of questions, so there’ll be opportunities for you to get to know our people and spend time with them in a social environment too.

Shoosmiths looks for a variety of skills in candidates such as communication, attention to detail and collaboration. We also want to see your motivations not only for a career in law, but also a career at Shoosmiths specifically. As such, it’s important that you showcase yourself and your strengths within your application. When you have the chance to tell us about your skills, don’t tell us what you think we want to hear – be authentic because this will make for a much better application.

Unless you’ve already completed the Legal Practice Course, from 2023 onwards you’ll need to complete the LLM SQE1 and 2 with BPP University Law School, which is now our exclusive legal education partner. It’s a 12-month course that can be completed online or on campus, and it’s fully funded by Shoosmiths. The firm will also fund the SQE assessments for our trainees and provide a living allowance while trainees are completing the SQE.

As a law firm, we need to be diverse not only for our business, but also for our clients; our clients need a variety of perspectives when dealing with their work and you simply can’t offer that if your business isn’t genuinely diverse.

Our current approach to diversity is based around the following three key areas:

• accountability;
• opportunity; and
• community.

This strategy is pivotal to our success as a business and the success of the people at Shoosmiths.

Our D&I team has many partnerships, including with the Black Solicitors Network and Stonewall, to ensure we have as much outreach as possible.

The most common way candidates let themselves down in applications is by not fully showcasing themselves. You need to make the application personal to yourself and the firm you’re applying to – authenticity is great to see in applications but is lost when you’re clearly using a template answer that’s being used to apply to other firms as well. 

To avoid these mistakes, you must take their time with the application – my advice is to split the application into sections that you complete at different points. Rushed applications naturally have a lot more errors and are more difficult to read.

Transferable skills can be found in a range of experiences, not just legal work so don’t worry if you haven’t got any legal experience yet. For example, you can talk about any part-time work you’ve had and whether you’re involved in any societies at university. You should provide details of the work you did, the skills you gained and how this applies to the role of a solicitor. 

It’s important that we can see applicants have researched the firm – not only so we can see whether you’d work well at Shoosmiths, but also for you to identify whether we’re the right firm for you. Given the number of firms available, you must be able to explain your decision to apply to a particular firm.

When conducting research, it’s useful to get involved in as much as possible, including insights evenings and panel discussions. Events like these will make your knowledge of the firm much more specific and means you can talk from first-hand experience. A great place to start is with the firm’s values and understanding why they’re important to us as a business.

Commercial awareness is extremely important and will remain so throughout a solicitor’s career. The best way you can show you’re commercially aware is by demonstrating an understanding of the impacts that the current legal market has on Shoosmiths and understanding how Shoosmiths reacts.

If you’re looking for a good place to start developing your commercial awareness, the Shoosmiths podcast is great – it’s easy to listen to and provides fantastic insights, which you can then build on with your own independent research.

We’ve recently updated our assessment centre to be strengths based, rather than competency based. It focuses more on the individual and where their strengths lie, rather than on a candidate’s experience. The aim is to level the playing field. The assessment centre comprises five different tasks:

• a small group task;
• a large group task;
• an oral presentation;
• an interview; and
• a written exercise.

It takes place in person and runs from around 9am to 4pm.

We attend a select number of fairs to give students the opportunity to learn more about Shoosmiths and what we offer. Law fairs are a great way for you to meet firms and ask questions with plenty of time to build on your research ahead of application deadlines. As mentioned before, there are plenty of other ways to meet us if we’re not attending the law fair at your university, including online law fairs, insight evenings and LawCareersNetLIVE.

My best piece of advice is to be open to opportunities and experiences. For example, being able to hear first hand what it’s like to work at Shoosmiths is extremely valuable. I’d encourage everyone to do as much research as possible and attend events to meet firms before starting applications. As well as providing valuable insights to help you write a good application, attending these types of events will hopefully give you the confidence that a career at Shoosmiths is what you want. As you conduct your research, connect with people too – LinkedIn is a great place to do this. You can connect with the emerging talent team on LinkedIn, you can also follow our Instagram page @shoosmithsgrads, where you can find lots of useful information about the recruitment process and beyond!
 

For a while, I wanted to be a chef but Hell’s Kitchen put me off that idea so my dream job would probably be a baker or cake shop owner.