That’s a tough one! One of the best moments is making training contract offers – I may have shed a tear from time to time when sharing the positive news with candidates.

TLT runs a two-week, in-person vacation scheme in the summer across all our offices (except Belfast). Applications for this vacation scheme open 1 October; so, keep an eye out.

The vacation scheme forms a key part of our early careers recruitment process. While we don’t exclusively recruit from this programme, we feel the vacation scheme provides candidates and the firm alike an amazing opportunity to get to know each other. Candidates have the opportunity to understand the firm from within and experience life as a trainee throughout the scheme.

Candidates will engage in live legal work. This year our vac schemers shadowed client meetings, attended court and actively worked on client matters to support senior fee earners with addressing client needs. They’ll also attend presentations and can find out more about the law firm’s different practice areas.

We enrol our future trainees on the Solicitors Qualifying Exam LLM with BPP University Law School in the 12 months prior to commencing their training contract. Our future trainees sit SQE1, undertake a professional project, and BPP’s Essentials for Practice course during this time. They then join the business and undertake their four six-month seats, which provide them with the necessary exposure to fulfil the two years’ qualifying work experience requirement to qualify as a solicitor.

Our trainees then sit SQE2 during their third seat and have study time facilitated by the business. Due to the practical nature of SQE2, doing it this way means they’ll have had a chance to practise the skills assessed in SQE2 while with the firm!

Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the core of our strategy. The firm has set ambitious targets to support us on our journey to increasing representation within our business and our six-colleague led TLT networks play a crucial role in supporting the firm to achieve these targets.

We were delighted to achieve our 33% women partner target two years early and have since set a new target for 50% female representation at partner level by 2029. TLT has recently committed to a target of 35% ethnic minority representation across early careers by 2030 and is launching a new programme, TLTalent, to support in diversifying the legal industry.

Being overly generic in applications can let candidates down. Phrases such as “great clients”, “good culture” and “great leaders” don’t provide enough detail to differentiate between firms and appear more like stock phrases. Instead, take the above concepts and apply them to the firm – they must find key examples that highlight what they’re trying to get across.

Candidates must make sure they can substantiate their responses. Saying, “I would love to work for TLT as the work that is carried out in X team interests me”, is a little vague. Dig deeper, why does it interest you? What key deals have you seen completed in that team? How would your skill set support you in potentially being a good trainee in that team?

The use of AI is an emerging trend in early careers recruitment. We understand that candidates may wish to use AI in their applications; however, we expect applications to be a true reflection of individual research, analysis and writing skills; we want to hear their authentic voice.

Of course! We understand that not all candidates will have had the opportunity to gain legal work experience and have therefore designed our early careers recruitment process to account for this. For example, we use a strengths-based interview as part of our assessment centre where we encourage candidates to use the best suited example, regardless of whether it’s from their time at university, a part time job or a hobby, in order to answer the question to the best of their ability.

My advice is to always think about things happening on a macroeconomic scale, and then zoom in little by little to understand how this may be impacting TLT as a legal adviser, our clients and our communities. For example, the new Labour government has made changes regarding employment law. How has that impacted the advice that TLT’s employment team provides to our clients?

Yes, we run assessment centre for all of our early careers opportunities. These take place in-person and comprise varying assessed activities that help us to assess a candidate’s potential and suitability for TLT.

We have quite a few law fairs booked in all around the country! Our main objective is to speak to aspiring solicitors about the options we have available for them at TLT and discuss with them what life is like at the firm. Keep an eye on our Instagram @tltearlycareers to see where we’ll be.

For candidates looking to apply to us, focus on why TLT? What do we offer that other national firms don’t? Which of our core values resonates with you most? What firm initiatives have you seen that make you want to work here? What makes you want to train at a national firm rather than a magic circle, silver circle or US firm? These are important questions to ask yourself before entering the recruitment process. The answers will help you to construct your research into the firm and develop your answers.

If I were any good at cooking, I’d love to be a baker and own my own little bakery. However, unless people want to come and purchase a wonky Victoria Sponge, I think I better stick to early careers.